You’re the first one here giving such information. Would have been better - if these numbers are correct - to just make them public. Everyone would have agreed that preordering batteries for 1M would be insane.
BTW: By saying “No one ever asked” I meant that FP didn’t ask the FP1 users, not the other way round - sorry, if I wasn’t clear enough.
Agreed. If there really is a 50.000 lower limit to producing batteries. This, too, could have been communicated openly, couldn’t it?
What I really don’t understand: What’s wrong with the FP1 batteries, so they couldn’t use the same kind in the FP2? And FP3, and…
I guess it’s the new design of the FP2. To that modular design the battery of the FP1 would have been an unnecessary limitation. Add to that the quality problems with the first FP1 batteries (lots of bloated ones).
Also, the battery design is licensed. They may simply not have the rights to use it in a new phone design.
The FP2 battery has a 15% higher capacity compared to the FP1 battery (2420 mAh vs. 2100 mAh), while being 24% smaller in size. It would not have been practical to use the FP1 battery in the FP2.
(Thanks to @matthijs for providing me with the dimensions of the FP2 battery over in the Riot chatroom. )
Dear people at Fairphone,
I know there are many posts in this forum and it is frustrating to hear so many people shouting around without listening to your arguments. Nevertheless I’m still waiting for your answers about my questions about software development in an earlier post (Fairphone 1 maintenance comes to an end). I hope I’m getting an answer at some point.
This is really important to me. I was number 2000 and something to preorder a FP1, and I did this because you promised an open source OS. Please help me to understand why the OS development was not puclicly available and accepting help from community members like me.
Sorry to say you fall into this category yourself. The answer has been given (multiple times) in this topic.
or example by @paulakreuzer in post 58 of this thread:
Hm ok, sorry, I missed this post. But it doesn’t explain why it’s not possible. @paulakreuzer So the people behind Fairphone just messed up with the first manufacturer… That’s a pity (because I primarily bought my FP because I expected it to be open; I enjoyed that it was rooted 
). I’m quite sure that FP did promise they use an open source OS. I can’t find that, now, of course, but for the FP2 they explicitly advert this as a feature.
Nevertheless I’m glad that they seem to have learned from their mistake: FP2 really IS open source. It’d be much easier to let the community contribute if the development took place on Github or Gitlab. Is there a reason not to do that? I have a bit the expression that FP doesn’t really want the community to participate in the software development 
.
I’m 99.9% sure Fairphone never promised anything.
Well for the FP2 there are options to run partially open source OSes, but the FP2 “is” not open source.
FP Open OS is just FP OS stripped from the proprietary G%§$e stuff. Removing that is not hard work and doesn’t require much community input. Sure if there was more to developing Open OS then community input would help, but to make that a reality would also require many-times more effort from FP devs and it doesn’t seem like the team is big enough for that yet.
But for people who really want an open source OS with community development there is #software:alt-lineageos, sailfish and all the other #software:alternative-oses.
You can contribute via gerrit. @z3ntu can probably explain it to you.
This is going off-topic…
Thank you very much for your replies.
I think now that I’ve misunderstood Fairphone’s plans.
I see that you focus on social (and partly economical) sustainability, but not on ecological: To guarantee longevity of an electronic device, one must guarantee support for software, especially if it’s a device containing private personal data.
But in my opinion, every company relying on proprietary software will sooner or later have to stop software support. That’s why it’s so important to make software open source: The community itself can then maintain the software.
I for my part heavily consider buying an iPhone when my FP1 dies: This guarantees me 5 years of security updates. Another possibility would be Purism if their crowd funding succeeds. Or a second hand device supporting Lineage OS. I don’t know whether the FP2 will keep its promise to be a long lasting phone (“the phone to last”, yes, this is a promise). If it does, I will buy a FP3 when it’ll be available.
This is a community forum. You are not talking to Fairphone Employees here.
Sure, one day G%§$e will decide (out of the blue) that new Software is no longer supported on the FP2 - then everybody will have to switch to Lineage OS & Co.
So because FP doesn’t come with an Open Source OS by default you switch to one of the biggest enemies of the whole FLOSS movement? Ironclad logic!
You can get a second hand FP2 with Lineage OS.
You can’t promise something you can’t keep - so no it’s not a promise. I can promise you though that unless you are a time-traveller you’ll never be able to buy a mobile device that was proven to last at least 5 years and can expect it to still last that long from the time you buy it.
Aren’t we expected to keep a more polite and factual tone here?
BTW: Apple is one of the worst companies if you’re looking for privacy, but they actually have a lot of Open Source activities in the field, check here.
Thanks for the article, I’m not really surprised that Apple does such things. I have to apologise for my rudeness. I was talking about the iPhone with respect to software updates. I did not write it that way, this is a mistake of my part. In fact, I oppose proprietary software where I can…
Back to the topic: Besides attacking me in a quite impolite way, you haven’t said anything about the pointlessness of a “sustainable” phone without open software. One could easily say the attribute “sustainable” is a lie… Of course, Fairphone 2 seems to be better. I forgot about the refurbished phones. These appear to be the most ecological and sustainable phones available right now.
Edit:
If you advertise something as “built to last” on the front page of your website, you are giving a promise. You don’t have to say “I promise”, or “I swear”, you can also imply a promise. This is imho what most companies do, and there’s nothing bad about that.
…and an insane idea: is it so difficult made an adapter to insert fp2’s battery into fp1?
I own a FP1U which I bought about 3 years ago for the only reason that is was made to last and sourced ethically. I have just learned that Fairphone no longer supports their first products and is encouraging users to purchase the second generation of phones. In what way is this ethical? It seems to defeat the core mission of the organisation, at least on paper. I no longer can recommend the product to friends. The suggestions to find solutions in the community is a lazy and unacceptable response from the executive. Please look at your practices. So far you have proven to disregard the longevity of your first product, and with it, your credibility. What a shame.
Sorry to hear that of course. And - as the topic of this thread shows - you are not the only one.
Please take some time to read a bit of the discussion in this thread and try to take a look at this decision from the company’s standpoint.
For a start some points I had to think about myself, when being informed of the end of support for my FP1 (including some info I found here): What goot is sticking to a lost product (e.g. the chinese company that produced the phone is out of business) and holding high principles, when this might lead to going out of business or at least having less chances to take the project further with the next - modular - phone.
Thanks Bert for taking the time to respond. The question for me has to be one of ethics and trust -how willing a company is, one that profiles itself as ethical, to place business before principles. If it survives by prioritising business, well it will be just another company but not an ethical one. Seems to miss the point entirely. I understand that these are difficult times for businesses but would you support a charity that goes off-mission simply to survive? I would not. Now I am left with a redundant phone with less support and sustainability than if I had purchased a standard phone. Fairphone has missed the point entirely.