We don’t own an Fairphone, but are considering buying one. My wife has a Nokia 7 plus and have been quite satisfied with it. Unfortunately some apps are running a bit slow and are a bit buggy. She’s complaining a lot about this now. Snapchat is probably the worst app for her right now. We reset the phone a half year ago.
How are the Fairphone 2-3 years after release? Maybe any Fairphone 2 users here can comment on their experience on this?
I’m thinking about Fairphone, but I want the phone to last as long as possible. I want to avoid upgrading due to slow performance because of app updates.
I’d recommend to have a look at how full her phone storage is by now. Often laggy app performance results from a crammed full storage that doesn’t leave enough wiggle room for apps anymore. On a Fairphone (but probably also in other Android phones), you can look this up in Settings > Storage. This might be a less radical approach than just resetting the phone altogether.
With my previous phone, I found a factory reset gives a better result than deleting files.
To answer the main question: I think it’s difficult to say to be honest. FP2 users can comment on their experiences indeed, but this is a growing company. The FP2 is not just a previous model of an established brand, but part of a process in developing a fairer, modular phone. With what the company learned from the FP2, they developed the FP3.
One would hope and expect the FP3 will do better than the FP2 and therefore I do not think experience with the FP2 will tell you much about the FP3 after 2-3 years.
What you do know is the FP3 is a phone that was specifically designed to be used for 5 years, meaning you will most likely receive software updates for as long and will be able to buy spare parts for as long. This is different from other brands, that might be more interested in getting you to buy a different phone after a year or two.
I do think it is realistic to expect any smart device (phone, tablet, computer) to become slower over time, so that will probably happen with the FP3 as well, just as it did with your Nokia. If your phone is still functioning, I think it’s good to make the effort to either delete files or reset the phone to factory settings after 2-3 years. My Samsung was good as new after a factory reset, after which I continued to happily use it for 1.5 years. I think it’s good practice with any device and if more users did it, a whole lot less phones would be discarded for being ‘too slow’.
My brother has had his FP2 for three years no and apart from some bugs with the bottom-module (which were known defects), he’s very satisfied. I myself have two FP2s, and although they don’t have the best specs, and they sometimes lag a little, they’re just good for everyday use (knowing the FP2 had known design flaws, which isn’t that much the case for the FP3).
I recommend you to have a look at this thread if you want reassuring experiences: Mine works fine, or here: POLL: How satisfied or unsatisfied are you with your FP3 or FP3+?, but you’ll never have a very representative image here on the forum.
I think all in all you can consider the FP3 as rather reliable, but that’s just my opinion. Of course you may have some bugs, and yes it’s not perfect nor as perfectly reliable as a Samsung or Apple smartphone, but Fairphone want it to be sustainable, and they do what they can to achieve their goal. This, I think, makes the difference.
I’ve had a FP2 for more than 4 years now. Initially it was great, durable, snappy and all around a good experience.
After the update to Android 7 came, some features I was using were lost (mainly the ability to deactivate a second SIM card even when it was in), and the WiFi started seriously misbehaving. Not only that but the phone was sometimes being extremely slow for a while, to the point where I was considering changing. I decided to first try LineageOS.
I installed 16 with microg, and immediately everything became better. The phone was snappy, all of the problems with WiFi disappeared and I was finally able to remove a lot of Google apps that I was never using.
This was, I believe, more than a year ago and it’s been great ever since. My FP2 is now more than four years old and I’m very satisfied with it.
This was about the software and the experience. When it comes to the hardware, I have needed to change the front microphone twice during these four years, once after a year and the second time was a couple of months ago. Could have been better but not terribly disappointed. I also had to change the phone case, the old one was in very bad shape after 3 years of use (the first year I used the original rubber one), but I’m not kind with my phone.
I don’t play any games or use any apps that need 3D, but I would expect it wouldn’t work that well for that use case. Otherwise it’s great.
I bought a secondhand FP2 and its now almost 3 years old. The microphone stopped working around the 2.5year mark, but otherwise its working well including battery life. I am a ‘light user’ though, and try not to overload the phone with too many apps, or watching videos etc.
. I wish you a nice day.