Does anyone know why this is necessary? Couldn’t they just raise the price if it has become uneconomic to sell bottom modules? Or if they really don’t want to produce bottom modules they could maybe give the blueprints to the public domain so someone else could produce bottom modules.
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I don’t see what makes you claim that the bottom module is not available anymore. Can you provide any source for that claim?
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Email from Fairphone sent out today says it will be stopped at the end of this month.
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I totally agree. With 12MP camera unavailable too! I was expecting full spares support to last AT LEAST five years after the end of production.
In case you don’t receive it the text of the email is below (links removed as I only just joined):
" Dear customer,
Today, I’m reaching out to you to let you know ahead of time that we will stop selling Fairphone 2 Bottom Modules by the end of this month. If your Fairphone 2 is still under warranty, a replacement Bottom Module will be available to you through our [Customer Support].
For all Fairphone 2 users whose device is not covered by the manufacturing warranty anymore, I recommend checking in with our [community forum], where you can find a marketplace for buying and selling spare parts. Another helpful resource is our support articles on how to extend the lifespan of your phone ([battery lifespan], [SIM card issues]. For everyone who’d like to check if they can fix the problem themselves, we have our [troubleshooting tool]). And, of course, you’re always welcome to [reach out to our Customer Support team], who can review all available options with you.
Now, I would like to offer some context to the situation. We launched Fairphone 2 back in 2015, and together with a loyal and dedicated community of users, we managed to support it for more than five years.
Ensuring the availability of spare parts becomes an increasingly delicate balancing act once the manufacturing of the phone stops. Ideally, we’d sell infinite spare parts to our customers for as long as they are needed while also ensuring we didn’t make one single module too many to prevent excess e-waste. But this is not the reality - although we do our very best to find a balance between these two objectives and keep devices going as long as possible. Fairphone 2 was the second phone we produced and the first modular phone in the industry. Producing the first modular phone presented new challenges in the supply chain. It came with difficulties in ensuring we had an adequate stock of spare parts. Stocking spare parts becomes more complicated once a device is no longer in production. And moving production for a limited amount of spare parts to another manufacturer is not a possibility.
That said, I must emphasize that this is not the end of Fairphone 2. We have enough supply of other spare parts, such as batteries and displays, as well as a major Android upgrade coming up shortly. However, I realize that no longer providing replacement Bottom Modules will be a serious challenge for some of you (who are out of warranty). For that, I sincerely apologize.
If you have questions concerning your Fairphone 2 or our effort to keep it going as long as possible, please feel free to [reach out to our Customer Support team].
With gratitude,
Eva Gouwens
CEO, Fairphone"
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I thought I weren’t allowed to share that email here, because of copyright restrictions, but yes that’s my source, too.
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I think this is an opportunity to bring up @Leo_TheCrafter’s great project again:
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Adding to that, I have a bunch of broken bottom modules lying around, either with USB plug issues or with a broken microphone (or both), so it would be great if one were able to repair them - I just don’t know how.
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I also need a new one every six month on average due to broken microphones.
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If that’s the case I apologise, but I’d hope that this would be announced on Fairphone’s website for the attention of second purchase users and so on.
I found this sentence the most upsetting / difficult to understand, especially after reading your post!
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I’ve immediatly written to them.
This is not acceptable.
I’ve had to change in average my bottom module once per year.
They’re directly sending FP2 to the trash with this decision.
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There are decisions at Fairphone which I just do not understand: They release Android 9 and cease spare parts for a device that might need them the most to run the OS for the next few years.
But yeah, the news about longevity have been spread already. Well done, Fairphone…
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I’ve had my FP2 for 5 years now and in that time I needed to renew six or seven bottom modules (lost count for obvious reasons), all of them because of a broken microphone.
Maybe it’d be a good idea to produce better bottom modules instead of none.
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I guess that the issue is caused by the frame that does not provide enough stability to almost all modules…
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From what I know, I would agree to that analysis.
The FP2 is “trouble by design”, as it is quite modular, very flexible and the display, that could lend stability is fixed by click and snap only.
The bottom module is most likely to break, as it is stressed not only by the flexible design. The USB cable connection is adding lots of stress/movement as well. And even more so, when one is using the phone while it’s plugged in; e.g. as navigation device in the car or playing while charging.
While I fullheartedly share the frustration and annoiance with the end of production, I have to admit, that it kind of makes sense businesswise.
More and more users, that are experiencing troubles, start looking for a new phone instead of spare-parts. That’s even visible in this forum with quite a few threads to that regard.
Please don’t tell this to my phone that within 4 years and 4 months has needed a new display as the old one became unresponsive and I gave it a new battery in that time. Everything else is working just fine. However I could imagine that the micro USB connector could be a candidate of failure in the future simply because it has the mechanical stress that you mentioned already. And given this it’s a pitty that exactly this part won’t be available anymore.
On the other hand it seems like this part has always been the one that was replaced most often and therefore is sold out now while other parts are still in stock because these are leftovers from the last production batch - just guessing of course…
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High time to take the stress off it with a magnetic adapter.
My Fairphone 2 is still on its first bottom module since 4 years, by the way.
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I too want to voice a slight disappointment. I’m aware that supply chains are difficult and all that, but at the rate that bottom modules fail for me (and quite a few others), I expect my phone now has less than a year left. 5 years is certainly not bad, probably the longest I’ve ever done with a smartphone, but equally I haven’t found an incentive to upgrade. Whatever my phone does today is sufficient for me. And with Android 9 in the pipeline, that could have lasted long enough to bridge the gap between the current 5G roll-out and mainstream 5G, one that I was hoping to skip over. Today new would just be for the sake of newness.
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Seriously? In my FP2 the microphone is always broken after 5 to 6 months and I need to buy a new bottom module. What good is a phone, one cannot talk with? I am very disapointed, this is not sustainable.
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