Fairphone 1 maintenance comes to an end

FP1 users do get fist dibs on the cheaper and refurbished FP2 “new life edition”.

Great, who is selling this? can you send me a link? What I found wasn’t from your Fairphone shop.

thanks

Exactly! It is rather misleading, as the FP1 has only been supported for approx 1.5 yr. And as supporter of this project I don’t think we deserved to be mislead.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m still behind my decision to buy the FP1 at the time, but support has been extremely short, leading to an premature end of my FP1 (even though it’s still being used as a secondary phone).

Hmmm, if I had known that I might have considered bying a FP2 instead of diverting to a not-fair phone as I’ve done now. And I’m pretty sure I went through all the details on the webshop site several times before this divert.

Information about the refurbished FP2 can not (yet) be found in the webshop since that is open for everyone. It might be a good idea to add some announcement though.

You can show interest for the refurbished FP2 on the page ‘The latest news on the Fairphone 1’, a link to that page was sent with the news about the ended support.

You can find it here: https://www.fairphone.com/en/the-latest-news-on-the-fairphone-1/

About halfway through the page, right below ‘If you’re saying goodbye to your Fairphone 1’, you can enter your email address to show interest.

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As @uBkUN27v said above, there is more to support in a phone then software.

Also, as explained in the blog and as can be read in this previous post we tried very hard to release an update for over a year.

And we failed.

We think it is not in the interest of the company to keep pouring resources (money and man hours spend) into a project we do not know will ever end. As we say in Dutch: “Beter ten halve gekeerd, dan ten hele gedwaald.” (To err is human, but to persist in error is another matter.)

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And after 2-3 years, no updates anymore… - again.
In general, despite understandable frustration: lots op people totally underestimate that the whole mobile market is way to fucked up. And we are in this situation, because so many people permanently buy new phones and do not care about, what Fairphone stands for. Such a small firm CAN’T change supplier’s minds.
I would like to hear though from Fairphone in detail, what measures they take to secure FP2-support for, say, at least 4-5 years…

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And what else, if I may ask? Considering that (many) spare parts were over long time before this announcement, could you please lists some pieces of this "more to support in a phone " … I’d love to be illuminated to what was the support that have been kept for 3 years and half.[quote=“Douwe, post:197, topic:30482”]
We think it is not in the interest of the company to keep pouring resources (money and man hours spend) into a project we do not know will ever en
[/quote]

Again, this is very understandable, but still the key in all of this is communication. You kept up hope until the very last moment and then said "it is not gonna happen "…and insisting that the communication was good and you did support the FP1 for 3.5 years it is a bit frustrating as in practice this didn’t happen…

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To date you can call us during office hours and ask for help with any issue related to the Fairphone 1. Also there are still spare parts available. The battery part was for sale until very recently and throughout the last year we’ve been able to restock the display module from time to time.

Indeed. We wanted to make sure that we really reached the point of no return. As soon as that was decided we told everyone as quickly as possible. Do you think we should have informed you before we made the decision?

How do you define the last moment? It looks like the last moment arrives when you make a decision; so they logically always come together…

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After the disappointment with the FP1, in my opinion the chance is higher to get software updates in the future from bq then from fairphone.

When you give an appointment to someone saying:" I’ll be there at 5." Then it is 6 and you keep saying "I’m coming! I’m almost there “. Then at 9 you say :” I’m not coming “.
I bet everyone will be mad especially if you insist in saying :” but I do thought that I was coming "

About that I am not sure if you can define that a support since many people here do not have replacement… But OK, I understand that you need to defend the good things that have been carried on despite all the difficulties, but through all these posts I never seen you acknowledge any of our concern and you never said "yes you are right, we did not do good in this and that. And bla bla " . In my opinion if instead of keep insisting on the fact that you did the best you could do, you will admit some of the errors we care about and share why is not gonna happen again, there will be much less anger…

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Simple question:
Why do you stop supporting an operating system when you’re not able to get spare parts?
I mean…
We all understand that you cannot do the impossible, but you might continue to support whatever is still possible.
Dropping the whole thing means, more or less, that you don’t believe in it any more… and implicitly that we all should not have believed in it from the beginning. I think that’s why so many FP1 users are so disappointed.

Thank you for posting this clarification. Last time when I contacted customer support about a problem with my FP1 I received the following answer, something that really obset me:

Hello Amanda,

I am really sorry to inform you that we are phasing out FP1 in favor of our latest pride FP2.
However it is much improved and with better and more colorful cases.
"I hope you find this information useful, please do not hesitate to contact us for anything further you may require.

Kind Regards,"

That´s not at all what you want to hear if you think you have invested in a sustainable phone.

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Because maintaining software also costs a lot of money, and if vendors don’t care and security updates get rare, such a small firm like FP has hardly any options left. If way more people would have bought FP1, this would probably be different (also concerning spare parts), but this simply did not happen.

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Well, other people sue the vendors of phones equipped with insecure operating systems: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Klage-gegen-Media-Markt-wegen-Smartphone-Sicherheitsluecken-3778616.html / let’s assume this doesn’t apply to FP1

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I think from the offical communications it’s clear that the decision on stopping KitKat development is not based on spare parts availability. You can look in the forums to find posts from 10months ago that have some reports of specific problems with the Alpha. It seems they were unable to fix some of them for almost a year. It seems they were even unable to say if and when these would be fixable. They had to make a decision and I guess that’s just sunk cost now.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: :de: Enttäuschung über Fairphone 1 End of Life Strategie

They do not sue the vendor, but the seller (Mediamarkt) - for not informing the consumer that certain phones contained security vulnerabilities, when these phones were sold.

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Why not simply produce again FP1 ?
Lot of people love the FP1 and would certainly bought one, if have give more time to this product.

350€ for a phone sustainable phone was great.
Why create a fairphone 2 not compatible with the first one…

The parts are no longer produced. So it’s simply not possible to produce the FP1 again. For this reason the FP2 is not compatible. To make it compatible, you are very limited in choosing parts. And then the same thing would happen to the FP2: Parts will no longer be produced and the phone can no longer be supported.

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My FP1 battery is inflating, i could not use it anymore.
I am really disapointed to not found any new battery to buy on the fairphone shop !..

I buy the fairphone because you sell the concept of something durable, and that could be repair.

And now after only 3 year i should throw to trash a fairphone just because the battery breakdown … Its sucks.

I keep my old phone 7 year … What difference between fairphone and other compagny if you follow exactly the same issue.

Why create a fairphone 2 when fairphone 1 already give all option necessary.
Durability, mean possibility to repair, but also to not follow all new technical option. Larger screen; better camera etc… Do we really need them for a better world ?

I feel betrayed.

I bough the fp1 to my wife, and this year i hesitate to buy for me the fp2, but i do not cross the river, because it’s too high-end for the use I make. I do not need all this option and to pay such expensive phone. But well i like the concept of durability, so i could decide to finally buy it.

But now i see that i can throw away the fp1 like any other consumer goods, i will reconsider my position.

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If I would be in your position, I would check ebay and alike for a cheap FP1 with decent battery and probably other parts too. Supposedly, there will be lots of people selling their FP1 sooner or later.