First findings with the new Fairphone 3

All the important info you find here https://www.fairphone.com

Therefore, I concentrate on my personal feelings and impressions which are , of course, subjective. The phone is not rooted!

Outside:
FP3 looks nice and of good quality. The bumper protects well and even with bumper it does not look thick.
In the beginning i had slight doubts that on/off-switch and volume which are situated left hand side are comfortable enough, but I found it in connection with the longer phone very comfortable for left- and right- handers. Left-handers can easily use the buttons with left thumb and right- handers even can use 2 fingers and there is no feeling that FP3 could slip away.
Fingerprint-scanner on the back does not disturb the smooth picture, if you do not use it like me.

Software:
Display is light and phone works like a charm. As expected there are only the basic Go**le apps preinstalled. There is no bloatware. I like Fairphone!!!
New battery is amazing and works nearly one week if you save energy as far as possible. Furthermore I use Blokada from F-Droid and have the impression that besides blocking ads and making browser faster it saves energy.

Did not test any games and use mainly software from F-droid.

APN works out of the box even with Drillisch. On FP2 I had to fill-in APN-settings manually.

Loudspeaker is also very good and listening to my favorite audio-books works without vibrations and is a pleasure.

Camera works very well with the installed standard app but with open-camera -app pictures are darker. Do not know why, but it can be only the software.

The only missing item is an OS without G***le like Lineage but I am sure it will come in future.

In summary:
I am very happy and recommended this phone to my friends!
P.S. FP2 is still alive and remains within family.

17 Likes

I totally agree with you

I was a litte anxious with the FP3 : battery, reactivness and so on.

I have the FP3 since a week and it works like a charm .

I have imported all my contacts without problems not using the Google tools.
I also use Blokada from F-Droid with is very efficient.

I am very happy with the FP3 and recommended this phone to evreyone !

Also wait for Fairphone Open and Lineage OS !

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I agree totally.

Add to that, a few quirks I had with FP2 are solved / not there with FP3:

  • Flimsy feeling -> FP3 feels much more robust (bumper, back panel)
  • Flimsy buttons, sometimes you not sure you pressed them correctly -> with FP3 i dont have to worry I crush the buttons anymore
  • Tested the battery life: way better than my FP2
  • No ā€œhamperingā€ (slowness)
  • importing apps went like a charm. link both phones to your network using wifi, and FP3 finds FP2, using the google account copy tool.
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What is your findings regarding the radios (LTE, WLAN (2.4 and 5 GHz), Bluetooth, NFC, FM)?

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Compared to my FP2: WLAN connects better. 4G reception traveling by train in NL is a bit better. NFC I havent tried yet. One thing im not sure about, WIFI has the option to turn itself on when a saved network is found. Iā€™m not sure I like that as it does not turn off when notrusted network is found. The reason I turn it off is that I dont want others to find my phone.

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Right, as expected, since FP3 supports more frequencies. Would you mind sharing which trajectories you experienced a better reception on?

I can recommend WiFi Privacy Police by UHasselt.

Quoting:

Prevents your smartphone or tablet from leaking privacy sensitive information via Wi-Fi networks. It does this in two ways:

  • It prevents your smartphone from sending out the names of Wi-Fi networks it wants to connect to over the air. This makes sure that other people in your surroundings can not see the networks youā€™ve connecte to, and the places youā€™ve visited.
  • If your smartphone encounters an unknown access point with a known name (for example, a malicious access point pretending to be your home network), it asks whether you trust this access point before connecting. This makes sure that other people are not able to steal your data.
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Mine got here today, and i started to install everything i need. After a while i charged it and then 15 min later the screen went outā€¦ it still charged, it responds by vibrating when restarting with the button, with or without the battery first being removed.
Probably dust or dirt inside from the factory? I will try to remove and reinstall the screen tomorrow.
So initially very positive but now very unusableā€¦
Sidenote :upside_down_face:
With the ā€˜ā€™open cameraā€™ā€™ app i installed, no manual focus, so the hardware doesnā€™t allow for it.

For me in Germany:
LTE: Cannot measure but from feeling faster than FP2. Think it is the better hardware.
WLAN: Is fast and my router shows that FP3 starts with 2.4 and changes after short time to 5 GHZ
Bluetooth: Faster connection to earphones and also to car system
NFC: Not used
FM: You mean broadcast? There is no. With FP2 it was possible to listen to radio but within 2 years only used for testing purposes. So I do not miss.

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Is there a way to access the settings shortcuts from the pull down menu? My FP3 only shows the Moon symbol for the Night Light but doesnā€™t have any options to add more shortcuts.

Have you tried pulling down a second time? Then you should get a pencil symbol to edit the shortcuts available on the first pull down ā€œpageā€.
Not sure if it is possible to add a shortcut for the settings, though. Iā€™m on Android 9 for the FP2 (LineageOS), and there the settings shortcut cannot be added but is available on the second pull down ā€œpageā€ only.

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Thanks - that worked.

6 posts were merged into an existing topic: Removing google searchbar

The only thing Iā€™m missing now is a toggle for NFC :confounded:

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Also, has anyone else found that the hole in the bumper around the USB-C socket is a little off centre, meaning that the charging lead doesnā€™t fit properly? I donā€™t really want to take the bumper off each time I charge the phone, so I may have to ā€œengineerā€ it slightly with a knife :grimacing:

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Open Camera does work with manual focus in FP3. First, in the main settings of Open Camera, turn on ā€˜Use Camera2 APIā€™. Then in ā€˜Camera previewā€¦ā€™ set ā€˜Focus assistā€™ to 2x or 4x. Then set the focus to ā€˜mā€™.
Camera2 API support is said to be ā€˜limitedā€™, donā€™t know what exactly is limited, but manual focus works. I have another camera app, Camera FV-5, where manual focus also works fine.

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A post was split to a new topic: FP3 reboots during phone calls

Thanks!
When my phone works (I have it and it worked for a few hours), I will try your tip! Now Iā€™m waiting for help from FPā€¦

Hello everyone!
Has anyone of the FP3 owners already found a working software for Call Recording?
Thank you.

@d2w: Did you already tried Call Recorder (Simple call recorder, no ads, open-source) :question: