If you believe you talking to Fairphone: your are not, you are screaming at those sitting in the same boat.
And you are mixing and generalizing incorrectly for the sake of ranting, which makes your entire statement something that I cant hardly take serious.
So just on example:
Thats how life of Custom ROM developer is, they have to adopt to the device. There is no standard Calyx, LOS, Iode, e/OS for all devices and Custom ROM are made for a device and not one for all.
Ghost Inputs are back, Second Phone, Second time.
I am going to leave you guys with this, because in contrast to what I said earlier, it isn’t practical at all to have the phone sent in every few months.
I am going to sell the phone, because customer support takes ages to answer and suggested me to update the OS, because they appearently fixed a touch issue. While this is great an all, I had this issue on Lineage OS, so I highly doubt the “software bug”.
Hope you get a solution to this mess.
See ya
Hi everyone,
I have the same issue as everyone here and have been following this thread for a while now.
My hopes were that this miraculous update would solve the issue but it clearly hasn’t…
I don’t know what to do because I feel bad reselling the phone for someone to have the same issue but this phone cost me a lot of money…
Do you think we’ll see something like a recall on the product or a serious solution to this issue in the future?
Welcome to the Fairphone community.
Did you contact Fairphone support already? As this is just a user forum, we can help with some own experiences and suggestions, like tightening screws, put some adhesive tape over blank areas of the ribbon cable or some cushion pressing on the contacts, but not with a hardware swap or repair.
If not fixed by the recent update, or any orther tipps mentioned here
What? I’ve contacted Fairphone and I’m making arrangements to have it returned.
However, as we have seen multiple times, it’s pretty obvious I will send them my phone, not being able to use it for weeks, and the issue will still be there. Let’s not pretend like they have a solution, we are 500 replies in on this thread…
Also, the adhesive tape and cushioning solutions are simply ridiculous. I agree with whoever’s saying that this hurts the repairability cause. Repairability shouldn’t be about buying a phone and having to do dubious fixes for the product to work. Repairability and sustainability need to be about reliablitly and durability. I’ve had my phone for months when I started to have issues…
I work in customer service and I believe in giving solutions to the customers. Or be straightforward and just tell them they were scammed when they spent over 600eur on a phone who has a serious design issue.
In my opinion, Fairphone needs to seriously solve the issue and recall the product if that’s what’s necessary.
Yes and that are still not 500 phones…and why recalling a phone when the majority does not have issues?
I think Fairphone has done a bad job communicating with the community about this issue. I am glad they have finally released some kind of mitigation. The mitigation I think is working without any side-effects so far but not 100% sure yet. I’ve moved to another device already and not sure if this will ever become my main device again. I would like to see Fairphone publish what they have on the issue and upstream, release or opensource the mitigation so other ROMs can also implement the fix. It took a year and a half for some software mitigation to be released. This will weigh heavily in my decision to buy products from Fairphone in the future.
Calyx already implemented it
As of yesterday and today, my expensive (now 1y old) device has become effectively useless despite the previously somewhat working community fixes. I’m reaching a point where it’s simply not optional anymore to ditch Fairphone for some conventional, non-malfunctioning alternative. Because with that experience, am I just gonna trust Shift or Nokia to do it better?
Are you deliberately misrepresenting me?
Because no I don’t believe that, nor is it relevant to the points I voice here.
What you’re quoting is from an earlier draft that I already had adjusted before you replied, exactly to avoid such distractions from my points. You still chose to distract anyway without adding anything worthwhile regarding the actual points. Appreciated.
I’m also not “screaming” at anyone nor do I appreciate being gaslit, as I simply reacted to an official Fairphone employee first posting yet another duct-tape-tier solution in here, and then worringly marking it as “solution” before they moved on. You picked up the conversation with me by making it look like the glaring issues I was pointing out weren’t even just not an issue, but actually the solution - either entirely failing to understand what I’m saying, or misrepresenting it on purpose. So let’s try this again.
In essence,
“You want to make software for our sustainable device? It’s got very weird quirks and defects we had to program our way around. So that’s your problem now, because that’s your job after all, figure it out for yourself, since we don’t actually care.”
That’s what that particular take comes off as.
Do some Devs still put up with it? Evidently, yes. Respect for that.
But it is still sabotaging the product’s sustainability, because:
No. Yes, every Custom ROM is indeed device specific. Because every device has a specific combination of components which need their specific drivers to function. But that’s where that relevancy ends. Because the more unicorn a device is, the less likely it’ll get custom ROMs. And that doesn’t end with the components.
Which is why I asked if that “software patch” was even documented anywhere, available as open source to simplify implementation in other systems, and whether it was released under a license that permits that legally. Because if not, that really would be offloading a lot of extra effort of unicorn software solutions for just one specific faulty (!) device on the custom ROM devs, making it unnecessarily hard for them to support it. Devs that examine the kind of fix Fairphone slapped on there might probably already think twice about bothering with supporting a defective device like that. And don’t even start, if it needs such a hackjob of a “fix”, you cannot not call it faulty - all the fix actually changed is the symptoms. Frequent violent ghost inputs becomes frequent unresponsive display.
Communicating “that’s entirely their job, not Fairphone’s” is not in line with the sustainability principle. It very much is Fairphone’s responsibility to make sure the hardware isn’t faulty, and to adhere to their sustainability principles by providing support and a long term hardware platform with software compatibility for longevity.
I’m sorry.
Let us take a moment to step back here and reflect about what you just said about the top SEVENTH thread on this entire forum, okay? Let’s get some perspective.
How many unique people here have experienced the issue? How many of these posts are talking about two or even more devices at the same time, all of which seem to suffer from the same design flaw? Most people who chimed in after their - dare I say - unacceptable exchange with support for a replacement (you know, the “just spend multiple weeks without your phone” one), have reported that even that massive inconvenience led nowhere because the new or repaired devices very quickly suffered from the very same issue again anyway. And now, it’s gonna be the same issue, just painted in invisible color, and treated as if it was an entirely different issue.
And since you’re arguing that: If there actually are so many devices that are fine, splendid news! How about us just getting some of those mystical devices instead of multiple faulty ones in a row? Also, most of us simply don’t have the luxury of playing roulette with support for weeks on end to maybe get one of these. If we need to get a replacement “for the meantime” anyway, then let’s be real, Fairphone will end up in the drawer or a bin over the purchase of an actually reliable, ironically “more sustainable” although fast-tech Pixel, Huawei or whatever, with a custom ROM.
Why would these people post here? They can already see nearly 600 complaints which have been met with either silence or ineffective ‘solutions’ by the company for a whole year and a half (18 months) now. They’ll simply ditch the brand quietly because they have better things to do with their time than trying to hobby-project their phones into functioning like we are.
Lastly, downplaying customer issues as serious as ours reminds me of Apple’s infamous “you’re just holding it wrong” defense and how that went. Why do you seem so focused on opposing our legitimate issues, frustrations and concerns?
I cant see your drafts so it was published when I quoted and I cannot know that you wanted to change it later
The FPs are all very well supported by many Custom ROM.
Guess it’s part of the propriety firmware provided with the update?
Wow, I’ve been silently following the thread and only now I’m realizing the level of covering up being attempted here. I guess I was too focused on the duct tape hacks…
Do you actually have data to support the claim that the majority of the phone doesn’t have issues?
500 replies is not 500 phones but I’m sure most people with the issue won’t bother signing up to the forum and commenting on the thread.
If there’s units that are not faulty, why do the replacements received eventually turn out to have the same issue?
I don’t know what do you get for defending Fairphone so hard but you should tell the CEO that your strategy is doing worse to the brands image…
I haven’t had any ghosttouches since the update. It’s only when the phone is on the table that I have trouble zooming. But I can live with that. I am satisfied.
I can support that part of your statement, as I’ve peraonally had this issue slowly getting worse for months now, but haven’t spoken about it on this forum until a few days ago.
On another note:
I did observe one unintended input along the middle of the screen despite the update just a few minutes ago, but it was only one short strike before being suppressed and in no way comparable to the erratic inputs from before:
The touch inputs being disabled across certain screen regions pretty regularly is becoming the bigger issue now.
One more thing I haven’t mentioned before, which thinking about it could be related to the connection between main board and screen degrading over time (and hence the ghost input problem). Maybe some of you guys have experienced this in combination with your ghost inputs as well:
I’m also experiencing the issue of the screen sometimes suddenly turning black without actually turning off. All other functionality is retained when this happens (e.g. audio output).
The same (or similar) issue has been described in this thread by @jaxom, which has unfortunately been closed since with no update as to the resolution of the problem:
I haven’t done anything about the issue so far, since it could always be resolved by simply turning the screen off and on again. Note that I also haven’t refitted the screen yet, which I intend to do due to the ghost-intput and irresponsive touchscreen stuff shortly.
Has anyone else who experienced ghost inputs also had this problem on top?
This sounds more like a android software problem to me. Are you using different launcher or something?
Nope, the device currently runs the stock Fairphone launcher. I did disable the Google App (Search, Voice Input, etc. - not Google Play Services) and use DuckDuckGo for my standard search stuff, but I don’t think that should have any bearing on this. Also it does not happen on any specific app, but pretty randomly all across the board.
It’s not frequently enough to make the device utterly unusable, but it can be a bit annoying nonetheless.
And it persists through a factory reset?
I’ve had four violent ghosts yesterday. One of which was going on for close to 4 minutes, because the device was in a safe enough state (navigation) that I just let it run its course without interfering, curious as to how bad it’s gonna be.
Since that one, the device has not been acting up too much again, I even put it to the test by watching an entire movie on it in the evening, without any issue. Not the best movie experience, but it served a different purpose after all.
Im with you there, mostly. But I would refrain from speculating in that direction without actual hard evidence to back that theory up. I didn’t mean to insinuate such, either, sorry if that’s the impression that you got.
Because IF I were to speculate, let’s look at the facts we got. They’re a community Moderator (not Manager, Moderator) which still suggests they’ve been involved with FP as a product longer than most (any?) of us. Their profile confirms that, including that they’ve been using FP2, and FP3 before FP4, meaning they probably also have been using the FP4 specifically before most (any?) of us, as well. Their contributions here consisted of trying to help for the most part, until the two, three last posts which unfortunately came off as possibly discrediting our experiences here. But that you can also interpret as their own years of experience simply being at odds with ours, indicating that there absolutely are devices out there that are functioning properly long term.
Long story short, what’s the speculative conclusion? I suspect that the first few batches of devices / components off the line may have been fine. If only the later batches ended up having issues, that would explain the discrepancy of some, maybe even many, not having had any issues while now, all or most devices / components produced within the last year or so, have turned out faulty. No actively ill intents required.
