I am currently moving away from the FP3 too. After owning an FP1 and a FP2 I hoped that with the company got it finally right with FP3.
But no! Although the close to stock android is a blessing regarding to former Fairphones… I’m a little disappointed by the mediocre specs and performance of the fingerprint reader and apps which makes the FP3 not suitable for your/my day to day/main mobile phone.
From the start my FP3 seems to have a life on its own rebooting almost with every call.
Getting hot/too hot when charging…
The camera like with the FP2 giving the same connection error.
And no notification LED (why??)
To top it off NO customer support.
I have reached out to them 12 days ago and all I have is a auto responder with a ticket and the promise to get back to me within 1 business day
If Fairphone really wants to be the fair alternative for common smartphones it has to clean up its act.
Poor performance and poor support and service scares people away… Why buy a FP3 for €450 when you can buy let’s say a smartphone with double the RAM AND ROM for €200 less. For the story? Come on
When you ask a premium price nowadays you have to offer a sort of premium somewhere!
You can learn a lot from the other sustainable smartphone manufacturer Teracube
Well no, for the material benefit to workers. That’s not a story, that’s a very real thing. The price is also not premium, as you say; it’s closer to what a phone should cost if workers weren’t being exploited the way they are by most smartphone manufacturers.
From what I’ve been reading on the forum recently, I think customer support may be a bit swamped at the moment - have you tried giving them a call at +31 20 788 4400? You’ll likely have better luck getting a response on the phone. De beller is sneller (the caller is faster), we like to say here.
While I would agree, that rebooting and overheating are a no-go and demand customer support to react, I don’t understand that point:
Didn’t you check the specs before ordering?
That disappointment is totally on you and not on Fairphone, as they were absolutely transparent (unless you miss the FM-radio; that’s another story )
Well, that depends on how you define sustainable.
In a wider sense, you are right, but then should add shiftphone well, as they claim this as well and even apple, that is renown to produce long lasting phones (they slow them down via software-updates to make people buy new devices).
Focusing on the targets taken on by Fairphone, I guess, you will find no other manufacturer for comparison.
Especially mining, workers welfare, social responsibility, transparency and repairability.
This of course is no excuse for failures and defects, though the soldering and glueing all parts togehter obviously offers a better guarantee for firmer connections and their durability than the modularity.
And even Samsung had their phones going up in flames due to a design-/construction-error.
Finally it remains to be seen, if teracube will live up to it’s 4 year warranty; i.e. if the company stays in business that long. So far, there is no long-term experience or any experience at all.
So, before presenting them as an alternative, it’s rather wait and see.
Up to now it’s just promises.
I’m also a little puzzled by the comment on the mediocre specs. I was a bit wary myself, and I’m sure the phone is mediocre compared to the latest iPhone or Samsung, but coming from my Samsung S5, the FP does everything my Samsung did and does it better and can do other things my Samsung couldn’t. It’s an improvement in every way. The only things that might be missing or not great, are things I was aware of when buying the phone.
I think it’s ironic to talk about sustainability in this situation. Part of that, in my opinion, is making absolutely sure you’re buying something you’ll use for many years, which means doing research. I’m also puzzled by OP switching back to his old phone in that sense; if it works so much better for you, why the new phone in the first place?
When it comes to the phone malfunctioning, that is of course unacceptable, but should not be part of your FP experience and your phone should be fixed or replaced. It doesn’t mean the FP in general is a bad phone.
I was one of the first buyers of the FP3 because I knew a few people working there anddddd after my 3rd swapped / new (!) FP2 was broken too I decided in order to support the cause and after talking to a FP rep I decided to give it one more chance… But the thing is that like Swiss_FP stated too is that the FP3 isn’t the phone (again) for day-to-day use.
Regarding Teracube… Same as it was with Fairphone a few years ago
Yes, I tried several times to reach customer support. Today I got the message round 4PM that ‘all lines are closed’
How much you have to endure because of ‘the cause’… Don’t get me wrong workers rights and fair wages are very close to my heart but It is possible to build a fair phone and pay the workers what should be paid.
And have you seen Stranger Parts on Youtube? Where the host of the shows that it is possible to build a phone completely according to your specs using recycled parts, bioplastic, compensationplan, etc, etc
And to be sure that wheither the claims were true (or false) I contacted several manufacturers myself… Long story short… China is very keen on doing business. Customer is still king… So, it is possible to build a very Fairphone for less than FP is charging now… But hey even without remarks regarding the premium I’m still dissapointed in how Fairphone customer service is treating me (or treating me at all)
I am sceptical. I have seen some of those Strange Parts videos, and while the guy seems to be having a lot of fun, the parts he uses are only as cheap as they are because they are made by their millions, by one of the richest corporations in the history of the world, in factories with suicide nets.
So could you put a fair phone together by going to Africa to get some bags of fairly sourced cobalt and gold, going to factories with good working conditions, having parts made? Yes, definitely, because that’s what Fairphone have been doing for the past eight years.
But would it cost you less than €450? I doubt it. The Strange Parts guy made a video explaining that making his own iPhone cost him somewhere between $300 and $1000 - that’s an existing model with unfair parts that are manufactured on a massive scale by a greedy megacorporation. Contrast that with Fairphone who to my knowledge, as of last year at least, had yet to turn a profit.
You’re not just paying for the weight of the resources plus a profit margin, you’re paying for the sourcing of materials, higher wages, design, testing, software development, customer service and so on. €450 seems like a pretty good deal to me.
I’m with you all the way on that one - I hope FP are working on fixing that, as you’re not the first who’s complained about long waiting times lately. Nothing like bad customer service to turn minor issues into big resentments.
Unfortunately he seems to have no luck trying that.
Maybe @lorahaspels as the community-contactpoint can have a look into this, so the support-team answers?
Well, from my experience with phone-lines, 3 times is not worth an exclamation mark.
In other cases (non FP), I had to dial much more often for some days, before I finally received someone.
It helps my fingerprint reader in recognizing when my fingers are not too dry (e.g. I slightly lick over my finger before unlocking my FP3) and not too cold.
Just my experience, though.
Generally, it helped to re-register my fingerprint twice - it works more reliable now.
)
