Fairphone 5 in Vodafone Portugal? Anyone?

Help Fairphone 5
1

Has anyone used a Fairphone 5 in Vodafone Portugal network, that would like to share any experience ? (Both positive or negative?)

PS: I am thinking of ordering a an FP5 in the next few months, but I am a bit cautious with early bugs/defects. My FP3 still works but performance is a bit “nerfed” by the update to Android 13. Pixel 8 is my second choice, but I think Fairphone deserves a lot more historical credit regarding the repairability trend.

2

If that’s acceptable for you, you might want to switch off auto-rotation (you’ll still be able to rotate the screen manually) and animations (that came with Android 13) in the Settings and see if it speeds up things a bit.

Regarding your specific Portugal network reception request, perhaps it helps to also ask in the Portugal and the Lisbon topics in this forum. :slight_smile:

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Thank you for the tips @urs_lesse , but really struggle with this forum’s interface. There is only “+New Topic” button on the home page. There are no categories or tags for Portugal or Lisbon, and if I visit those “threads” (? what are they) there is no “+New Topic” button. (So I fail to create a post there…I can only reply).

(Any admin) Feel free to move my post there, as I can’t figure out how to.

PS: The FP3 performance “nerfing” is not so much about “graphical” performance (I can stand that). It was about:

  1. battery life is better, but messaging apps - MS-Teams, discord, slack - notifications are mostly delayed to the next time I unlock the phone (and so, they miss the point of notifying me). Did not want to mess with battery settings.
  2. Unresponsive for a while while after unlocking (maybe all messaging apps are bundling their past notifications).
  3. loosing calls (twice people said they’ve called me, and I am sure that the phone did not rang) - but I could not reproduce nor did I have some trust with those people to ask for help reproducing. (So this defect is a “maybe”. Maybe it is not a defect, but miscommunication between people, or a sporadic phone network issue).
4

On how the forum works, basically a “topic” is what is often called a “thread” elsewhere.

If you want to continue in an existing topic/thread, you can use the BLUE “Reply” button at the bottom of a topic for generally continuing in that topic or the GREY “Reply” under someone else’s reply/post if you want to directly reply to that forum member’s reply/post.

5

“Local” category, but not only for Portugal: Local - Fairphone Community Forum

Tag (well, flags are actually not that convenient here…)
https://forum.fairphone.com/tag/%F0%9F%87%B5%F0%9F%87%B9

6

Replying to myself, I’ve taken the chance (of being the only one I know locally) to order an FP5 - transparent edition - to help show the “Why?” to others.

I just received it a few days ago, and it seems to work fine with Vodafone Portugal.

Just tested the basic, make/receive voice call, send/receive sms (without RCS), use some mobile data, and all seems to work.
(Did not test the speed of mobile 5G data, and neither tested services under weak network coverage, yet).

The phone migration went smoothly, and I seem to be able to do everything I did with the FP3 (use Android auto in the car with an USB cable, use Bluetooth in the car, make payments scanning QR-codes, etc).

Performance seems to have gone back to acceptable levels. The instant messaging app notification huge-delay seems to have went away, but it needs more testing (having more people contacting me when I am not at the work PC).

Now it is just a matter of getting used to new features (face unlocking, tap to wake up, getting used to the new fingerprint reader, dynamic bright - turned off for now as sometimes the screen gets very dark, etc…).
I miss the 3.5mm audio jack, but I will probably buy an USB-C headphone soon (more money for the same feature :frowning:

So, I recommend FP5 to anyone needing an upgrade (or a new Android phone).

(FP3 will become my backup phone body, pocket tablet, and in a few months, until I have courage to apply a factory-reset, then maybe use it for games).