Fairphone 1 maintenance comes to an end

I’m not happy with this decision at all. I bought the Fairphone 1 mainly because I hate the idea of having to buy a new phoneeach few years. I can live with the old Android because what counts for me is that it works, I have not encountered much problems due to the old software and I accepted that.
What really hit me today is that there will not be any spare parts produced anymore. I changed the back cover, the midframe and the battery up until now. The prospect of something else breaking or not working and then having a phone with broken and unfixable parts is really something I was hoping I could avoid by buying this phone and so I am disappointed with this decision. This might be necessary for the future of the Fairphone brand but for me as a user who backed the movement during as one of the first 5000 buyers, this is disappointing.

Please mind, I still support the idea and believes of Fairphone and value the efforts it takes in sustainability, improving lives and work conditions.

But: There were bumps in the road, as one could expect when you do something new, but this is somehow seems like a full stop for a phone that should be long lasting.

edit: sorry, seems like this is now a reply to @katrin’s post, that was a mistake.

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Can’t you at least release a new version of Android 4.2 with some security fixes? Please. I don’t need Android 4.4, but I don’t want to use OS with security holes.

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Very much what @Isata said.

I may add that I recently broke my display, and I am getting comments from various sides that the “sustainability marketing” is crap. Only this weekend, I apologetically defended Fairphone and told several people that at least FP was still trying to get Android 4.4 to the phone - despite being quite aware that Android O is probably hitting the market this year in Barcelona as version 8, and 7.1 is the current version.

Given my experience, and the current price of €529.38, I am seriously in doubt if I should replace my FP1 with a FP2.

I wonder if you can at least set up a buyback program for people who will buy a FP2. This would be some kind of incentive. And I seriously beg you not to let down FP2 customers the same way. I convinced several people of buying a FP2, and in general they are satisfied customers. If the same story happened again to FP2 users - a drop of support well within the lifetime of a standard smartphone - this would be horrible.

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I don’t have a FP1 anymore because it was stolen :cry:, but the main reason I bought it to contribute to let the project start was that was born to last, so I’m pretty disappointed.
I think that the minimum you can do for the rest of the owners of FP1 is to let them have a huge discount to get FP2.
And please, I have now FP2 and I’m super happy with it: make it last. For real.

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Thanks, still hope for those sources the company worked on until recently.

This is a question of copyright. All the stuff that we would be allowed to publish is pretty boring because it is out there already. The juicy parts are proprietary to Mediatek. There are some Fairphone related changes to open source parts. But they are really really minor…

Did Fairphone ever consider crowdfunding specific spare parts? I am primarily thinking of displays and motherboards (as opposed to batteries) here because those are expensive enough to justify the losses from transaction costs involved in crowdfunding. This way you would have had the certainty that you would not produce a large amount of excess spares that would never be sold/needed.

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This is sad new.
Anyway, can I still subscribe for the Android 4.4 Beta program? I would at least like to run the latest beta to continue using my phone as long as possible; I don’t care about the Bluetooth issue.

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Hi folks,
what a great success for sustainability and environmental saving: I now have a 3 1/2 years young smartphone that was never developed ready (BT4 isn’t available until now although the hardware would be able to). There was a promise that the Android would be save and up-to-date… nothing!
I have a smartphonethat was bought with the promise of longevity and repareability. Well it was designed to be but without spare parts. who cares… Especial the batteries. My old Huawai 8160 uses its first battery since 5 years now and is pretty good. My fairphone battery quits its life 2 1/2 years old :frowning: The price for a new battery was so high, i made my spare unit myself. I can do this, others not.
Now canceling the development of Android 4.4 you lost all the trust I ever had in your honesty. We, that entusiatic guys that gave you our money to move something, we are dissapointed that you dont’t care about us. You don’t care about environment and all teh rest you promised.
By, you lost me. Be sure, I’ll never buy a fairphone again and be sure I’ll tell everybody not to buy such a crap. It is much more envirinmetal friendly and sustaionable to buy a smartphone that is well supported by second source and a big open community.

:frowning:

Marte

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I’m really disappointed by this bad news! You told us that you would have released an Android 4.4 for Fairphone 1, and now you simply say that it’s not going to happen… This is not a fair behavior from a company that is promoting a long life for its phones…
How much would it cost to finalize the development of the Android 4.4? If money is the problem, tell us how much you need for that, and that together we can find a solution.
How many Fairphone 1 customer are still using it? You can contact each one of the 60000 customers and ask them. Then you could launch a crowdfunding campaign …
Or the problem is that you don’t have any idea about how much it would cost?

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Well everyone who followed the FP1 forum this last year saw this news coming. Although this situation is perfectly understandable, I can’t deny that I am disappointed. I hoped that the lifespan of a Fairphone was longer than for example their Samsung counterparts. Unfortunately that is not the case, after three years I have a phone that is highly unreliable when it comes to its performance and many apps can’t run on this Android version. Hopefully FP2 users won’t find themselves in this position in a few years.

Nevertheless, I still stand behind the company and its values and maybe I would buy a (refurbished) FP2 when I saved enough money.

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Am not particularly surprised at this news, but am still disappointed. Communication always seemed to be a weak point from Fairphone and long periods without updates gradually worn down my expectations and hopes. At least we finally have a confirmation

I have been and continue to be reasonably happy with my FP1, but cannot see myself buying a FP2 or future phones unless something big happens to persuade me otherwise. Especially considering the price. I’m still glad I bought the phone and hopefully in that way contributed to the whole project, but frustration and disappointment remains

Am also worried for people who bought the FP2 now…:worried:

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I think the FP2 is in a much better position: Fairphone has sold already more of them than of the FP1, so the demand for spare parts is bigger and it is easier to order bigger quantities, although we see that there are some temporary supply shortfalls already. But I consider this as a short term issue and really hope that it isn’t a harbinger for the general availability of FP2 spare parts.
In terms of software updates we see that with Lineage OS there’s a community-driven OS that is on a later Android version than the official Fairphone OS. Due to the unlucky chipset choice for the FP1 there has never been something like that.

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well, this basically means I will probably go with purism in the future as fairphone fucked it up hard.
my advice: team up with 'em as they are good on the software part as well, but maybe not in ecological sourcing for parts so much.

Serious? I can’t believe it. Talking about sustainability, and let the product go obsolete after three and a half years? Please. Don’t. Already when I got that mail like: “Yeah, your phone is old now, and comes to the end of its lifetime”, I got sceptical. This was the preparation (“your phone is old now, time to buy the next one!”) Now come the facts. Ruins a lot of your image, sorry. No Fairphone 2 for me!

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It is not like Fairphone had provided Fairphone maintenance until yesterday. So the very first premise is incorrect.

Displays have been unavailable for a year already. Batteries have been in short supply for ages. Motherboards have been unavailable for months and months, and the last minor update of the OS is ages ago. The only thing we, the users have seen since are endless promises of a coming update, of spare parts that would eventually become available again etc. Jesus coming real soon this time…

So all in all, as an FP1U user, I have seen active maintenance happening for just under two years, which is pretty miserable for a device advertised for longevity.

I did expect more. Now I have returned to buying second hand phones again and putting custom ROMs onto them, for me, that’s the most ethnical and sustainable thing I can possibly do. Will I give Fairphone another chance? Not before some years have passed and they have a proven track record that they can do better. Because the experience with the FP2 also seems pretty sobering. Some of the components seem to be of poor quality and spare parts are also in short supply already. At this point I don’t have trust that they will be really able to ensure a life of 5 years as they have promised.

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I can only copy what Marte said:
“Now canceling the development of Android 4.4 you lost all the trust I ever had in your honesty.”

My girlfriend will switch to another phone supplier.
I also would like, but I bought a FP2, and now I think it was the wrong decision to buy it.

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Could you then please publish the Beta in its current state. I am using the Alpha and it’s quite stable, but I would be happier to use the most current version.

PS: Regardless of the unsatisfying news today, I would buy FP1 to “start a movement” again.

Thanks, Niko

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Hehe :smirk: That’s a good move! :wink: It’s seriously quite stable. The only thing that bothers me a bit is that the battery statistics are messed up (not battery life itself). At the end of the day I am still at 40%, but then it drops to 15% in a minute. Still, I think that most people wouldn’t notice that the alpha Android kitkat is not actually labelled as “stable”. :wink:

Thanks to Google they can’t. Google has long ago stopped releasing its Android Security Bulleting for versions below Kitkat.

@hagmeier @nikos You can download and install the last alpha build from this topic. The last version is “alpha-pre3” and there was no beta release.

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I hope you do! My FP1 still runs great, but I’ll keep an eye on the spare part situation (batteries in particular) with the FP2. Another failure like this after promising a long life cycle of your product, and I’m done buying from your company.

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