Got my FP5 a few hours ago Overal I’m very impressed. This is basically Pixel 3 quality. I still have to ‘battle test’ the camera, but so far I’m happy with it.
Found some minor stuff though:
- Just like with the Fairphone 4, the FP5 is also stuck on the February Play update
- Some strange custom menus with typos (again and still the same as with the FP4)
- When the always on display is enabled, the double tap to wake screen doesn’t work
- The phone instantly unlocks, which is not the best behavior in my opinion. On the FP4 this was optional. I also now have multiple false unlock attempts when I touch the sensor by accident.
- The ‘battery protect’ option is a bit strange, machine learning would’ve been a more effective approach to make this more dynamic instead of a static switch.
- The bouncing arrows in the notification bar bug is still here
- The protective case doesn’t have a risen edge anymore, exposing the screen to more potential damage
But these issues are all relatively minor. The initial impression is much better than the first few hours with the FP4. And even today the FP4 is in a worse shape than at the initial release IMHO. I hope the FP5 will remain awesome and become even better.
To balance it a bit, here are my positive remarks:
- The screen is amazing. Touch sensitivity seems perfect now, 90Hz is nice, good colors, brightness seems good.
- The speakers seem like a good improvement
- The vibration motor seems a bit more premium
- The camera is an amazing improvement! The AI auto scene selection, the camera leveler, the auto night mode, the selfie quality, it seems FF’ing amazing.
- Very smooth usage, also no crashes so far. The initial setup was a bit bumpy though with flashing apps at the edge of crashing and such. I did a factory reset and then things seemed over.
- Android 13 is amazing. It’s exactly where I left off with my Pixel 3. Even though that was Android 12, it had already features from Android 13. I’m glad I have these features back again.
I still have to test everything out and make sure things are reproducible and such, maybe some issues are just hiccups. But all in all, this time Fairphone seems to have nailed it!