I got my fairpone 2 early 2016 (after pre-ordering in Automn 2015). After almost two years of use, my experience is getting worse and worse every day.
Over three months of delay compared to the promised delivery date and nothing to compensate despite not respecting their contract
The back cover that breaks because of their design/quality issue. I got a second one for free but it still has the same problem after a few weeks of use.
The phone overheats for no reason (Phone update or call)
The phone battery goes from 40% to 10% all of a sudden, then drops 1% every minute. The phone is not even 2 years old and the battery always has issues…
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I do not want the most powerful phone on the market and do not mind paying a bit more to have an ethical product. However, ethical does not mean bad quality!
I use this phone for work and am so embarassed when the phone presses all the buttons (and sometimes hang up) when i put my ear and cheek on the phone…
All my friends made fun of me at the beginning saying i was spending too much money on this and I tried to convince them of the good action but with everything that happens, I will just take my old Iphone 5 (which is 5 years and still works perfectly!).
The idea is great, the result is just disapointing . A second-hand phone is more worth it.
I experienced one or two times the hot-for-nothing issue, with crazy battery draining. Rebooting the phone got me back a normal use, with a week-long lasting battery run (using the Open OS version of Android available in the update tool, and only softwares installed from f-droid, except VLC and Aard2).
So there is no reason to suffer this issue.
I agree with the rest of the dots. Especially, Fairphone created a better back cover, and kept sending bad ones to its users… (at least in my case)
I have to agree with kataimi. I was considering writing a post similar to his for some time.
It is roughly the same situation for me: pre-ordered the phone in Sept 2015, got it in beginning of 2016. Since then, I have not recommended it to anyone because of all the different issues I encountered since then.
By issues, I mean all the points listed in the initial post above + losses of network + SIM card that is not recognized + phone not detected by PC/Mac for USB functionalities; all of the previous points occurring randomly.
The only thing that works well is this forum where I found many turn arounds or help when I couldn’t fix the issue myself.
I did contact the support to share my experience, they proposed me to send back the phone to get a new one. Beside the fact that I have to get and use another phone during the replacement time (not really convenient), the disappointment has broken my trust in this product and, at this point, I am not even sure if I will continue using my Fairphone 2.
It is a shame as I completely support this ethical and modular concept.
As a guy who has been working in the mobile phone industry for 9 years, my personal opinion is that the FP technical team needs to muscle up and propose a better quality product with much much less bugs because those just give a bad image to what every manufacturer should do!
I do not expect a Fairphone to have the same design of the likes of iPhone and Samsung but just that it works as flawlessly as those guys.
A lithium ion battery is going to last about 500 days. So it isn’t odd that you need to replace your battery after ~1,5 years. At least you can, for the price of ~20 EUR + S&H.
I would like to refer to my post in another thread “How sustainable isfairphone?”
You simply can not compare Fairphone to large companies like Apple, Samsung, Huawei, HTC, Motorola, LG, Nokia, Blackberry …
Just take a look at the number of sold phones and make a guess, what that means when Fairphone starts negotiating contracts with suppliers. Add to that a new and revolutionary design and there you are: at least some of the quality control ends up with the customer instead of being done thoroughly by the suppliers.
To be clear: I am disappointed and frustraded as well with some of the issues, but taking everything into account, I - for myself - have come to the conclusion, that I am willing to live with it.
I’m sorry that you are experiencing issues, but not seeking help in time but instead coming to this forum after 2 years is on you.
If you want to give your FP another chance, please follow the tips you already received and if you need further help with one or some of the issues post in a linked thread or search the #fairphone2help category or create a new topic there if you can’t find a corresponding thread.
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