Not being a FP user yet, my first question to the support was about external charging the currently sold second batterie for new buyers.
Apparently the answer was negative as you might have expected.
The reply sent to me, included this proposal:
QUOTE:
If your post gets many upvotes or comments in the community, it will help us focus our efforts to better support you.
So here I am, asking for an external charger as some of you already discussed in other threads.
I would not recommend to use any 3rd party charger with adjustable contacts o.s., but a charger from the FP vendor, that has been developed and tested for the Fairphone, and provides some warranty, if anything explodes
hello and thank you for your initiative. To be honest, this giving away a spare battery hardly makes sense to me as batteries are to degrade if not used, and it’s not that convenient to charge them in the phone ( a gift card was much more useful IMHO).
I am not sure how many people would use external chargers but it is definitely worth looking into it.
For whatever it’s worth the last phone I had with a swappable battery was the BlackBerry Z10 and there was a dedicated external battery charger accessory for it that I used often. Carrying that charger and a spare battery was much more convenient than a power bank. I would make sure to switch which battery was the primary and secondary about once a week to keep the wear on them about the same.
In a similar vein, I would personally also like to see an extended life battery option witty a different back panel to accommodate the larger battery (also something I had on my Z10), or at least do something like frame.work did and release a higher capacity battery of identical size when there chemistry gets better.
I’ve always felt sorry for those users whose phones lasted less than a day without a charge; I would change first the battery and then the phone if my FP4 ever got to that stage!
For people (e.g. frequent travellers) who need extra battery capacity, a spare charged battery would be useful when recharging is impractical.
But for FP to offer a free spare battery with new phones seems like a marketing gimmick to drive new phone sales whilst tacitly admitting that the battery life is uncompetitive. What about the loyal FP users who bought a Fairphone specifically for the long device life (e.g. through hardware and software support)? How about offering existing users a free or reduced-price spare battery?
IMHO, an external charging cradle is just another thing to carry around so I can’t see that I’d ever buy one. The other solutions suggested such as a battery with greater capacity even in a bulkier case would be more attractive to me.
That said, welcome to the community Inoculator and thanks for creating this thread.
Fairphone needs to improve the battery life. The phone drains way too much with e.g. AoD and 5G on, compared to other phones with these features.
Do more with less, charging your battery takes less than an hour or so. I have a spare battery, I rarely need it because I can charge it most of the time. And when I do need to charge my spare one I really would not be carrying an extra charge device with me. I just swap, charge and done. An extra device for just this is wasteful.
I see, that there are multiple different PoV. Some of them pointing to the request of getting the current batterie to last longer during regular use.
Either by using better chemical materials or by just making it physically larger and enlarge the casing of the phone itself.
This brings me to the thought, that the FP could not be the best way for my usage, so let me explain, from where my intentions come -just C&P from my mail to support:
One of my hobby is to go out on my cycle for some days in a row and my mobile is my main gate to the rest of the world during this time. Having a second (or third) fully charged batterie at hand can be very helpful. But it would not make sense, if I cannot charge all used batteries over night, when on a camping side or in a hotel.
Therefore an external charger would make sense.
Even so I do have quite some stuff to charge batteries and/or support devices during I am on the road (Solarpanel, Dynamo, etc) it is always depending on my performance or the weather, if I keep the pace with the electrons in use.
In the past I had more issues having one larger batterie, but having 3 or 4 smaller batteries charging while cycling or over night.
Having a powerbank as support device has been not the best solution. As while charging the PB and using it as a charging device, the efficiency decreased very much -on each side of the flow you have some stepper device to regulate the voltage, that consumes some energy.
I suppose you do stop to eat and sleep. Fast charge can bump up your battery to 80% quite fast in about 30 minutes. Unless you sleep and eat in the outdoors of course.
I’m not sure if there is a market for a charging station that can handle multiple batteries though. But it’s best to contactsupport
Your phone itself is already a charging station But I guess that’s not enough for some.
I think Fairphone should develop and sell a solar power bank, ideally one that is as ethically sourced and sustainable as the phones. Clean, renewable charging is a perfect fit for Fairphone.
They can also sell the power banks to non-Fairphone users, and hopefully encourage them to join the revolution too.
I had been holding on to my LG V20 because it was the last phone I could buy with a swappable battery and when I started realizing this year that I was soon going to be hitting a wall I started searching and landed on the FP4 specifically because it had a battery I could swap on the fly. I really wish that Fairphone would produce external chargers so that I don’t have to find a way to rig a charger to work.
I really need to find a way to charge a battery outside of the phone.
For your use maybe it doesn’t make sense to have an external charger but for others, it does. If I come home with a mostly drained phone and 2 drained spare batteries even the hour it takes to charge a battery means I need to wait up at least 2 hours before going to bed to get 2 batteries to full charge and swapping in the third to charge while I sleep – and this is assuming that I notice the exact moment that a battery reaches full charge.
No, this isn’t a daily event for me but for my job I use my phone heavily because I can keep instructions with me, reference documents, and be able to communicate with remote technicians while walking around data centers, climbing up and down ladders, etc, which is mostly screen on and situations where even an external battery bank would not only be frustrating but in some cases dangerous… and when stuff goes really wrong I may actually work for 10+ hours. On those days I don’t want to wait up for 2-3 hours before going to bed after I get home.
The other thing that I think Fairphone should consider is that they are already the only current phone that has a battery that can be swapped on the fly and those of us that have this need are looking at FP… It is the sole reason why I bought a FP4 and the large number of LG V20 users are soon really going to need to go somewhere as I did. With FP being this close to that niche market it’s kind of silly not to produce a device for them even if the average user doesn’t need it.
There are more phones with replaceable batteries. Some Nokia and Samsung phones for starters. Probably more. I don’t think I ever seen an external charger for a smartphone battery. Not even when replaceable batteries were a thing.
The V20 had (and still has) specific docks for it. The V10 I had before had them… My Samsung Note had one… Actually all of my previous phones had specific docks available. With the FP it is more complicated because the batteries are awkward and have a higher voltage rating so they don’t work with the universal chargers that nearly any other phone does. If I could find a universal charger that could charge the FP4 battery to 100% then I’d be absolutely fine with that.
As for phones with swappable batteries please point me to one newer then the V20 or the Xcover pro that has one. I’ve looked extensively and I likely would have bought a different phone than the FP4 if one existed.
I am a traveler. I often travel to places with limited access to electricity. At the same time, I need reliable connectivity.
A great way to ensure constant connectivity is to buy an additional battery for my Fairphone. Thanks to this, the transition from a completely discharged phone to a fully charged phone takes a less than 30 seconds.
This solution is much more convenient than using large, heavy and slow PowerBanks.
However, I miss two little things that would significantly improve the comfort of traveling:
a charger for the battery (i.e. the battery itself, without the phone).
a plastic container for transporting and storing the battery.
It would be great to have such equipment (it would be ideal to have it in a variant for one additional battery and for two additional batteries. Please consider expanding your offering with such accessories. I have seen such universal devices from Chinese suppliers, but it would be better to have something dedicated.
I think this is a good idea, a new battery should be able to last most user’s the entire day but heavy user’s could definitely do with a spare and making it easier to charge adds to the convenience.
On top of that even for lighter user’s a battery will eventually degrade and even if you can buy a new battery from Fairphone you will still likely take it out of use. making it more convenient to swap batteries and use older batteries will limit how often people will need to buy new ones and ultimately help with the green initiative of the company, I know you can send them back and recycle them but surely extending there life first is as good of a option for that green initiative and they can still be recycled when they have completely broken down.
the only caveat with this is the external charger could constitute more e-waste itself but ultimately they could offer the same replacement/recycling services for it as everything else.
maybe even adding a CMOS to future phones to enable hot swapping without shutting down the phone could make this even more attractive in the future.
But I guess that’s not enough for some.