I have absolutely no intention of turning this into a discussion, as these have shown to exhaust me, just some words to explain:
I did not intend to step on your toes, you are right with what you said. However, it has always been my position - all the more since reading the article above - that we as a community know too little about what is going on, about the difficulties, the financial reasoning, the limited resources and the resulting prioritization to say things like “FP betrayed my trust”. This is why I said that better communication, also of setbacks, also of small news, and if it is just 140 chars on twitter, would be appreciated.
FP1 development has been halted, so whether it’s called alpha or beta or Untitled (36) makes no difference. If they had the resources to continue develpment, I am convinced they would do so. But maybe the harsh truth is that investing the manpower necessary for that into software development for FP2 serves the company (and all of us, in the end) better. My point is that we don’t know enough to sit here on a high horse and complain. I have never been a fan of forming an opinion without knowing all the facts.
Wait - of course we are allowed to complain - because we bought this product - or did you got your FP1 for free? A customer has his rights and if the supplier can’t fulfill what he sold with his product, customer can and must complain.
And the point of missing information: It’s really not the fault of the customers if the supplier don’t give enough information to see what is going on.
Consumer rights are a powerful thing. If you think Fairphone has violated yours, you should complain; with a consumer rights organization or the authorities.
I’d love to hear if you are really concerned about consumer rights and are taking steps to protect them. Which rights do you think have been violated (some links to articles would be great!) and which parts of consumer law we could use to show Fairphone that are wrong?
Complaining here in the forum is good to let of some steam and bring the mood down, but if you are concerned about your rights: you will find very little here that will help you to protect them.
[quote=“Johannes_Rohr, post:175, topic:30482”]
I just looked up and found that the last software update for the FP1 is nearly two years ago.[/quote]Support is not limited to software updates.
I’m curious, is it not unfulfilling to sustain a bitter state of mind over an extended period of time?
I own a FP2, and I am not sure to buy another one for my wife. FP depends on us, but at least I, don’t know, where the journey goes. I am not willing to pay 500€+ for a device, where I get no new battery (from the manufacturor) after 3 to 4 years. And I don’t want to regret, that I bought a FP2. I paid the higher price because of open software, transparency and a higher lifetime.
They should care about the device they have and keep their promises, before talking about a follow up device. The company is playing with their customer’s patience.
Provide fast spare parts delivery and much shorter device deliveries. Who wants to wait months for a smartphone? 4 weeks is the maximum. How can I recommend a FP to friends, and say, they have to wait such a long time. They would call me crazy. The best argument for them was the easy repairing. But how to do this without parts? And I don’t want to buy parts from 3rd parties or used parts.
And please have more ears for your community! Most users want SailfishOS as officially supported alternative OS. And FP takes Ubuntu Touch, a nearly dead OS. @z3ntu and @chrmhoffmann are doing such a great job with the LineageOS port. Please give them more support!
I don’t feel to be a part of any movement, when I read such news like this. And next year, maintainance for the FP2 ends??? Is that the idea you had???
You are not counting that this is about:
1- a ‘pre-alpha’ firmware (which will hold-off many) , and
2- it requires quite some (Android) skills to get this running on your phone.
Seriously, I waited since when? October 2015? for news on Android 4.4. And news would have been more than “we are working on it”.
I am not an Android developer. But I would have appreciated technical information, even some commented code sections to get an idea how complicated the stuff is and probably to learn from it.
What I got was radio silence, and an e-mail in July 2017 that Fairphone does no longer plan to release KitKat. Again, no “jucy” details. Not even a “we can’t tell you more because our lawyer advises against it”.
@Douwe, I assume it is very hard to do communications with an estimated 100k people, where only a small subset is actually interested in such stuff. But your work and what happens behind the scene in developement are black boxes to us. Basically everything since the e-mail that Android 4.4 would be coming to the FP1 is unknown to basically everybody. I don’t even know if the beta testers have had better information, as I missed the opportunity to sign up for the beta testing program by hours.
If you can, change that for future developement, please. Push out the information how to find information.
The beta testing forum of of Kitkat (#software:fp1-beta-testing) has been opened several months ago to the general audience. Everyone can read there about the current open issues, the discussion surrounding them and what is currently blocking development,
There has also been an Ask Me Anything session with the developer where anyone could ask questions and have them answered live by @jftr
If it is too long, I summarized the AMA and added any new news about KitKat to a topic which includes all the latest news with their date stamps. The link to the topic was posted several times on our Twitter and Facebook account to inform people about the status.
The information about why we can’t release the source was promptly given after the first person asked about it here on the forum. Apart from @wolf, nobody asked so far and I think we got the information to him as fast as we could.
Thank you, @Douwe, for this information!
And Bas, of course. [quote]the minimum orders required to produce new batches of spare parts is beyond what we can afford[/quote]Is it possible to get some actual numbers on this? Like what would have been the minimum batch size and the resulting cost?
Just for my peace of mind, can you confirm that it would have been too much money to accumulate through a crowdfunding campaign? Because I have heard several voices on here (including myself) that would have been willing to pay extra in exchange for displays and batteries.
Where he says that FairPhone 1 were support for 3 years and half but yet, the last software update is from August 2015 (or something like that), and spare parts were missing way before now… Again you are simply not being honest with us (nor the rest of the world). This is why people get mad at you… We don’t feel part of a movement nor a community if you treat us like this.
thanks for the information. I will not question how good or bad I find this decision, since it is already made and I am sure it wasn’t an easy one. However, you are forcing us to buy a new phone. I have been waiting for a while to change my broken screen because it wasn’t available in the shop, and now I know I will not get it.
Taking into account the end of support of FP1 that you are announcing here, the big difference of price of FP2 (in comparison with FP1) and the spirits of sustainability which are core of this movement, I believe the FP1 community deserves a discount to by an FP2. Otherwise, you are forcing us to either, feel a bit stupid and “fooled” buying a an expensive FP2 or to stop seeking fair technology.
Apologies if this has been already posted in the 179 responses that I have not been able to read.
Looking forward to receive a communication in my inbox with some good news…
Extremely disappointing. As so many that have posted in this thread before me, I joined the initial crowdfunding effort for the FP1 out of idealism and the desire to support a project that would deliver a different kind of mobile phone.
I expected a life time of well over the three and a half years that we’ve got now. I have been careful with my phone and I am assuming that mechanically and electronically it could easily work satisfactorily for me for at least another 6 years (just as a reference: I type this on a 2010 laptop and I still use a low energy 2009 desktop computer, both running on Arch Linux).
When buying in to the initial Fairphone project, I was also expecting the possibility of running an open source operating system on the FP1, but I was disappointed in that respect as well. It never happened due to the hardware used in the FP1.
I almost couldn’t believe what I read when it dawned to me that I will probably never be able to buy a replacement battery. I mean: a spare battery! In terms of sustainability one of the key concepts is to be able to buy replacement parts so that you don’t have to throw away the costly whole.
In summary: in my eyes the Fairphone project failed to deliver true sustainability (hardware and software) and I will not soon buy another Fairphone. My solution will be to go ‘back to basics’ and buy a simple mobile phone, like the Samsung clam model that my partner is still using.
This. 
