FP1(U) Longevity "Experiment"

That was the beginig of my Fairephones dead :frowning:.

The battery started to become bolted, that opened the Fairphone all the time, if I wanted to close it I had to push that hard, that I saw color effects on the display.

I believed that this won’t be a problem, because I had a phone with changeble battery but unfortunately Fairphone wasn’t able to deliver one and I wasn’t able to wait to long for a phone that dosn’t loose its parts all the time. So I’m an owner of a LG G4 since some month and I hope I will get spare parts for that when I need them.

So the Fairphone Experyment has failed for me :disappointed_relieved:.

Did you mean “bloated”?

But you’re right, spare parts (like battery and screen) have to be available all the time. Nobody wants to be months without a smartphone because the battery bloats (or another part is broken) and no replacement is available.

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Exactly,
I meant bloated. I was very sad as I noticed that I can’t get the spare part.

I think this is currently the biggest problem of FairPhone. As the battery of my first Android phone, a HTC Desire S got weak, it was no problem to buy a new one from a third party producer. So the phone can and is be used by my mother nowadays. Ok, the display will now reach the end of its life, after 5 years of use. But this are 4 years longer than my FairPhone was active. And the HTC was nothing special, it hasn’t promised to live long etc.

That is why I hope, that I can use my LG longer again. The support of LG might end quickly but I hope it was popular enough to make it interesting for third party producers of spare parts. So I can fix it if necessary (it git 8 of 10 points from iFixit).

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Fairphone’s batteries have fair cobalt. Apple’s doesn’t.
Fairphone still sells batteries for an out-of-production phone. Apple doesn’t.

Fairness has its limits at the moment, I guess. No 3rd-party fair batteries, but 1st-party, al least.

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…One year later…

U still using ur FP1(U)?

I still do :wink:

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At least @paulakreuzer bought a FP2.

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Yes I do. :slight_smile: I do have an FP2 too, but I’m using both and also sometimes lend one of them away.

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FP1U over 2.5 years now and still going strong :smile:

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The FP1U was sold in July/August 2014. It can’t be 2.5 years yet. My FP1 First Edition is 2.5 years now! :wink:

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Oops, sorry, it’s indeed the FP1 FI I have not the ‘U’.
But it’s over 2.5 years now: 32 months to be exact, up to it’s 3rd anniversary! And awaiting the make-over to 4.4.4 :slight_smile:

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To all, who have made it until today with their three year old Fairphone: Get you special badge! :smiley: :hourglass:

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Well, in spite of my best intentions it looks like my FP1 is almost end of life. The number of apps that can’t be used due to the too old Android version is increasing rapidly.
And that’s really bad: the phone looks almost new from the outside, but is becoming less and less usable. And that after only 3 years :frowning:
Not exactly what I expected when I embraced the FP-philosophy…

You could join the beta testers. Many apps would probably work again.

I think FP1 has Android 4.4 right ? It’s still by far the most common Android OS in the world, I’m surprised many apps are dropping support for it.

No, it is officially still on 4.2.

You could also switch to a Gxxgle-less life. The thing is that in the FOSS world it’s always a hard debate if an app should drop support for older Android versions. In any case there is almost always a legacy version that can be downloaded to older phones.

I see, last news I had was a few months ago where 4.4 was announced and I guessed it was already there. But anyway it will surely come, which means FP will hold to the philosophy of long term usage.

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Older versions of apps that require interaction with (web/FTP-based) external parties are seldom (if ever) compatible. And that’s the majority of apps I need :frowning:

Ok the experiment has ended.
I admit I haven’t used my FP1 as my primary phone for a while now, but I did use it for all kinds of things every now and then and it always worked perfectly fine.
Now I donated it to the austrianfairphoners’ spare parts collection and already it saved two other FP’s lives after we harvested the screen and the battery.

So here is the original bet:

Today marks 2 years, 1 month and 3 days after I pre-ordered my FP2. I got it half a year later.
I have no doubts that my FP1 would have survived another half a year, but instead of proving a point by winning this bet and having a secondary phone I thought donating it was the right thing to do.

I’m closing this thread now, but I just wanted to bump it one last time to illustrate that 2,5 years ago, after FP2 was announced many people thought that was the end of FP1 and betting to keep one running for 2,5 more years seemed bold to them.
So I don’t really get the outrage some people have now, 2,5 years later when Fairphone announced that batteries are out.

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