First impressions Fairphone 2

Other than the already much discussed sound and camera-issues, I am quite happy with my phone.

There is however one thing that bugs me a lot. I am not sure if It could be a separate entry in the feature request topic or that I am simply missing something that can easily be solved.

I don’t understand why there is not more integration between the contacts, telephone, and messaging apps. When I call somebody and this person doesn’t pick up the phone, I will want to write this person a message (Telegram, SMS). This can only be done when I close the telephone app, use the quicklauncher, open the messaging app, search for the appropriate person and write him/her a message.

A much more obvious (and especially much quicker) option would be to pick the messaging-button from the screen that is presented to me when I hang up the phone.

ince it happens regularly that I cannot reach somebody, it is a a regular source of annoyment that I remember having no problems with with my old Andriod 4.2.1 Samsung phone. Does anybody have a solution?

You can also choose to send a text message right from the telephone app.
I have by default the view with quick dialing. On each contact shown there are three points in the top right corner, if you click that, you can also send emails or text messages.
Also in the telephone app you can choose the contact list from where you also can access other option to communicate with your contacts, such as emails or text messages.

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thank you, solved! :slight_smile:

Hi everyone,

I thought I could share my impressions of Fairphone 2. I had it for 3 days now. The phone is not mine and I had no special love for it when I got it, hence please excuse my overly critical tone. Here is what I think:

  • like the look and transparent background
  • the feel is good, but not great. Near the volume buttons the back cover is deformed and when held firmly the phone makes strange sounds as the internal parts grind on back cover. Compared to the HTC One M9+ that I normally use or even Fairphone 1 the Fairphone 2 is a plastic toy. The upside is that the phone feels lighter.
  • Buttons are better placed than on most phones that I tried, works even for left handed person. Well done!
  • The modular design is a great first step, but still a bit complicated. It also adds greatly to the plastic toy feeling as the parts wiggle and move.
  • Battery life is above average, compares very well to even the one SIM phones that I had.
  • Phone is fast enough for everyday use, I think that one can expect this performance for the price. 3d games I tried had low FPS and were close to unplayable.
  • Camera is okay, not great.
  • Perhaps the biggest fault is the reliability. During two days the phone displayed a fair amount of bugs and glitches.For example is incompatible with most chargers, the touch screen becomes unresponsive when the phone is connected. Random restart occurred twice (this brings back memories of early androids, thank you for that tear of nostalgia Fairphone). When moving icons on the home screen, the icon jumps around randomly. When making a call the phone sometimes displays “Call not sent message”. Had to replace both SIMs multiple times before they even worked with this phone.
  • I don’t miss NFC, but I do miss fingerprint scanner.
  • Overall the phone is original, innovative and I consider it great that there is a company with courage to test new things. The ethical approach deserves all the praise in the world. I am a spoiled mainstream flagship user and I was surprised how acceptable the phone is to me. I would use it as a second phone that is an interesting gadget, because It is not reliable enough for real life use. It behaves like a prototype of something very interesting that is yet to come.
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That’s not normal! Try to screw them together tighter. This is probably also the reason for the noises you hear. Also check this topic

Most have already been described here in the forum and for some there are workarounds.

Could be:

https://forum.fairphone.com/t/two-sim-cards-cant-make-receive-calls-when-both-are-turned-on-workaround-wait-5-seconds/12118?u=paulakreuzer

Please check this poll:

I think your review sounds mostly positive and realistic! :smiley:

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Hi,
I received my FP2 seven days ago and want to express my experiences here.

As I already stated in the “OS of your dreams”-thread I’m coming from a SGS3 with Replicant.
You may know by now that I value privacy and freedom very high. For that to be achieved openess is a prerequisite in both, hard- and Software. In terms of fairness and emvironmental friendlieness I consider myself as very mindful as well a little affine to technology.

When I read in a german news site that an OSOS is in the making for FP2 I ordered one the same day.

First of all, Fairphone should consider parting ways with DHL. I had opened a support ticket about that, which hasn’t been answered until today. I don’t mind anymore since scheduling a secondary delivery attempt, staying at home the whole sunday waiting in vain, reading at the tracking I wasn’t home, calling DHL 2 times after that and taking 1 day off work, with requesting holiday retrospectively avoided the delivery, to go back to the sender…

Well at least the FPOSOS left it’s beta stadium in the meantime and I could immediatily geht rid of Google when I received my phone.

Positive:

handling
screen
OSOS + more OSes to come
battery (especially standby usage)
delivery Countdown blog
the forum / average quality of posts is high
no charger
no NFC
modularity
fairness
environmentally friendly

Negative (not all are FP2’ s fault):

Lollipop is a pain in the S compared to Replicant regarding customisation (status bar, launcher, lock screen, SD-card-usage)
closed Hardware / FW-binary-blobs
using volume up to skip track, … Where?

Neutral:

Camera
no major bugs occured here

I’m definitely leaning to the positive side, here but I hope that system updates will not only fix bugs but add customisation-possibilies (eg.Trebuchet, status bar, panels in the pull down menu (is that the correct term?)).

In addition I’d like to mention that my next smartphone will be a fully open and fair phone.
It may be FP3, 4 or a concurrent model. Im ready to pay apple-prices for (then) medium Hardware/software if its fair AND open. I would even relinquish state oft the art features like WLAN if theres no open option available.

Since I have my fair and half open FP2 and my unfair fully open SGS3 now I can wait a long time for such a phone to hit the market…

Greetings

Edit:
Positive:

all the apps I’m used to (VLC, Lightning Browser…) do work except for SpiritF (FM Radio)
Even twitch works in the Browser, so no twitch APP that requires Google play is needed
Negative:
missing APP rights management
The radios volume is much to low

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I’m not sure, if you are aware of the Xposed Framework (given that Replicant includes many features). A lot of functionality, you are missing, can be achieved by the modules Xprivacy and Gravitybox.

PS.: FPOSOS is rooted by default, so you could install the Xposed Framework right away, without further modifications to your FP2.

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Thanks for the hint. I have been playing around with those and they’ll definitely do.

Although I miss a really clear guide on how to set things up. For example for me it was hard to find out how to enter recovery-mode in FP2, so for everyone who is wondering:

  1. Shutdown your FP2
  2. Hold volume up + power on for about 10 sec
  3. If you have FPOSOS installed or flashed TWRP you’re now in TWRP
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Funny thing is, the FP1 was often delivered by Hermes and guess what? The old forum was full of complaints and and people begging to “part ways with that awful company” and choose a competitor like DHL :slight_smile:

This is the first time i read of no NFC as a plus. I would be missing NFC a lot :grin:

As Stefan said, Xposed is great for that. Might provide more customization then Fairphone could ever implement :wink:

This should come “for free” with Android 6.0.

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Hi all!

I got my Fairphone 2 yesterday and LOVE it! I finally feel guilt free texting and phoning people. SO much better!

I installed the Open Source OS and it was very easy.

I had to go to my local mall to the mobile kiosk to get a smaller sim(?) card though… my old phone was so old it had one of those comparatively gigantic ones. Luckily that phone lasted long enough!

We figured out a good way to get the rubber case on… We used a credit card sized piece of plastic to slide the corners over. It worked like a charm!

I’ve transferred all my contacts over manually… (I don’t have cloud storage)… And now I have to put everyone through a quiz “2 Questions, who am I and who are you?”

As far as first impressions… It might be because I’m upgrading from such an old phone… but this phone is bigger, badder and more epic than anything I’ve ever had. My family is already sick of me ending some of my sentences with “…And I have a Fairphone!!” lol.

So fun. :slight_smile:

Overall 10/10

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I’ve had it now about 3-4 weeks… I had to get used to Android (have always been an Iphone user, but was unhappy about Apple’s ethics and sourcing). Just want to say that I really like my Fairphone… everything works well except a couple of not so important aps. It has crashed a few times and rebooted, but that seems to have stopped now. Because of the bigger screen I have virtually stopped using my ipad… I even wonder from time to time why I have it… and I get a good feeling when I use my Fairphone because of the ethics… very pleased so far.

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It is the same for myself.

I would add that the FP open source OS is a great thing. It is the best android opensource version I have seen on a marketed phone. + great support

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Thanks for your good first impression. I had rather mixed emotions about 2 months because my display units had glitches until there was a complete breakdown and this most important part unit was exchanged by an excellent working service support of the FP team. Now problems vanished and I feel much better . But what makes me happy is the outsight about the development and evolution of the software without google. It let’s me almost oversee that the increasing number of customers means a real revolution about a new sustainable smartphone .

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Waiting for my FP2 to be repaired (have to send it soon) and this being the second FP2 I got I must say that right now it’s the worst smartphone I have ever had… :scream: In this condition I wouldn’t recommend it… which is most unfortunate…

I put a lot of hope on the repair but I’m really worried…

I’ve been using my old samsung galaxy S3 (rooted) with cyanogen mod 11 and I can’t remember why I abandonned it… oh wait because when I found out about fairphone I really really wanted to support the project… Now, I’m not sure I’m going back to it… really, my S3 with cyanogen mod works so smoothly without ANY problems that I really hesitate to pick up my fairphone again… and it makes me extremely sad to admit it…:weary:

The movement about a new revolutionary design and the usability and quality of the device product are “2 different pair of shoes” as we say in german. It was easy to follow or walk with the first pair of shoes. The maturity of the device and supply chain of the support is one that needs much more improvement than the FP team might has imagined before. The times when a device for users becomes unusable is kept here in the forum under “common-issues”. To me only this term looks a little bit like a playing down. On the other hand the movement and sometimes also the hype may have overlayed the problems a new revolutionary design must came along with it.

My first impressions of Fairphone 2.

I really liked the concept, I was sold.
The idea of having the possibility to open it up, and change modules when / if it broke.

But to be honest, after ordering the phone we had to wait 3 months before it arrived.
OK, We could wait, it was a ¨Fair¨trade phone…

And now 2 - 3 1/2 months after receiving it the screen is FUCKED.
I do not believe this is acceptable on a 3moths new phone !
After searching here on the forum I see more people have/are experiencing this STRIPES on the screen.
Ohhh how i wished I had just bought this phone in a local store in my town, so that I could go, return it and ask them shove it up their ass. - I am so disappointment.
Maybe the reason why i´m so disappointed is that i really liked this phone, and was so happy after the 3moths of waiting for it to arrive.

Now it will be interesting to see how fast Fairphone can fix this.

What don’t you like about the concept of returning a faulty device to get a working one? It’s standard procedure with any - fair or unfair - device you can buy, because it proved itself a better solution than shoving the device up someones anus.

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Another negative outcome of the problem of end qualtity assurance at FP. In addition to my repetiion here I also posted a longer article last days in german. I tried to start an objective poor-quality debate due to the many recalls of displays including my own in april. Getting DOAs (dead-on-arrival) for a small company with a complete new (revolutionary!) display modular design is not so unusual as you might have expected. Unusual is the dealing of FP with it. They treat it as normal spoilt devices as with any other brand. But other brands don’t have a revolutionary new modular display design. However your display will be replaced properly … as mine was in april. But … I buyed last week a second display in forward . But it works now for a week as expected .

I have owned an FP2 for precisely 2 months (as my display informs me). I am not sure if the guys from Fairphone are going through the forum but if they are I just want to say they’ve done a good job! I love the dual SIM feature, one of the reasons I got this phone. The FP2 works very well, it’s fast, the GPS is excellent, as well as the large screen and the camera. I also had some issues, none of them dramatic and at least some of them Android-related, and there are ways to work around them. So on the whole, I am very happy with the FP2.

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