I have a FP3+, the rear camera no longer works and needs replaced. The website says they are permenantly discontinued. Whilst I understand it does not make business sense to keep making older components for phones - surely this is the whole point of fairphone? Does anyone have any ideas as to where I could buy a replacement?
Hello and welcome
Have a look here,
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Welcome to the community forum.
You can have a look or inquire yourself in the Market category here.
Well-known second hand platforms in the internet might be worth a visit, too.
It wasn’t necessarily a business decision.
Doesn’t change the fact that the situation is lamentable.
And the repairability surely is not the whole point of Fairphone, just to say.
What about the more fair material sourcing, the more fair working conditions for people in the supply chain, as well as the recycling efforts?
Regarding parts, here’s a good example of the challenges … Supply chain stories: What happened with our phone displays - Fairphone
And here’s the supply chain blog article search which led me back to the one about the FP2 displays … https://www.fairphone.com/en/?s=supply+chain
There’s much more on Blog - Fairphone, of course.
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Grim reading from gnmatthews. So disappointing to see that Fairphone have decided to discontinue some of the modules. That’s not even 4 years of availability if you bought a FP3+ on launch day, less if you purchased one at the end of their production run. It’s (another) ‘boooo’ from me to Fairphone.
It is good to see there modules are available on the market place, but I wonder how long before Fairphone discontinue the FP3 battery?
I agree with AnotherElk that repairability isn’t the only reason I purchased the Fairphone. For me, it was :
a) Phone did everything I wanted it to do,
b) It was marketed as easily repairable,
c) Fairtrade.
I paid for (a) including a 50%? premium for (c) upfront, and took (b) on trust. You can only replace modules if the modules are still available. It’s a thumbs up from me to the Angels who recycle used modules, I’ve boo’d fairphone already… right? 
On a positive note for FP5 users, they get a 5 years guarantee so I assume the company will have to stock all modules for at least that long. I guess that is a move in the right direction. Doesn’t help us FP3 users though.
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If you want to deduce from the warranty period … “We are still able to repair your Camera+ at our repair center.” … so since the warranty repair process always goes through the repair center that’s not an entirely different situation with the two phones.
The parts just ran out too soon, whichever way to look at it.
Only time will tell whether the situation will be better for the Fairphone 4 and 5.
The problem is that Fairphone can’t manufacture the parts themselves, they need some manufacturer to do it and even if there is a possible manufacturer for a maybe necessary new batch after years, Fairphone will be bound by their terms, which might not always be feasible (incredibly high minimum quantities for instance).
Better planning ahead is needed as a workaround, but this needs experience to draw plans from as Fairphone pointed out themselves, and success with this will still partly be down to luck.
The real conceptual solution to this would be making sure parts can be produced under all circumstances, i.e. designing parts which can be produced using artisanal processes if needed as well as publishing the complete designs.
(Fairphone made electronic schematics available for the Fairphone 4 and 5, no other phone vendor does this currently.)
But a phone like this would probably not be or even look like what we now have as normal smartphones, depending on what artisans could handle in production.
In any case, a significant part of Fairphone’s long-term credibility will depend on them getting the parts situation in order somehow.
Storing a huge abundance of parts for a really long time would not be ideal eco-wise, but bundled with their recycling efforts it would not be a mortal sin either in the long term. How much does it cost, and is suitable storage space readily available? I don’t know, but they’ll have to figure something out.
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