OK Soooooo. Final update I guess.
Have a new phone
Have a new SIM
Still dropping calls: people don t hear me in the middle of the city with full 4G / 5G reception.
Even on GSM. Free mobile France Marseille center. No GSM OUt.
The worse is I can hear people saying “I don t hear you”. It happens much less than with the 1st broken phone…but still not on pare with a 2008 phone for example… I never had such drope in conversations. Its like (I imagine) having a phone call in africa lost in the country side…but you are in the middle of a major city with 100% coverage signal…
I will sell this crap at some point, still hoping for an software update that would make it as good as a Samsung a3 from 2017…
Looking at the update on the FP4 the past 6 month they all mention “imrpovement on the network cariers”…it looks at least FP is putting its effort in the right direction !
Just to mention a little thing: the speedtests you did (as all speedtests I ever tested) show the speed in Mb/s (Megabits per second), not in MB/s (Megabytes per second), which means you have to divide your figures by 8 to get the speed in MB/s. E.g, when it shows an upload speed of 8Mb/s, it’s actually 1MB/s.
I know it’s not going to make you feel better… Just thought it was worth mentioning for the sake of it.
@Alex.A thanks for caring about others.
I really don t care about MB GB or what ever the measure is. I just need to do things in my every day life with a phone; like:
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receiving a phone call and BEEING HEARD on the other side of the phone.
Which doesn t work aswell as with let say a Pixel 4a and Samsung a3 2017
If the status of the techology would be that is not possible to be heard , I would say there is no problem! Now if I buy a 50€ phone it works ! -
[SOLVED]I need to be seen on a video call on the other side . WHich doesn t work with my PREVIOUS received FP4. Now it works quite OK.
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Most importantely is the CONSISTANCY of the quality of the signal. The people can hear me on a GSM call with this new FP4 they send me BUT every 2 minutes they tell me “I hear you like a robot”. This NEVER happend to me for the past 10 years ! Even with this 2nfd fairphone 4 they send me + the new SIM card it doesn t work well with full 5G coverage in the center of Marseille on a GSM call “I don t hear you” should be the base line for Fairphone .
I now believe it is some kind of problem like I had before the first update of my pixel 4a. The phone is not good at handeling GSM AND 4g/5G at the same time. I had this with pixel 4a : I do a lote of tethering to work on the go; and when I received a GSM call with pixel 4a it would disconnect the visioconference I was on (4g). I am wondering if we are not in an issue like this.
I am astonished no other people complain on this forum ??? Are you using your phones ???
PS: I am now mentioning only the problems I have with this replaced phone. Which is muuuuch better. But still needs a lot of signal improvement to be on pare with a modern phone.
If the only problem confirms to be tethering + GSM calls at the same time, I ll close this thread and open another.
I have this problem too. So a replacement model didn’t improve it, good to know. Maybe all Fairphone support staff and devs should use a FP4. Then maybe they will understand the problems better and can detect and fix them faster.
They are improving though. But this phone is almost a year old now and if I was in charge of quality control I would still not consider this phone ready for the consumer market. Calling should work fine for a phone. That’s not a premium feature.
I hope the Android 12 update won’t reset all the progress made.
“I am astonished no other people complain on this forum ??? Are you using your phones ???”
As I said, FP4 is on pair with other phones, no problem at all with Orange F.
thabks a lot @hirnsushi
This is actually the best answer I had concerning this issue, the fairphone support is nice but is absolut ZERO in helping you! They made me change SIM and blabla… just to waste my time.
Just had a look and my pain is coming to an end with this 6 moth old phone ! I might in the end be able to phone with a fairephone !!!
That’s pretty unreasonable. They no doubt ask you to do some basic tests that they can not do. The fact that it was fruitless for you doesn’t waste your time it just uses it in checking for a problem you have with your carrier, and Android 12, 13, 14 . . . . 100 won’t fix that you may be asked to do some tests when you complain.
take it easy 
I ll just not answer directely to your comment. But there are several phase I have been with this product.
I am just out of the phase where I had the feeling I had been stollen 570€ for a phone that 1) had no 4G connexion (Upload = changed the defective phone) + 2) couldn t give GSM phone calls.
Especially since FP4 is advertise as a phone and not a DIY project. It ll be OK if they would say it is in BETA until 2023 (I wouldn t have bought it).
For a resume read this :
Now If you believe this is not a waste of my time , its up to you ! At the minimum its a lie to consummers, and I don t feel happy beeing lied, sold a beta product.
For note I have a framework laptop wich is from a 1 year old company and EVERYTHING is working, no bug at all (Wifi connexion , screen; trackpad keyboard, camera,… ). When things work, I am aslo happy to aknowledge Framework is a very good sustainable product.
I have one too, however it’s a very simple product compared to a phone. The size of a phone alone causes problems for the developers., and all of the above, that exist, work on my two FP3s
However my argument isn’t that you should feel any different as you are clearly not finding the phone fit for your situation. That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the phone. My daughter is fine with her FP4 another wasn’t with her FP3.
It looks like your use scenario is in the percentile that is deemed almost usable, but that’s not the phone. Sadly it would have been a happier situation had you discovered it wasn’t suitable in the first 14 days and you could have asked for your money back.
However with a 5 year warranty there’s hope you can communicate your problems effectively with Fairphone and find a way past this issue.
But as you say, in your case it’s a bit like being a Beta tester. Well to stretch the issue it seems we only have one planet and are testing that and finding our demands are the issue not the planet.
Take care ~ I’ll not comment more ~ all the best.
I’ve moved your posts to this thread, started to turn a bit off-topic for a discussion about Android 12.
04/10/22
So with the replacement of my phone 2 month ago, I can attest that it has been mostely solved :
- I can use the upload of my phone to do signal video calls as expected with an average phone.
- With last month update people now start to hear me on the phone on GSM phone call like an average phone. They don t anymore hang up saying "I absolutely dont hear you. You sound like a robot in a cave " !!!
I wanted to wait to send this confirmation, since it has been soooo sketchy.
The only thing disapointing is that there is absolutely no advantage of 5G for now on free mobile in France. But this is another topic!
Especially the UPLOAD in 5G is exactelly the same as in 4G.
This 5G thingy is useless for now…maybe in some years there will be an usage??? I would have liked nulber one on my list an improvement in upload from 4G: improvement in consistency of the signal and bandwidth.
So yes sometimes you get DOWNLOADS of 300MB/s instead of 60MB/s…but who cares ?
Freemobile IS the problem, as their 5G is highly deployed on 700MHz with DSS. It’s fake 5G.
On Orange I usually get 700-1200Mb/s DL and 80-150 UL.
Well I just did a test (for work purposes) even with 4G I have
That’s certainly enough for me right now.
Had to think of this thread. I am currently in France and the roaming partner of o2 Germany seems to be Free Mobile. I’m in the heart of Paris and reception strength in my apartment is switching between 2 and 3 out of 4 bars 4G+. Download speed is in a range of 0 (didn’t even get registered by the app) and 646 kbit/s. In Germany, the only limit is the 500 Mbit/s cap of my provider. In Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, I had no problems with roaming, even with worse reception.
Outside of buildings, the values with Free Mobile are definitely better, but I haven’t done any speed test (yet).
Thanks for the info.
My test shown above was indoors building of reinforced concrete but big windows.
Yes it is exactely the kind of behaviour I have now with a working unit of the fairphone (beginning of this thread was with a broken unit). It has been improving a lot , now fairphone is comparable to a bad 5 year old 4G phone for me. Now I am hopping for more “network carrier” update like they have done the past monthes.
- Something that help sometime is to put your phone in airplane and back on the network. Or even reboot the phone. Then you get back to 2 to 10MB uploads.
- You need also to deactivate 5G since it is worse than 4G! What an evolution ! If you set 5G you will get Uplaods arround 400Kbts, where as in 4G you can get more realiabely 2MB to 8MB , even 13 MB if yiu are lucky .
Another thing that has greatly improve is when you receive a GSM phone call it degrades the connexion to 3G or lower 4G; this behaviour enables a better GSM connexion , so you can be heard by the person calling !!
Also GSM call is not up to the standards (yet?) of 10 years ago ! Which is VERY sad. I think if by the end of the uear It is not up to 2020 standard for GSM and internet, I ll sell it to another idealist and just get a samsung with a 5 year waranty;) Iphone 13 are now build to be reparable and just work aswell.
I was in the train every single person was watching a video from the internet wether on Iphone or on cheap android phones; with my fairphone I couldn t zeven access the internet for 3 hours (X2)!
I was in a place for 48hours I use to go for years with bad signal reception for everyone (Orange, free, bouygue) its inhe middle of nowhere.
The thing is that Fairphone consistentely perform worse than any phone using any network. With my Samsunf 2017 I was always able to give a phone call going to specific spots. With fairphone I could NEVER give a single phone call, even SMS didn t work ! I had to go to the reception to give a phone call like if I was in 1990!
Comon fairphone move , give use an update that make GSM phone call work like a 2020 phone. This mean if 99% of the people around me have a connexion I want it aswell.
If I get a phone call I want people to hear me.
Another user experience comment. I am using framework laptop for 2 mothes now for heavy work. And I feel this laptop is realiable , I can go on the other side of the world and just “do my things”. It is not going to fail on me in the exact moment I need it. This brand after only 1 year deliveres a product that is almost as good as the Macbook !
Fairephone give a call (with a samsung phone) to framework and be prepared to learn .
Fairpgone as improved over the past month on freemobile. In 4G here is the best I ever ad in internet conexion Upload, better than 0,2 mb UPLOAD !
Signal is still the worst on the market and no way to have internet when you are in a train for example !
In termes of the crown for the worst connexion I think fairphone 4 is pretty much fighting against it self at the very end of the market!
But I now believe that with some software update it can come back …the reason why I am keeping this phone until end of the year…
Free mobile has less frequencies (especially those below 1GHz) AND 25% less base stations than Orange / 1000 less than the 2 others.
Free mobile has the worst quality of service since his launch in 2012 (official annual survey by Arcep, based on millions of tests).
Just get rid of it. I have an excellent QoS on Orange, Bouygues is very good too and SFR just below.
You are not the only user with these problems. I know at least two other people, who are dealing with it. I have disable voip calling and am using GSM, as nobody can understand me, and I am using vodaphone as provider. Using GSM disables internet during calls. It’s like as the beginning of this millennium. And it’s happening with the original Fairphone OS and iode.
It’s really a shame, because sustainability was the most important argument for me to buy the really expensive FP4 and I will dispose it after half an year. I had not problems before with all my phones before.
After the December update I can confirme that Fairphone 4 is now behaving like at 2022 phone in france on the free mobile network.
I even noticed once having a better connexion than a Iphone from 2012 which never happened to me before!
This December update and then one before have been a very big leap in usability.
Even regular GSM calls have improved, I still have sometimes to deactivate the data in order for people to hear me on the other side of the call.
But is is maybe 30% of the time now…not 100% of the times !
So I am now confident that Fairphone can make this phone work exactely like any normal phone like samsung or iphone.
Only downside is that It took 12 monthes to have a working phone !!! Hopefully Fairphone will improve over time and Fairphone 5 will get basic features like GSM call and internet right out of the box.
This december update made also navigating through the phone somehow more fluide, like more FPS.
The photo app is bugging and lagging much less, its almost there. If we would have a ,night mode like pixel phones, that would be super.
Ho and GPS navigation too has improved over time, it was very bad , but not as important to me as GSM and data! But now it ticks all the checks. Bravo fairphone, finally we are there.
Looking forward for the improvements in the 4 coming years!
Can someone change the title tp [SOLVED]