General review after 5 months

Discuss The Products
1

I obtained a Fairphone 5 around 5 manths ago. This has given me plenty of time to experience it and find its foibles.

First off, I should say that I bought a Pixar 1TB memory card and set it up as Internal Storage - this is not often done, but I was determined to try it. It has worked well, though it did need a reseat yesterday. I tidied things up after completing the upgrade from my old Samsung Galaxy S9+, including removing the Zoiper app which is/should be unnecessary, for a reason in the next paragraph.

I have an eSIM from Sky, which is OK but their network incorrectly reports incorrect dialling or even “number does not exist” falsely when there are issues in their network. I may return to iD when I can. I also have an Andrews & Arnold/ONSIM physical SIM which is fed by my home Asterisk, via A&A’s servers - this is a better option than using Zoiper. It has proven “wobbly” because of some issue with Fairphone not always doing the necessary “keepalive” - ONSIM and Fairphone apparently disagree on this - but it is not a big issue. It does recover when the phone is restarted and is normally good for a week or so at present.

The phone is less wobbly on Android Auto than the Samsung was, but still seems to need to be disconnected and reconnected a fair bit.

The phone also sometimes gets “in a knot” but this is no more, in fact possibly slightly less, the case with Fairphone 5, compared to other Android phones. A restart is once again highly effective.

Battery life is, with some of my heavy use, quite respectable - though a recent increase in use of WhatsApp video calls has hammered it a bit. I have “Battery Protect” on under most circumstances so charge is normally a maximum of 80%. I charged from my old Samsung charger at first, then my older Huawei charger, or an Omnicharge power bank, PC or other USB port.

One issue likely to be down more to Android than Fairphone is the Battery Saver mode. You can set this to activate at a configurable charge percentage, but automatic deactivation is at a fixed 90% - with Battery Protect, this ought to be 72%. I am trying to create this behaviour in Tasker as a workaround.

The one big annoyance has been when I try to pay using Google Wallet. Depending on the shop’s device, the position the phone needs to be in can be awkward. I also noticed this with Electroverse, when activating a card. The app asks you to use a position on the phone that does not work - you need to put the card more “in the middle”.

I have not had need to replace anything yet, but I am sure it will be simple enough when I do.

Based on what I have seen so far, I would always choose Fairphone from now on. In fact, if it can be afforded, I intend to get Fairphones for two other people important to me. If there was a Fairtablet, I’d consider it.

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2

I have to advise strongly against a memory card as Internal Storage.
You will get into problems and loose everything that’s is stored on the card.

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3

A bridge I am prepared to, quoting the Doctor, burn when I come to it. The sheer organisational headache of not doing so would be too much for one of the people I may buy for in the future. I was aware of the risk I was taking when I started.

Unless, of course, there is a better way to achieve the same effect.

4

Of course, the other alternative would be a Fairphone with sufficient internal storage as standard, but I am not expecting that any time soon. It has one “oodle” as standard, where two would be sufficient for me but at least one person I know would need 3 to 4.

5

As it has started to indeed prove a little unstable I have stepped away from that setup. Only the restoration of music is taking time - other than that, all seems well. Of course, I may, if I’m really unlucky, end up with the administrative headache of always having to move some stuff about, but hopefully not.

6

Do I get the impression there is a “time limit” on MTP on Fairphone 5? It would explain how it was behaving when copying files from my computer.