I know it’s not relevant here, but I wanted to post it here so that all the people who blame FP for borking updates see that even Google can deploy wrong updates.
So much for all the arguments “I’m rather buying XYphone because they have reliable updates”. No manufacturer is immune to this.
PS: I understand that some FP owners suffered so much of the bugs that using the phone stopped being reasonable for them. I get that. But so far it seems that the probability you get hit by so many FP bugs is pretty low.
But Google will likely push a fix in a month time. Fairphone cannot even fix the At A Glance widget in the launcher for years now, also the typos that can be fixed in a minute persist. The bugs on the fp5 aren’t dramatic. But in general they last for a long time. If they can fix it all, they disabled the Always on Display feature because they couldn’t fix it (or went with poorly tested hardware that can’t be fixed).
It is impossible to always release code without bugs and in the link you posted we can read it doesn’t concern everyone and that it seems to be enough to try deactivating 4G/VoLTE calling.
Google updates its phones every month for at least 4 years in more countries than fairphone and with more phones to manage. Yes, Google is bigger but you should look at the team dedicated to pixels. And Google solves bugs way faster than Fairphone does… even though they can sometimes introduce new bugs.
Reliable updates != always reliable updates. Google Pixel updates are generally a lot faster, include a lot more features and work a lot better than Fairphone updates.
The difference here is that Google will release a fix any day now, while with the Fairphone 4 I’ve had to wait for months if not years in some cases. Often with zero communication that there’s even been an issue in the first place.
Such a small thing like making the issue tracker readable is seemingly taking years to fix. Since this is something I actually work with, I can tell you that fixing that would take seconds.
Note how “status” is entirely outside of the screen. That would almost make sense if they made it scrollable, but it isn’t.
Is it though? Some of the threads on here have literally hundreds of posts.
The battery drain issues, the screen randomly dimming and the call quality being trash are 3 problems that come to mind that seem(ed) to affect an awful lot of people. Let’s not forget the random shutdowns, seemingly happening by having 5G enabled. Or how about the current GPS problems?
The list of issues is a lot longer than it should be, and to my knowledge everything above except the battery drain issues has, or is currently, affecting everyone with a Fairphone 4.
For comparison, due to the battery issues I’ve had to switch to an Iphone 13 (Yes I know, billion dollar company) so the Fairphone 4 is used in airplane mode as an “at home” device, and the Iphone 13 has some minor camera issues. That’s all I’ve noticed really. When I had a Pixel 3a (my device before the Fairphone 4), I noticed the launcher hanging like 4 times. That’s it.
Boy This brings back memories. What is honestly not mentioned here that all tech that update over the Net have this issue. I can remember my Wii U, xbox, Samsung phone, and PCs all having an issue with an update from one time or another. I
PS5 when it launched the SSD update a while ago also comes to mind also. Its bound to happen to anything as things get more complex as Tech develops over time. It ain’t like we live in the cavemen days with phone wires connecting everyone. That seems primitive for 1960s tech. But honestly still similar how we use internet lines in place of that today. That’s the era where we had the humble Headphone jack was from for a fun fact for you. That was used to connect phones to one another with phone operators. Just food for thought.
I think that when assessing the number of users affected by bugs, it’s important to take into account the number of sold phones. That is around 300 000 for FP 3-5 since 2021.
The most intricate bug of all, ghost touches, has around 600 posts. That is one post per 500 sold phones (okay, if we try to guesstimate the number of sold FP4s, it could be 1 per 250). I know that not everybody affected is here on the forum, but I guess those who are the most affected, are here.
For reference, Google has sold around 10 million devices last year.
Let’s see, so far they haven’t even acknowledged the issue and they try the same thing FP does - throw responsibility at your carrier and tell you that you should force your carrier to fix the bug.
But I agree generally with everyone here that FP is super slow with support. Even as a beta tester I feel some slowness. This thread was meant for those who say that other manufacturers do not have this kind of problems. Everyone does. Even the “closest to source” Pixels.
They have posted in the Reddit thread where the issue was first reported and has requested more info. Maybe not an official acknowledgement but it’s something. For comparison, we have yet to receive a response on the battery issues that have been around since A14 released for FP5 and the battery issue haunting me and many others on the FP4.
For comparison, I counted 14 people in the above thread that claim they have the issue that you are linking to at the start of the thread. Some people also claim to not have it.
In the second thread in the article, a staggering 3 people claim to have the issue.
It’s almost like the media will jump at any chance to generate click bait.
Also, I disagree that most affected people would come here. An unknown amount of people are likely contacting support, writing on Twitter about it (since that is where FP seems to be the most active) or just straight up getting rid of the device.
