First impressions Fairphone 2

… and White Stripes for the white noise

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My previous phone was the FP1 which has served me well. I was so disappointed on receiving FP2.
Firstly, customer service has been awful. I received an email notifying me of impending delivery via DHL with the tracking details. The phone had already been ‘delivered’ 30 hours beforehand! But not to me! I then spend 5 days chasing my phone via DHL (who had bizarrely delivered it to a house without checking the name or address).
I contacted ‘customer services’ at FP but they did not bother to help or reply to my emails…
Eventually, the phone was delivered. I opened the box and find a phone that I feel will fall apart in 5 minutes. FP1 was a good quality product that served me well, whether I was working on the farm or in an office. I even accidentally ran it through a wash cycle and it survived!
I cannot see FP2 surviving a damp day let alone a washing machine. The phone has a cheap feel to it, the outer case flexes and it just feels poorly made for a high priced phone. The phone case is slippery and in my slightly arthritic hands it keeps popping out.
Transferring from FP1 to FP2 has been a pain as nothing seems to work…but that maybe my skills.
I bought FP2 because I like to support the notion of what FP is trying to do…but I feel I have been let down a lot after all the waiting.

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Just in case you’re not aware, if you regret ordering the Fairphone 2 you have up to 14 days after receiving it to notify Fairphone support that you want to return it for a refund (just file a support ticket here or look for the details on phone support at the bottom of this page and they’ll tell you what to do).

I find that impression quite interesting.
My personal impression was that with this thick back cover it rather feels very sturdy, even a bit too much for my taste. I usually take care of my things, in 20 years of mobile phone use, I never broke a phone. I would have rather wanted it to be a bit thinner even if that means more fragile.
Anyhow, my first impression was rather the opposite of what you described here :smile:

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This reply is more related to the first impression on delivery than the first phone experience itself. I received my package terribly broken by DHL. I suppose they suspected it to be a drug delivery from the Netherlands, and looked inside. Only the phone itself was not violated, saying that the outer package, inner blue package and the styropor were all damaged. The “Open it, it’s yours”-seal was free of damage but it could be easily have been reglued, since the styropor inside was damage too. Furthermore, I wasn’t at home when my FP2 arrived, and the postman just put it on top(!) of the mailbox, acessible to everyone. No neighbour, nor I, was informed - which is likely bacause of the damage done to the package.

I have googled on this and found out that normally the customs department has to inform you by their seal when they open your mail beacuse of suspicions. I did not get such an information. I am really disappointed about such a practice, however, I was very glad that the phone was inside and functioned well!

Does anybody had similar experiences?

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The outer part of my DHL parcel was also broken, but only at one edge. Inside was all OK.
I was a little bit disturbed not had to show my passport for receiving the parcel, in your case obviously nobody hat even to sign.
That’s the contrary how it was handled for the FP1 (only personal sing and passport)…

Did you contact the support team? They should know about this issue!

Thanks for the tip. I was wondering how to find a pink noise soundfile, but instead found an app called Pink Noise that does just that: play pink noise for how long you want to (it turns out it used for ‘soothing quality’ as well, I wasn’t aware of that, I know pink noise as a way to test a concert hall for frequencies that peak in the building and need to be tuned down when adjusting the PA to the venue).

No, I just have contacted DHL right now, because there are many (additional) obscure things about this package. Tracing showed 2 items to me (have screenshots), DHL sees only one. These two items, have gone different paths with different timings but arrived at the very same time. DHL said they will contact me again.

That was also my thinking. Why not signing for such an expensive item. There is no proof who recieved the parcel.

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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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