Unfortunately Fairphone 2 is way too unreliable as a serious phone at the moment. So many people seem to experience so many problems with it. I really hate to say this because the concept is so good and I want the project to succeed. I just can’t cope with a phone which is such hard work! I won’t list all the problems I have had. It started with the phone not accepting a charge, went through all sorts of different crashes. The latest was a bizarre resetting of the time in the middle of the day for no apparent reason. Even the most basic function of an alarm clock isn’t reliable as if the phone dies in the night, which it has done several times, there’s no alarm call in the morning.
What should I do? I’ve had it three months and there is no sign of things getting better.
If resetting the phone does not help: Contact support (call them, ticket takes ages) to get it repaired/replaced. The FP2 usually works (those with one of the many bugs/defects are after all a minority).
My FP2 had - except for a camera that did not focus - none of the problems and worked like a charm.
Replacing only this module would have solved the problem … in theory …
Long story short: Good luck with support. Your problems however are not normal so they can be solved by repair/replacement.
“So many people seem” is the main point. I don’t think there is any other Forum in the world where such a high percentage of customers of a product are registered. Of course with so many people there will be many who have problems. But the silent majority of FP2 users experience no substantial issues.
So like @bfb said: What you experience is not normal, so contact support. If you can’t reach them per mail call them.
I’m sorry to hear that you are experiencing problems with your phone. As with any tech product on the market, there can be technical issues. I think this is especially true for a high tech product like a smartphone which is as well the first modulair smartphone ever to be produced on a large scale.
But I do disagree with your statement that the phone is unreliable! As @paulakreuzer already mentioned, we have a very active community here on the forum which might make it look like the phone has many problems. However, with roughly 40.000 FP2’s on the market we currently have a DOA rate (phones which need to go back because of a technical issue within the first two weeks) of around 1%, which is a normal number in this industry.
In any case, we of course want to make sure that you have a proper working phone. So if you get in touch with support through our support page - or indeed call us at +31(0)20 - 7884400 we can make sure to help you as fast as we can. Calling is faster!
I don’t know about majority or minority of users. If I am within the 1% I guess I am just very unlucky. However after 3 years of faithfulness and support to the fairphone project I am really beginning to have serious doubts: my FP2 has so many small issues that I don’t want to do any modifications to it by fear of making it worse: I haven’t updated to 1.2.8 and I haven’t tried the FP OSOS.
My experience of using phones previous to FP is that I cannot remember of any minor or major issues with them, maybe except for a random, unexplained reboot from time to time. I have updated, customized, opened, bricked and ressucitated phones many times before, a living proof of that being my son’s old Galaxy S2 now flawlessly running Cyanogenmod 13 Lollipop, after years belonging to my wife and months subjected to experiments in my ownership.
Now I am a bit tired of it, it is not the fun it was expected to be. And I do find myself sometimes eyeing the Dark Side: phones which for £100 more look fantastic, are light, have a long battery life and just work…
Our main way to solve issues (aside from hardware repairs) is releasing updates to the software. I strongly advice you to always upgrade to the latest version. Specifically if you’re experiencing bugs that have been solved in an update.
I’m one of the happy majority. Before my Fairphone arrived in January I had created an account to participate and posted a lot in anticipation of the arrival, but once I had my Fairphone, I was totally happy with it, didn’t experience any problem and there was no reason for me to post as there wasn’t anything to mention (besides the fact I can use the phone for 5 days on a single battery, which was a relief, by having turned everything off but the ability to send and receive calls, only turning on data and GPS when needed at that moment).
I expect most people with good experiences and without any problems with the phone behave like it: just use it happily without feeling the need to visit the fora. The need arises, if you experiences problems, thus there’s a huge bias to be found if you look at the fora and expect you can deduce the ability of the FP2 to work without problems.
Bascially I have the same experience with my FP2 as the starter of this thread. I contacted support already in mid April, then mid May: No reply. I’ll install the new OS version that was released today and see if that improves anything.
Thanks for your help Michiel. I am sorry if I seem frustrated, but after three months of living with the FP2 I was beginning to despair. I have spoken with your support team, who asked me to return the phone to the Phone Co-op in the UK, from whom I bought the phone. They told me that they have an arrangement with you that FP will deal with all returns after 30 days. I spoke again with your team. Christof was very helpful, but asked me to complete a web form. I have done this (#106497). I should be grateful if you would do anything you can to expedite the return process. I have persevered for three months. I have kept the software updated but today the phone would not accept the new software updated today.
Many thanks for any help you can give. As I said,I love the Fairphone concept. Unfortunately it seems that I have been one of the unlucky few. James
Just a quick post to share the fact that I’m an happy Fairphone user since more than 3 months now and had never had any problem (except the ones fixed by the OS updates). We exist
But I think there are a lot of people like me, who decided to give you time and waited for the updates, because they like the project. Any other Smartphone out there with the same problem as my phone, I would have sent back right after the first problem appears. Your fundamental idea of the phone,is the only reason why I waited, although the last update some weeks ago made it worse.
I was experiencing some of the annoying behaviours on my FP2, namely frequent reboots and silly touch screen events (those I could produce by slowly scrolling in the PDF viewer).
Yesterday I updated to 1.3.6 and have not noticed the erratic touch events since.
I’m not sure about the reboots because I did not pay that much attention.
I’d say: I was happy enough with the device before and now, that it got better, I’d even suggest it to users who need more reliability than I do.
I can understand your disappointment, and I am sorry to read that you had such a hard time with your FP2 so far.
But, how is the title of this thread related to your issues? In my opinion the title seems really inappropriate, and personally I think it should be changed.
That said, I wish you good luck with soon becoming a proud owner of a well functioning FP2 (like I am), so that you’ll be able to enjoy a working phone!
The low DOA rate is only because we all love the idea and concept of fairphone. In fact the FP2 comes half dead to the customer. If it hasn’t been a fairphone, i would have sent it back in the first week. I understand that fairphone has to sell phones to get money for further development and bug fixing. But please, don’t tell us only a few FP2 are buggy, there are many sw bugs in the OS, mainly driver based. I’m writing this post from my good old, but slow, motorola moto g2, because i can’t order a new SIM card every 5 weeks (the SIM killing feature for T-Mobile SIMs). I was happy yesterday, to see the new update, great. Please, faiphone, be honest and keep the community informed, there are some more bugs to fix and feature requests/improvements to do. I don’t want to sell my FP2, but it should be usable
Yes, maybe i should have been tagging it more clearly as my personel opinion, sorry. Again, i want to see fairphone succeeding, but i’m hoping for more transparency. Maybe my job, working in IT projects, is influencing me too much…
