I recently purchased the black Fairbuds to use with my Fairphone 5. When out walking with my phone in my pocket the music stutters quite a bit.
I just took them on my first jog and was impressed with how they stayed firmly in my ears but the connection was horrendous. I would say around 1/4 of the time they were either not playing or were stuttering. I have had £5 wireless headphones that has a much more stable connection than this.
I am playing the music through YT music and it is downloaded onto my phone.
Are there any settings that may help to solve this issue?
I also observed that the wireless range does not seem to be very good in general: One issue is that when I have my phone in my thigh pockets (right side), then it plays fine for a while. But at some point it starts having a bad reception without anything else having changed. It then helps to take the phone out of my pocket and move it closer to my left side.
My best guess: To my knowledge, the “main” headphone role changes from time to time to even out battery use across both earbuds. When that role changes to the left side, the reception gets too bad with my body in the way.
I have a feeling that this might be a limitation of the small form factor and resulting small antennas. Thus, my hopes of a software fix are limited, but it would surely be nice if range could be improved somehow.
I’m on the Fairphone 5 as well, and have no Bluetooth connection problems at all.
Use in earbuds from Jabra and overears from Sony.
Maybe its a hardware problem with your phone,
but hopefully it can be fixed through an software update .
Yeah, I am really hoping for a software fix too but it seems unlikely. They have got a small form factor but I haven’t had this issue with other headphones with similar size and especially not at this cost.
If it’s not that mine are defective then I would definitely say they aren’t fit for purpose in their current format.
Same issue. It’s practically unusable when going out with my phone in my bag or in my pocket. If it can’t be fixed software-wise, can we hope that Fairphone will propose replacement parts that could fix the issue?
Same problem here, i tried to send them back as faulty, but the response was that they haven’t found anything wrong with them. That’s very unfortunate, because Kieran stated, they’re basically unusable when Jogging…
Have you been able to get in contact with them? The live chat is always offline and they havent responded to a contact form from a week ago… feeling like I got scammed.
Yeah, that’s stupid. I wrote another message to the support regarding our issue, even sending the link to this conversation.
I specified, that there was no malfunction found on my pair and suggested maybe the stability can be improved with firmware updates?
It was on the 7th of September and they still haven’t responded.
Fairbuds are my first product from this company and I was looking forward to buying the Fairphone 5, however now I’m not that sure of it anymore. I’ll wait for the reply, but my phone needs replacement soon…
I’m thinking about sending my Fairbuds back.
They are unusable and I am disappointed.
Google Pixel 6a
Android 14 (LineageOS 21)
Bootloader unlocked, rooted
Fairbuds with firmware V65
Ok, the app has hardly any setting options. This can all still be changed and is currently not that important.
But the constant loss of connection, the left earphone not charging… what’s that all about?
I’m the kind of user who usually only wears one earbud in my ear so that I can hear my surroundings. During work, etc. When the battery of one headphone is empty, I take the other one fully charged and put the other one in the charging box.
I take the left earphone out, after 20 minutes it goes out or loses connection. After hours, the app shows 10% for the left earphone.
Even with my old Samsung Galaxy Buds Live SM-R180, the left earphone was empty extremely quickly, but not as bad as with Fairbuds.
So at the moment I can only use the right Fairbud (as long as the connection lasts). But still together with my old Galaxy Buds Live SM-R180 where I very rarely have connection problems.
Btw, Fairbuds are my first product from Fairphone too. I’ll test the Fairbuds for another week and then send them back. Fortunately, there is still a legal return policy.
Edit: Forgot to mention. If I only have the left Fairbud in my ear, video playback is paused every few seconds, for example.
And the app now only shows N/A for both batteries.
Why is that? I’ve never had anything like that before.
If you would like to continue using them, but are annoyed by the problems you have: Did you try to open a support ticket (contactsupport)? It might be a defective product. When I tested them I did not have such drastic issues - even if not everything was perfect, see above.
Don’t send anything back to Fairphone without hearing from them first. It will not go to the right place and you win absolutely nothing by doing that. How long has it been since your request? Two weeks and more seem to be the norm for receiving an answer right now, unfortunately.
You mention returning the product as well as warranty. Those are not the same thing:
returns: Under EU law you usually have 14 days to return a product you bought online without obligation to provide any reason for doing so. In this case the important part is that you have to declare the intent to return it within this period. It does not strictly have to be sent back within this period. As you depend on a response and possibly a return label from the vendor, you can only act once you got that. If this is your intention, then just wait for an answer, they still have to take it back even if more time passed. The important part is that you opened a request with them within the relevant timeframe.
warranty: This term is somewhat tricky as it’s used in different ways. It can refer to a voluntary offer (usually) by the manufacturer of the product covering defects. In case of the Fairbuds, it’s 3 years, but it does not entitle you to returning the product for a refund, only to a working product. If this is what you want, you aren’t running into any warranty issues anytime soon as the product is far from 3 years old. On the other hand - at least in the EU - it can also refer to an obligation for the vendor to provide either repairs, exchange or a refund in case of a defective product (“Gewährleistung” or “Mängelhaftung” in German). The period for that is between one and two years after the sale, depending on some circumstances. In this case the same applies: The important bit is that you declared your issue to the vendor in time, not depending on the reaction time of the vendor.
(I understand that the situation is not satisfying in either case. I’m waiting for a response on my own ticket right now. But doing what you describe above would only make it worse.)
I can’t recommend the Fairbuds really. I have used for over a year and had numerous annoying issues. I hoped that firmware updates would sort some of the issues but there has been nothing like this.
I have decided to sell mine on and buy a different mid range pair, sadly won’t be as ethical or repairable.
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