Fairphone 4 case & Alternatives

Hi and welcome please read above

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The Caseonline cases I ordered finally made it here:

Nice cases. No issues, aside from the brige of material above the power button being substantially thinner than the the one on Fairphone’s case though, and quite fragile when the phone is out of the case.

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Okay, I lied a little. The ring case is convenient, but it was a bit too slow to “deploy” for me: the ring must be pulled out of its resting position, then oriented to fit your hand/finger.

So I modified it a bit: I dremeled out two notches in the side of the plastic housing the ring rotates in to give the ring a second stowed position sideways, oriented exactly in the right position to slip my index or middle finger through.

Check it out:

Now it’s the perfect Fairphone 4 case :slight_smile:

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Where did you order this from, @Paule?

I bought it from eBay:

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The long-(pre)announced Fairphone 4 flip case is now available:

It is clearly marked as incompatible with the Fairphone 5 … but … I’ll want to test this again following my previous testing of an FP4 case on the FP5.

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On a closer inspection of just the pictures in the shop … I don’t see a cutout for microphone #3 (the mic on the long slim left side of the FP4). Neither on the hard case nor on the textile part.

Now I really hope I’ll get to see the real thing soon. :thinking:

P.S.: Confirmation that there IS a third microphone hole:

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Thanks for the notification. Let’s see how quick they are with shipping. With a bit of luck I may be able to bring one to the meetup in munich on monday. Chances are it’ll take longer though.
I really wonder about that microphone hole too. In the worst case a drill will do I guess.

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Unfortunately as of now it doesn’t look like the order has been processed to the point of it arriving on monday. :frowning:

The official FP4 Flipcase just arrived.

Here’s what I noticed so far:

  • The plastic the Shell is made of is significantly harder than that of the regular case. This means it cannot be bent as easily, which ensures a firm fit despite the edge not being continuous. This also makes the phone a bit harder to remove from the case, but within reasonable bounds.
  • There is in fact a hole for the microphone on the Phone’s left edge. It appears it was simply not included in the marketing renders uploaded to the FP Website.
  • The card holder comfortably fits one ID card. A secondone fits in there quite firmly. Inserting a third one is challenging but doable. It seems the slot was designed for a single card, but the fabric might well expand a bit if you put more than one card at once into the slot. I’m not sure ho easily the seam will break if you push it too much. I honestly don’t intend to find out.
  • The surface is matte, as is the surface of the original case, so it feels quite nice when holding it imo.
  • At least subjectively the edge of the shell is pretty flush with the screen, so you probably shouldn’t put it down on rough surfces face down with an open flap, but that’s what the flap is for I guess.
  • The flap fits on the screen pretty perfectly.
  • The fabric connecting the flappy part with the shell is reasonably soft. I did a few drop tests ob my bed (soft underground, so the Phone’s protected) from 1-2m of height. Since there’s no magnet holding the flap in place, it usually opens up furing the fall (except if dropped face-down with clesed flap and no rotational impulse), but it actually landed face down with lid open the minority of times. I guess there’s a bit of luck involved in how you drop your phone. What the flap still provides is scratch-protection wheb the phone is placed face-down on a surface.
  • The black stripe on the inside if the flap is some kind of cutout revealing black fabri underneath. At first I thought this was there to provide some transparency for the light sensor, but that does not appear to be the case. Maybe the black surface is needed for the proximity sensor to trigger correctly. Interestingly it aplears, the stripe is not alligned with the selfie camera/upper edge of the display, but is already located on the upper end of the display itself (below the camera notch).
  • As for the FP5-Fit of the FP4-Flipcase I have not test device at hand at the moment, but I imagine many of the allignment issues would be gone when the FP5 is inserted into the case, as there are mostly long open stripes along the edges instead of exact cutouts (except for the left microphone). Also the slight camera misallignment will obviously persist. Since the FP4 soft case did fit reasonably well into the FP4 standard case during the last meetup ecxept for the mentioned misallignments, it may be worth a try to see how bad it is. Maybe we can arrange a little test with your device some day @Volker? Also the favt that the FP5 camera sticks out further from the devive itself should be managable, as there’s a bit of space left on the back - the FP4 camera is not flush with the back of the shell.
  • Also a cosmetic note: There’s a glossy ‘Change is in your hand’ written on the matte inside that’s hidden once the Phone is inserted. Othe than that there’s a little ‘FAIRPHONE’ logo cutout on the bottom front of the flap’s outside.
  • As for the durability we’ll have to wait a bit. For now the case seems reasonably stirdy. I guess tge two thibgs that have the nost potential to fail would be the seam if the cardholder as well as the triangular fabrick part glued to the back of the shell. (It’s glued in a partial-cutout, so that its more or less flush with the backside of the rest of the shell btw). But we’ll have to wait and see for more on that.

I can provide some Photos of the case with the Phone inserted later on, when I have a different camera at hand, that’s not inside the Phone in the case. For now the Photos of the case itself will have to do. :wink:

Also I will gladly post an update if I notice anything else of relevance or forgot something.

Hope that helped. :slight_smile:

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Yes, should be possible. We might fix a date via pm.

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Just remind the third mic will def be covered by the case, even if the FP5 fits into the case

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As promised earlier, here are some Photos with the FP4 inside the case:

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I also just noticed, that it is actually possible to use the case as a stand (e.g. for watching videos):

snapshot_20230927_sq

(sorry for the bad photo quality in this instance - i took this one with a rather rudimentary laptop webcam)

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Thank you for the comprehensive report. Photos 5, 7 and 8 also provide some reasonable hope that the FP5 power and volume buttons (which are spread a bit more widely than their counterparts on the FP4) will most likely be all out in the open and fully accessible and usable in this case as well. Thanks for planning another FP5 in FP4 case test. :slight_smile:

Update @AndreasChris Fairphoner @JBap was hoping it was possible to wake up the display when lifting the flip case flap. I was wondering if an app like WaveUp (also available on the Play Store) could enable this. :thinking: Perhaps if you find the time, you might want to try.

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It’s done. I just followed up with a report in your thread.

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Hey FP community,
As a FP4 user and sustainability enthusiast I created a website for customizable and on demand printed phone cases: indimise.com
You can individualize fp4 and fp3 cases.
What do you think about it?

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Looks really nice. Do you also sell the .stl files for self-printing?

Glad you like it!
For now I don’t sell the STL. But let me know if you want to print your design on your own. Just take in account that the designs are optimized for PA12 in SLS.

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Fairphone 5 Protective Case - needed/Alternatives?