Yeah, @Alex.A that’s a point well made. People never go on forums to exclaim that their phone is working as expected. 
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You could always put a plastic bag over your phone when walking in pretty damn moist.
Better safe than sorry.
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I guess those having their FP3 ruined by moisture must be somewhat unlucky. It is not waterproof at all, and had to open the back to get out drops of water. I kind of bathed my FP3, but I simply dried it and continued to use it without any problems. All the moisture sensors have activated, so it was exposed for some water indeed, but the phone works perfectly fine despite this. I however don’t recommend anyone doing this, I’ve been very, very careful after my blip and understand I was lucky.
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Yes you were! Bathing your FP3 and it it still working perfectly is what I call sheer luck 
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To be honest, I understand your reluctance and I am the last person to say, that the Fairphone 3/3+ is unreliable, as the one I bought for my wife works absolutely flawless (running on /e/).
But - as @diwic posted - IP54 is protection from water spray.
To make this maybe a bit more understandable:
IP54 is sufficient for lamps on the outside wall, not under a protective roof.
From the wikipedia:
Water splashing against the enclosure from any direction shall have no harmful effect, utilizing either:
a) an oscillating fixture, or b) A spray nozzle with no shield.
Test a) is conducted for 10 minutes. b) is conducted (without shield) for 5 minutes minimum.
The one question, that could be important for you, would be, if the phone is kind of “bathing” in your pockets. Does the water collect in your pockets? Or are your pockets so moist/wet, that this kind of equals the drowning of the phone.
Making a call in the rain, on the other hand and according to the definition above, shouldn’t do any harm.
In my humble opinion the design, that allows the phone to be easily opened, is more likely to allow water to enter (especially by the battery cover); at least after some time/years of wear and tear.
But then one can replace the back cover to restore IP54 again.
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@Alex.A, then please hear my story as I had a very similar issue with my FP3.
Early this year many of its sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, etc.) stopped working all of a sudden. I could still use my phone properly, the only thing that annoyed the hell out of me was the camera app that could not rotate the picture anymore so I needed to rotate each and every photo to landscape manually.
After trying every tip I found on the forum (Safe Mode, Factory Reset, OS Reinstallation), I contacted FP Support and posted my phone for diagnosis at Cordon Electronics. According to their report, the phone has suffered severe oxidation, and therefore is irreparable hence need to be changed to a new model.
I am just completely astonished as well as puzzled as I have never dropped the phone in water or such, so I have no clue how such oxidation could materialise. How badly is the phone designed if it suffers such damage from an event (moisture I guess) that the owner does not even notice? Unfortunately this story just makes me want to buy another phone that is not so vulnerable…
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Just keep in mind, that this experience, however bad it is, does not represent all users’ track record.
Plus, that you can not recall the damaging event, does not mean it didn’t happen. It’s just, that you did not consider it a problem at that time (most likely long ago), because nothing obvious happened. E.g. a water bottle leaking in the bag, where you kept the phone,
Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t intend to blame you or something like that; you might as well have got a bad phone, that was not as watertight as it should have been.
I just mean to explain, that this is not the normal thing to happen.
IP54, being considered enough for outdoor lamps, should be sufficient for smartphones any time.
Still, I understand, that you don’t trust FP anymore and consider buying a phone by another company. (Though bad things can happen everywhere; rembember the exploding/burning Samsung batteries.)
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Same here - my accelerometer (not sure about gyroscope) is flaky, and yes, it’s annoying that most photos end up rotated…
I have lived on a boat for 16 years and another 16 aside the tidal river where it is damper than most places, especially as this is in the south west of the UK, Cornwall. I’ve had no issues with corrosion on any of the phones I’ve had for some 20 years, Nokia and Samsung. I hope this FP doesn’t buck the trend ~ only had it for a month 
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Sounds exactly like my story aswell, so it’s not a ‘single cause’
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I really feel for you, and I’m sorry to get your stories down to stats, but 2 stories, or even 5 stories out of… I don’t know how many, but certainly quite a few, is what I call a near “single cause”. There is also a story of a user whose FP3 fell in a lake, stayed here for the night and had nothing and was perfectly working (saw it somewhere, then believe it or not), there are extremes on both sides, they had good luck and you probably had bad luck. I don’t say it’s impossible that it’s a problem with the phone, and it’s perhaps a defect, but please remember the FP3 was never marketed as waterproof and only has an IP54 rating, which under heavy rain isn’t much.
I can also tell my story with my FP2, which I once had in my pocket during a quite heavy rain, thinking my pocket was waterproof. Though I know how stupidly you can get water damage, and when I opened it I found drops of water everywhere. Opened it, let it dry, and had no problem after. Had I not checked… 
TL;DR Two stories are not much, even more on an unrepresentative online forum, only stats can tell if it’s a design fault.
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The problem is: Every device has its history, and if bought second hand, nobody knows until every part is disassembled…
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Sure 
Well it’s in a couple of tests and reports aswell (unfortunately I’ve read them now and not before buying it). But this is still a very important point (and I think I’m not just talking for our three or four cases). The typical FP costumer does willingly accept deductions on the technical status, the weight, the size, price etc. but wants it to be longlasting and best possible for the enviroment and people.
This is why I’m dissapointed, because it was just those two little things that where imporant for me and now it’s more vulnerable than everything I’ve ever had. And I think it should be more visible if there got dampness in there as it took me a lot of time to explain, check, try, reset, send it in (and my spare phone is so old, that it has a grey beard and a walking stick (;)), so it’s not fun to wait for the other one to come back without anything changed)
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like me but no walking stick yet, thankfully, I get by and about. 
I agree with everything but
wouldn’t that be nice but age tells there’s no should, maybe could, but definitely a hope for the future.
Yes, but the problem is: Dampness (water) is the greatest evil of electronics. Once the corrosion has started, there is no way back, and such devices can then no longer be sold or with great difficulty only. But it might turn out that your device is not severely damaged, because the watermarks may turn red quite easily.
My advice: Take back your phone and look for another (used) camera, and see how long both of them are going to last. And do not forget to make backups regularly!
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List of people selling or giving away their FP3 camera modulesJust a simple idea on the side: As I now have a couple of the little plastic bags that new FP2 slim cases come in, I have gone to use those bags as an emergency rain protection for my FP3+.
These little simple bags come without holes (previously I found many little plastic bags from other products I kept had punched holes out of the box – maybe a precaution against suffocation of kids?), they have a sealing line (one of those you press shut) and while they certainly won’t seal enough to go diving with your FP3 (or FP2), they still come really handy when you just want to protect your device in your jacket when you get into rain unexpectedly. With some care, you can even just fit an FP3 with a protective case inside them.
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Having a case also helps keep some water out.
@fellowfreaksnnerds: I tested it. I filled some instant lemon tea corns (granulat, you might remember from waaaaay back … 
) into the bag, tried to push out as much air as possible, made sure the brown stuff rested right next to the sealing line and submerged it under water for 2+ hours. See what it looked like then (first photo still fully submerged after 2+ hours, the other two after wiping the bag from outside):
Not too bad for a bag not designed for this. Please note the sandy parts near to the sealing line were already that sandy when I filled the stuff inside. It does seem that tiniest amounts of water were able to enter at least at the very left, but frankly the wiping and dealing with the bag after pulling it out of the water might have done it just as well.
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What could be helpful to future readers of this thread is:
Is there a way to check the moisture sensors yourself, and if so how? So that if they are activated, there’s no use sending the phone for repair.