Your frustration is clearly visible (like for instance your username), but this comment gives some context:
without any real experience with smartphones whatsoever
In that case, I can very well understand your frustration. Sadly, smartphones are not as reliable as so-called ‘dumbphones’ like good old Nokias. Prior to owning a Fairphone, I’ve had my deal of tinkering and troubleshooting with Samsung phones. Maybe Fairphone has had an unfair deal of unwanted trouble so that they suffer more from the challenges and quirks involved when you are a small player in the big world of chip manufacturers and OS providers. As sad as it is, smartphones can have more issues than ‘dumbphones’ and unfortunately for you (and for Fairphone) it is now influencing you.
Anyway, I’m totally not with you when you write
Truly wondering if FP is simply just another greenwashing exercise
As far as I see it now, your (understandable) frustration should then better be projected upon ‘smartphone industry’ as a whole, and not to Fairphone who are (at least IMHO) really trying to become as ‘green’ as business-wise reasonably possible. I don’t see any proof of the contrary (and yes, there is the thread on ‘planned obsolesence’, which I also don’t concur with).
You cannot install another OS on your phone without losing all the data (technically not completely true since you could back them up before and then restore them).
Since you are ready to delete all the content of your phone in installing /e/OS, why don’t you try first a factory reset (go to Settings > System > Reset options > Erase all data (fatory reset)) ? It worked for bg14001 (see FP3+: Issues with Android 13 update - #271 by bg14001). If it doesn’t solve the bugs, then you install /e/OS if you think it is a good idea.
Note that you should make a backup before the factory reset.
If, from the computer, you see the SD card as storage separate from internal storage, then the SD card is formated as portable. Otherwise you’d just see one storage space instead of two.
Yes, of course! Thank you for pointing that out. And thank you @RMW as well - between both your replies I can see that my card is indeed (still) formatted as portable
Well, it depends on who you ask to. For me (and many others), it was really nice. However, it’s true that (besides other issues you could read in this actual post) the fingerprint sensor “problem” is an important issue for a lot of people.
Hi, since this seems to be the big thread for the update, I’d like to add another. I’m in Italy and my German SIM card struggled to log into the correct network for mobile internet, even on Android 12. Prior to the update I could manually pick the network and switch to the correct one. Now on 13 it just tells me there’s no connection possible on either of the available networks. It also used to tell me if the network is either 2G or 4G, nor they are all displayed the same.
I have the same problem with the lowest volume setting as described at point (1). I already wrote a message to support, waiting for an answer. I have to keep my phone on silent in the meantime, as it is far to loud.
Hi,
I’ll add my 2 cents to this loooooooong thread.
I have 2 fairphones 3, both bought on FP online shop with 2 years between them.
They use french operator SIM cards, one of them is with Free and the other Orange and Free.
Since the update, we got those problems:
Slow boot
Need to reboot the phone to use SD and SIM cards (only functional on 2nd boot/reboot) and ages to get unlock SIM prompt.
battery is drawn very quickly, my phone could stay for 2 days without plug on Android 11, now, it’s around 10h.
Tethering is not working anymore, connection to the device is OK but no data can go out (both Wifi, Bluetooth and USB tethering are broken)
Wifi/SIM data death after wifi thethering (reboot to fix it)
infinite loop of “ has freezed” message every 2 seconds while the said app works well (or is in background after 1st message)
issues with fingerprints reader: cannot unlock phone without screen on, lot of attempts to unlock the phone
phone goes hot with power charge or using some apps (did not do that on Android 11 even when I used those apps while charging)
I was really happy that my phone is still maintained but this update broke nearly all functionalities I use every single day.
I also saw some messages telling that there are no white screen with Nova launcher, I can confirm it. Only got 1 or 2 while using another app.
In-place upgrades to new major OS versions are tricky on any device with any OS. They may work well, or not.
Looking at that many issues, if these were my phones, I would do a fresh install from scratch to either hopefully solve much of the issues, or to at least help sorting out which issues prevail after the new install and therefore were not caused by the tricky upgrading process and therefore would be issues Fairphone support should have something to say about …
I have all the problems listed in the post opening this thread (on FP 3). Additionally, once in a while I get a splash dialogue box saying something like “application system not responding” or “user UI not responding”. I can either close them or wait, if I wait they keep popping up, so it is not an option. If I close, I have to wait tens of seconds for the system to be operative again.
And all this for useless new functionalities, such as binding internal phone “search” with search of the internet, what only takes more time. It is just ridiculous. The mission of Fairphone was to be sustainable but they pushed an update braking our phones, just as the evil ones wanting us to buy new products.
Using this phone is now pain in the ass, it is so slow, heats up, etc, you all know it. When I want to take sb’s phone number, they get bored and annoyed waiting until my phone becomes responsive, so I could start typing. Insane! I waited around one month after the update, simply hoping Fairphone would react to it. Nothing happened. For info: I cleared cache have 10GB free.
Did anyone of you contact the support and knows if they are working on it? In my view they should be doing it, if preparing a fix is too hard, then at least they should provide a document “how to recover from that 13 disaster” instructing us how to survive this mess. Thanks for your responses in advance.
I think Fairphone is taking the blame for Google’s failure to deliver a quality Android update.
Why?
I recently stumbled upon the following links. Some of the issues described there are very similar to what we have repeatedly complained in this thread.
My partner and I have found our FP3 phones have slowed down since the update (mine only a bit). In particular, my partner’s phone has become frustratingly slow and the screen is now quite unresponsive. Does anyone have any ideas on that?
(Sorry, I couldn’t read the whole thread to see if the screen issue was mentioned. Any tips for improving the speed and screen would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.)
