Hey all, I wanted to share some information with you that we got this week.
As you might have noticed, some owners of newer Fairphone 2 phones are experiencing stability issues (i.e. The phone sometimes reboots on its own.) In most cases this issue causes the phone to reboot once per day (often while not in active use). A smaller number of phones are experiencing a higher rate of reboots. This issue affects mostly Fairphone 2’s sold after August 2017.
We expect to deliver an extra software update improving phone stability within two weeks (by 20 February 2018 latest). Owners of all Fairphone 2’s will receive an alert prompting them to install this update - following the same process as our routine monthly software updates.
This update has been successfully tested on our pool of impacted test phones, and eliminated the stability problems associated with this issue. It is also being validated with end user testing.
The cause of the issue is an updated memory package. Engineers at Fairphone, Qualcomm and our manufacturer have been working to resolve it. The update developed by our software team adjusts the memory interface parameters to solve this stability problem. After rolling out this update we will continue to monitor and fine-tune performance with future updates as needed, but we expect this update to resolve the current issue.
Advice to impacted phone owners:
We suggest that Fairphone 2 owners who might be affected by this problem wait a little longer and install the software updates when prompted.
So far, Fairphone has been replacing any phone identified as affected by this issue, at the phone owner’s request. We will continue to do so at the request of owners of new Fairphone 2 phones. However, we now recommend customers wait for the software update rather than shipping us their phones for exchange. The software update will very likely be faster and more convenient.
Thanks to you and the people affected for your patience throughout the troubleshooting process, and our apologies for the difficulties this issue has caused.