Huh, thanks for your long and valuable reply.
So for now it seems it is up to the customer to decide whether to buy a product made to care for responsibility or a product made for reliability. I would like to see both goals achieved. Maybe Fairphone can do that with their next smartphone.
Depends. Currently only FP2 is offered. So any “now” decision would be regarding FP2. Your statement implies, that FP2 is rather unreliable. But compared to what? A similar expensive phone? What does reliability mean? That there are software updates? That sometimes speakers fail? Does reliability also imply potential provision with spare parts? There could be a lot more questions to this.
My take on all this is a little different.
Currently you have the option to select from various packages. E.g. the Apple package which includes a phone and the way they treat workers and the things they care about.
Or the FP2 package which contains also a phone and all the things FP stands for.
Compared to a daily use at least until the end of the warranty period (two years).
I would say yes if we talk about security updates.
Yes if they fail within the warranty period.
It is worrying to see a lack of spare part supply for so many devices that are still covered by warranty…
@Gerry & @maik this is not the right topic to discuss whether the FP2 is reliable. Please stay on topic.
I think the worst aspect of the FP1 end of life issue is the uncertainty. I have read through this entire topic and I am still not sure if Fairphone has given up on FP1. It would be very helpful if someone from Fairphone could give a clear answer to the following question:
Disclaimer: I don’t work for Fairphone.
Fairphone did not abandon the Kitkat porting effort, after they had passed their estimated release date of September 2016. Judging from this I’d say that they won’t abandon it altogether, but keep on working on it until a release happens. Everything else would be a loss of many working hours of the developers.
The only reason I see that would Fairphone make consider to give up on FP1 would be when Google stops releasing security patches for Android Kitkat. But that’s entirely up to Google and Fairphone is probably too small a player to be able to influence Google’s decision.
Thanks Stefan for your reply.
If you are right that still leaves us with the uncertainty which as I said is the worst part. There is no point continuing with the developers effort if all the users have abandoned the FP1 in the meantime. Their time might be better spent on FP2.
It would still be nice to hear something official from Fairphone.
Relax, use your phone as long as possible, and do not count on a release of “KitKat”. When Google withdraws support for security updates, whenever that may happen, and “KitKat” is still not in reach, then it is time to make a change.
I must say I felt let down by last week’s message on the FP1 .
I’ve bought the FP1 to back the project showing the world that you can make a decent phone with respect for environment and work circumstances.
I accepted the fact that I paid more money for lesser technology than other phones at the time.
however… from a decent phone and decent company I would have expected more in terms of support. I’ve had to accept that I couldn’t properly use the bluetooth functionality and many times had to restart my phone to make it charge the battery.
Problems that have not been solved in the past 3yrs. I was hoping to get these fixed in the KitKat update promised for September 2016 (?!) , but with last week’s message I’m having very little confidence in getting this update and these problems fixed.
So until my screen breaks I can use my FP1 with the same problems and an increasing feeling of degraded security without updates being provided.
It looks like I’ll be looking for a new phone soon. Will it be a FP2? Don’t know yet. I’ll be reading up on the forum on user experiences so far to make my choice on that.
This is a great discussion and I’m also feeling betrayed by the lack of support for my Fairphone 1 but I guess that comes with the territory of supporting a new company 'kickstarting" a new phone. I still believe in what Fairphone is doing but because of this experience I’m not going to be buying a Fairphone 2.
By the end of the summer I will probably end up buying a new phone from Samsung. So there ya go. 
In my opinion it is a bad decision to buy an unfair smartphone because the fairest phone is not perfect yet. Fairphone has made huge progress with the FP2 and it is unlikely that FP2 will have the same problems as FP1.
That’s good to know about the FP2 but I don’t think asking for an OS update that I’ve already waited over 10 months for while having to delete apps on my phone that I use on a daily basis because they don’t work anymore, is asking for perfection.
I’m also not going to buy a FP2 because of the price. I’m in Canada and paying $500 for my FP1 was already a stretch for me. Maybe it’s not for most but I’m not willing to pay that much for a phone. Paying almost $800 for a FP2 is out of the question.
I think @Lee_Walker would like to buy a new Fairphone 2, not a used one without or with shorter warranty period…
If I understood it correctly the pre-alpha-3 is still the latest version of 4.4 for the FP1 (and has been that for many months). If that’s correct that doesn’t give much hope for us.
In the meantime I bought an unfair phone as alternative; the FP1 now being my secondary phone (without banking and other important apps).
Would you like to share the reason why you did not buy its successor, the Fairphone 2, instead of another phone made by a different manufacturer?
Yes, twofold:
1- Price. FP2 is far too expensive (for me)
2- Specs. A year ago I might have considered buying one (but by then my FP1 was too young to be replaced), but not now.
My original idea was to keep the FP1 alive until the FP3 has been born, but I really needed a newer phone (or better worded: a newer OS).
for me:
I read the email but I did not give it so much weight. I’ll keep my FP1 as long as I can. I’ll change the app that doesn’t work, as I made with Runkeeper which became a bloatware that cannot run also on the latest smartphone on market.
Continue here: