First impressions Fairphone 2

Same for me! Though I received only one FP2 :wink:

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I also often had issues with delivery services, so I can see how that is annoying, or in case with that parcel from @xaxa, actually frustrating. However, all those issues are clearly in the responsibility of the delivery company, and not Fairphone’s fault.

About signing the arrival. Nowadays I live in a small village, where nobody locks doors or cars. It happened already quite some times that when I came home, a parcel was in the doorhall of our apartment, because the post man put it inside the apartment when nobody was home. Was something I needed to get used after having lived in big cities also for some years, but in the meantime I appreciate it. No running behind parcels anymore. :slight_smile:

I have at least two apps that run full screen (memory map, youtube) covering up the “back” “home” “recent” buttons. It’s not an FP2 thing it’s a software thing - some apps assume you WANT to see the controls.

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I guess we could simply ask Fairphone to make the picture, animated or not, available to us as a download. Anyways I’d really like to have it. Keep us posted!

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My Fairphone 2 with the transparent blue cover arrived yesterday.
My experience so far in one word: AMAZING!

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I’ve been fiddeling around with my FP2 all day, installing and configuring stuff, and I really like it.

It charges with two different cargers, from the PC and from 2 different powerbanks. I tried 4 different cables and only one doesn’t work (a non-data cable from a powerbank). I had no problem to use my phone while charging, regardless of the cable or the power source and I’ve tried all combinations. Well, the charging LED only works when the phone is switched off and it won’t switch to green at 100%, but that’s a known bug and doesn’t bother me at all.

Since I still don’t have root access, I decided to get my stuff over from FP1 via the PC and My Phone Explorer. At the beginning, I had some trouble to connect the FP2 with my Windows 7 64bit PC via adb, but by rebooting the PC and installing the adb driver several times it finally worked. Don’t ask me how and why, but it worked and I could transfer contacts, calendar, notes and SMS. My Phone explorer can also backup apps (apks) and other data…

Another problem I experienced but somehow solved is the restricted writing access to the microSD card, where I wanted to save my fotos. To enable the brandnew SD card, I had to choose “erase SD” in the storage settings. Then it was available, but on the FP2 only read-only. Seems to be one of these new “features” of Android 5 :confounded:. Well, trying to create a new folder on the SD with ES Datei Explorer, this app gave me the necessary instructions how to enable writing on the external card. Afterwards my SD was shown in both camera apps (Open Camera and Camera ZOOM Fx) and these asked me for writing permissions and now my fotos are stored where I want them to be.

The phone paired directly with my Reikko Evolution bluetooth speaker and there was no problem with stuttering sound.

One thing I really don’t like is that the two SIMs don’t have different colours anymore. And in general, I liked the notification bar of FP1 (of Android 4) much more. This one is just ugly and I hope I’ll find a solution to change it. I also don’t like the software buttons, but I’m getting used to them.

The only thing that really annoys me is the bug that makes it impossible to use VR-glasses like Google Cardboard. I got one as a new year present and as the hardware of FP1 is too weak for most aplications, I had looked so much forward to my FP2 for virtual reality experience and now it doesn’t work at all :sob:! I know that this will be fixed in the next update, but neverthess…

The camera is much better then the one of FP1. It makes very clear photos of texts (so it might replace my scanner) and the flash is quite powerful. But I haven’t had the time to really take pictures.

Well in general, on this first day, I’m REALLY happy with my FP2 and in most things it’s a real improvement compared to FP1.

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@Mikaciu Thanks a lot for your report. Since I’m coming from a very similar device as your Xperia V, I would be highly interested in some more words about the comparison between both devices: How do you feel about the size of the FP2? Is it hard to get used to? Also - does it feel much more heavy than the pretty light Xperia? And can you give some impressions about system performance?: does the FP2 really feel much faster or is it more or less comparable for everyday stuff like browsing the web?

Hello @kuleszdl,

TBH, the mass difference between the Xperia V (120g + the backcase I have bought) vs the FP2 168g is very minimal. I can’t feel the difference on my everyday use.

The thing I have not yet got used to is the size. Given I have small hands, I have a hard time accessing the icons on the left side of the phone but I guess that I hold the FP2 like I used to hold the Xperia V, i.e. wrapping my palm a little bit too much around the phone.

About the system performance, it’s astounding. My previous phone had severe memory issues, and I had to reboot it randomly because apps started to freeze. With the 2GB RAM provided by the FP2, I no longer have this issue. When browsing the web, I found the performance to be quite good (although I’m not using my phone for that, I don’t use the browser much) with 4G (LTE).

Another thing important to me (I didn’t have yet the time to update my post), the display quality is very good. The contrast is fantastic, the colors are not washed up at all.

As a conclusion, its not hard getting used to at all, except for the phone size, for which I’ll need a few more weeks I think.

HTH

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Moving folders/files to SD-card (unreadable popup)

I turned on my Fairphone 2 for the first time today. And it comes up to my expectations. Until now, I really like the phone. I like to press the buttons and how the screen looks. I like the speed of the phone and got no crashes or reboots until now (after 4 hours). Overall I am really impressed what the small Fairphone team achieved and I am proud to be a supporter :smile:.
The only thing, that really annoys me, is the deep integration of the “Privacy Impact”-feature, so that I have to activate it. Otherwise many apps don’t behave as expected. But that is an already known issue.
Another small thing I noticed, was the poor german translation for the tutorials at first startup. The screens that introduced e.g. the edge-swipe-launcher or the most-used-apps read like translated by Google :grin:.

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I made one for myself - no animation I’m afraid. So now my wall paper is the inside of the phone.

I reduced the contrast of this photo a bit so it looks like the back through the transparent screen. Either way I pretty pleased with it … for now.

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Oh wow well done mate! And thank you for sharing. :+1:

My pleasure … it’s nice to know that the hours I spent yesterday evening, avoiding work whilst playing with cameras, tripods, lights and photo editors are appreciated :¬)

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You can customize that by installing another launcher, e.g. Nova Launcher.

My experiences:

Shipping / Packaging

  • The package arrived before I got the shipping confirmation e-mail. A pleasant surprise.
  • The packaging looks nice.

Looks / Hardware

  • The phone looks better than I feared. The transparent back cover is great.
  • It’s a bit big for my taste, but I guess I’ll adapt to it.
  • I like that the USB port is now on the bottom of the phone. Previously you could not charge your phone and plug in an adudio cable at the same time if both connectors were a bit bulky.
  • I love the connector pins on the back, looking forward to hardware mods.
  • The cover is actually quite hard to get onto the phone. Takes a while until everything fits.

OS

  • The OS is fine, everything seems to react quickly to user input. In the beginning I had some problem with screen flickering / touchscreen problems, but that went away after the setup dialog.
  • Firefox scroll speed is really slow / laggy.
  • Even though I’m a software engineer and I love root and custom ROMs, I think it makes sense (especially from a security perspective) that the phone came unrooted. Many people don’t know the implications of rooting it. But there should be an official rooting guide soon.
  • The camera is really bad, at least in low light. It’s probably fine in sunlight.
  • The second SIM card symbol is annoying. I’ll try to put in a (unused) SIM card into the slot tonight, maybe I can then disable the symbol.
  • Unfortunately gesture typing is broken in the AOSP keyboard
  • I moved data from the FP1 to the FP2 using ES File Explorer and its “send to LAN” feature. Went really well.
  • I had no problems with the OS otherwise.
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Great !
One quick and stupid thought : shouldn’t it be horizontally flipped to seem more realistic with the transparent cover ?

EDIT : Oh my. Did I just actually set this as my good old HTC wallpaper ? :slight_smile:

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You can flip it in a photo editing program if you like; but its an actual photo of the insides with the screen element removed and I was quite pleased to get the battery in exactly the right place, so it’s what you would see if there were no screen there!

Oh I’m sorry, I thought it was a photo of the BACK side, I didn’t understand that it’s the actual front under the screen… Now it makes more sense to me, thanks for clarifying @nicka

I am glad that you are suggesting renaming the flight mode to some other name rather than forbidding all Fairphone owners from flying. I am going to visit my family in South America this summer and I do not fancy the 7000km swim. :wink:

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Let me help you @paulakreuzer

Clearly we now need one that reflects the actual battery percentage…

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