Fun fact, I recentely noticed I have a “Fairphone bug anxiety” .
Never had this with any other phone the past 23 years.
I had very big problems with my FP4 the first month, requiring to send it 2 times within the first month ! I thought I would be left with a brand new , NOT working phone !
Concequentely, every problem makes me feel its the end of my phone.
I was wondering if the person on FP2 and other version get this feeling ?
Especially interested in FP5 first impressions, do you feel like “using a sturdy german car” … or “a chinese one” ?
After 2 years of using I just now find it is kinda worth the effort, since I just placed an order to change my USB c and battery, which wouldn t have been impossible with any other phone today.
For sure my customer experience would have been much better with a regular samsung to trash every 3 years.
Now I believe FP5 must be much better ? Especially since the motherboard is more integrated, it will result in fewer HW bugs.
If FP5 is not better I can imagine I will go back to samsung in some years, just because I don t want to be somewhere in Africa or taking a train with my digital ticket without my phone working!
Note: for those with big problems at the very beginning, just cancel your order and send the phone back. If is a production quality problem like me , you are in for a nightmare. Better reordering the same phone 3 monthes later.
I use Fairphones since 2016 and so far never had any serious issues, so no I dont have any bug anxiety. I doubt any answer here will take away your anxiety and any neg experience you hear will just feed it.
In my opinion you cant overcome this with a forum and forum replies, thats more a general mental trainng thing topic and first step is to recognize it. However further steps isnt anything this forum here can really accomplish.
Onething you maybe want to take away:
Worries are as pointless as sticking on plasters, because you could cut yourself.
Thks @yvmuell , I think I understood thks to you. Its just as explained in this post.
I am not going to “post over”, since it is all there to read
Just I think this is a reality for many users, I have read before buyinh this phone, and people onf FP2 where very anxious I think. Especially the persons using it every day for real as a smartphone … people “just phoning once a day” didn t experience this (and might have been better served with an old nokia).
That s why I waited to read less problems with the FP3 , in order to jump in the FP4 wagon.
Still FP4 was not as bug free as a samsung.
Bottomline FP4 was kind of a meditation, I realise how dependante I really am from technology ! If my SIM card disconnect like I had recentely, before taking a train or a plane, I am loosing money and business , because I cannot get to a 3000€ meeting in Paris ! I cannot afford in this day and age to not trust my phone …
Have fun
Failure log since purchase (its more than on any other phone I owned. Most time I have no problem in the 1st 24monthes) :
1 month : FP4 could not connect to the network , after 3 month finaly had a new unit that worked.( The unit couldn t phone well still because it was staying on 4G fro 12 more monthes until soft update)
16 monthes : Mirophone on lound speaker GSM call is mediocre , since update to android 13.
18 monthes : SIM card disconnection since 3 monthes.
19th month : Screen Popup since a month ( tapped back).
24 monthes : USB C wear out 1 week ago (I saw this only on one phone from a relative on an 8 year old samsng)
As long as you stick to re-posting your issues over and over and over again, I dont think we can help you with your worries and I feel your are rather searching for bad experience confirmation helping you to stay in the frustrated and worried mood.
There are enough users out there haunted by bugs on any kind of smartphone, Samsung ones, too.
Leaving the non-helpful area of anecdotal evidence, statistically there certainly will be phones serving a higher percentage of users well than other phones, but how would it help you to know which ones, if the real possibility remains to end up in the respective minority of users dealing with issues?
Ok, you may find solace in the fact that your choice of device might have been statistically sound, so you did nothing wrong there, but this too doesn’t help you with issues you might encounter nonetheless .
You can not solve this with your approach, because the bottom line really is … in this day and age you can’t really trust this technology.
You recognised a valuable truth with this, and if it helps you feel better: you are ahead of the curve with this (which is more of a sign of the unawareness or ignorance of many many users out there, but you are allowed to accept positives how ever they may present themselves ).
Instead of going to lengths to try not to see this now recognised truth anymore to get a fake cozy sense of security back, deal with this truth to prevent negative outcomes and win sovereignty over the situation, and thus win actual security back as best as you can.
Look for alternative possibilities or workflows for your important use cases.
You seem to have a general sense of problem awareness, that’s good.
Yes, exactly. What if? What to do then? What could you possibly have done beforehand to prepare? That’s where it starts.
You have a use case there, threatened by failure of your smartphone or your SIM card. What do you want to do to secure the functioning of the use case, now that you recognised your primary tech means may fail you? What is a possible plan B (and C)?
What about a backup device which can do most of what the primary device can do? What about possible non-digital/non-electronic fallbacks for a certain situation (perhaps e.g. people still printing out all their PDF or App tickets on paper are not dinosaurs beyond hope, but rather on to something)?
No.
My wife had one of the first FP1, I had a FP2 which my son continues using and I’m very happy with my FP5 now. I was never afraid of any of these phones failing randomly. All the potential shortcomings of these devices were pretty clear and known but none of them prevented me from using them in some way, knowing that I had to adapt somehow.
But I probably haven’t built up my existence on any of these devices. So if anything had failed, then there would have been an alternative way of doing it.
I view myself as technologically cursed but after reading your posts I can honestly say you have me beaten in that regard.
Yikes.
I’ve had plenty of issues with my FP4, some of them being launch day bugs that were around for years before being fixed, and in your case I would probably recommend just buying another brand next time.
Wait for the Pixel 8a drop and buy while the iron is still hot so to speak.
Just another anecdotal… In total here in the family we had four Fairphone 3 and one Fairphone 5. Two of those FF3 are still in daily use; one of those FF3 came in for 0€ as spare parts as the mainboard was dead. I switched two USB modules.
One FF3 mainboard died. It would have been five Fairphone 3 if there would have been a good second hand offer at the time when that happened. But did not have the time to wait for such an offer, so just went and got a FF5.
So, to answer your post: No anxiety here. And FF5 I did not have any issues.
Sturdy, yes, if you add a bumper (which I immediately did) - my wife and I are prone to drop our phones, so I expected to have a broken screen in the first half year. While the dropping did not decrease, the bumper saved the FF3 screens from breaking.
I feel that the higher the modularity, the lower the failure rate, because the most feared area for bugs is the motherboard. With higher modularity, the motherboard becomes smaller, and the smaller the motherboard, the less prone it is to failures.
My first mobile phone back in 1995 was a Nokia 2110, which… rebooted on the first call of the day. Everytime.
Some years later, had a Treo650 wich freezed regularly.
Then a Motorola Defy very handy and very buggy, especially with bluetooth (i stopped counting the times, riding my bike, when i had to dissassemble it to get the battery out then back in to hard reboot, then wait for the boot, re-appairing and get my music back).
Then the Samsung Note, very buggy too.
Then a LG G4 with some problematic production batches (mine could definitly shut off without warning at any time).
Then a Redmi note 5 which exceeded the radio emission limits, got a software update to limit the power… and then was a POS in reception (frequently no network indoor).
Then a Zenfone 8 with the same risks the LG G4 had.
On the FP2, when I had it, I experienced daily issues with it.
The FP3 was one of the most reliable phone I ever had. It’s still kicking BTW, my son is using it now.
The FP5 I’m using now sometimes freezes and forces me to reboot it by holding the power button down for 30 seconds. This happens maybe once a week. Not enough to make me anxious. It’s otherwise a solid phone and I expect the issue to go away on one update or another.
I’ve been using a FP3+ since Dec 2020 to Nov 2023 then I switched to FP5.
FP5 seems to me more reliable than FP3+ but this could only be related to good luck: I could have been blessed with a bad FP3+ and a good FP5.
As a Fairphone Angel I could be expected to be a FP enthusiast but… no, I’m not. I do think you can have a better phone for less money.
So why keep I being a Fairphone user?
Because my Fairphone is the best phone in it’s category, which is not the category of phones but the category of fair phones.
I’m proud of my phone because I know workers that built it got a fair salary for their work and because I know at Fairphone they tried to make as less damage to the planet as possible.
This gives me the strength to overcome the (undoubtedly) more problems I’ve had with my FPs than with any other phone.
I know tomorrow I’ll probably have another problem with my phone but I also know there isn’t any child out there that worked to build it.
All this compensates very well for the problems I have.
If you can’t cure your “Fairphone bug anxiety” you might try to put next to it something like a “Fairphone pride”.
If it doesn’t work, just think that you can be useful to the world in so many ways that there’s no reason to stick to using a particular phone.
S. Augustine said “love, and do what you want” (I’m atheist but sometimes they get it right ).
After one or two years my (already 2nd hand) FP2 was really getting in the way of me using it. I really have the “bug anxiety” with it since then. Random reboots, no data connection, battery parkour ; it has been all over the place — I have no confidence in it whatsoever. I am afraid to open the store to update my apps!
The FP3 is much more stable ; even though it gave me one or two scary moments, I’m still trusting it to do the work.
I guess it boils down to trusting the phone to be stable and resilient, and I think they are. Until they’re not
The FP2 I used until 2 years ago had always some “reliability issues” (random reboots, disconnected SIM, poor battery life, etc). My son is using a FP3 which is rock stable even in daily use in school.
The FP4 for my daughter had some issues (bad audio, sometimes the camera is not working until reboot), but some of the recent firmware updates fixed this or at least improved stability.
I use a FP4, too. I noticed some random reboots last year which may (or may not) resulted from that 5G/LTE bug. But this occurred only on very rare conditions so the “impact” for daily use was small.
One difference compared to other phones (at least for me) is that Fairphone is addressing these problems and is improving the software. In some topics this could be improved, indeed (… camera on FP4), but I will not switch.
My first FP was the FP3 which has been rock solid for me (apart from swapping 2 USB ports).
FP5, again, is rock solid for me (even with beta updates) even though I’m aware that some users have issues with 5G depending on operator settings. Yes, there are teething issues, but nothing that breaks the day to day use of the phone.
So, won’t be worried buying a next Fairphone, but I won’t expect the experience to be as polished as I would expect from, say, Samsung.
Happy to recommend Fairphone to friends and family.
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