I am fuming about this - I have a FP1U which is just over 1 year old. The motherboard has already been replaced once due to the charging socket not working. Now the headphone socket is not working and has not been working for a couple of months. When I asked about repairing, I was told that there was only a one year warranty so I would either have to replace the motherboard AGAIN which is out of stock and cost 100 Euros or I could trade my phone in for a new one with a 100 Euro discount or they would buy it off me for spares. This is not really the ethos I signed up for!
Fairphone is meant to be repairable - from reading the forum - it looks like this is a difficult repair to do with standard parts.
I have now purchased Bluetooth Headphones - but I am very disappointed in the service and the attitude… can anyone advise me on repairing my phone
This is mainly true for the second Fairphone, though there were also spare parts available for the FP1.
Since it is hard to find manufacturers for the small quantities for FP1 parts, Fairphone apparently started to buy back old phones to get some spare parts back in stock. Unfortunately, with a part broken on the mainboard, there’s not much one can do, unless you find someone who can micro solder certain parts onto the mainboard. The design of the FP2 is more flexible in regard of repairability, a lesson learnt from the FP1.
I know, this info will probably not help you much to solve your problem, but maybe it sheds some light why Fairphone was offering you a discount or to buy back your phone. It is an attempt to get again spare parts on stock, and to move people to the more modular, thus better repairable FP2. I guess it’s the best approach to keep some FP1s alive, thus reducing e-waste.
To pay for a phone that’s life is just over 1 year is deplorable and does not fit with my ethos. This phone seems to be less repairable than my old Samsung - which I have just repaired. The unwillingness for fairphone to repair my phone or even give me a quote for repair is shocking. I am very disappointed in the product and company.
The Fairphone repair center (which is another company) does not micro-solder, like most repair centers/shops. Thus they could only change the whole mainboard, I guess. There are only very few repair shops doing such delicate work such as changing some components on the board (like the USB socket for example). I am not sure if anyone would change the headphone socket, but here you find a list of some shops that have been doing some micro soldering in the past; maybe one of them would be willing to change the headphone socket.
Parts like headphone or USB socket are prone to break and some of the weak points of mobile phones. For this reason they are not on the motherboard anymore on the FP2.