After the sudden demise of my Fairphone 3 and the service debacle and embarrassing chaos following the Android update and defective fingerprint sensor on my Fairphone 5, I am saying goodbye, deeply disappointed. How often have I defended the Fairphone, its lame technical features and its predictably consistent promises in conversations with relatives, acquaintances and colleagues?
In addition to the headphones, both the FP3 and the FP5 have simply broken down completely. The farce of it all is that in the meantime, most of my acquaintances are still using the same damn phone - and I have the third fpā¦.
I work in sustainability management myself, and I have repeatedly used my personal device as an example of positive developments, unnecessary perfection, etc. But I can no longer stand behind this service and quality disaster. To be honest, I am embarrassed to have used your products for so long.
I know this is somewhat mean, but the odds of having two devices to break down by themself is so unlikely, that I assume you may have treated your devices poorly.
In my household are two FP4s and there also was an FP3 once. My FP4 is from one of the first batches and my spouse had the FP3 even before and just replaced it since she won the FP4 and we did not have a single hardware issue in all these years.
Hi @Malte5
I am stepping in after reading @bjoern23 comment as I find the latter harsh and unacceptable.
There are well documented cases of both sudden deaths of FP3 and fingerprint issues with FP5 (exacerbated by the booting issue with Android15). I would assume both suffice to lose confidence even though this has not been my experience.
@Malte5 It is not my place to say what should or should not be done next, but my suggestion would be to contact support in reference to FP3 death.
Now with your FP5 experience, most likely you know the booting issue has been sorted with the last update and that there is self-repair portal that sped up warranty claims. I also remember you submitted your ticket like a month ago (correct me if I am wrong) and I hope it has been dealt with (or in worst case scenario will be soon).
Yep, the sudden death issue with the FP3 happened to some users. It occurred right after the warranty expired and led to immediate failure of the device, including the loss of all locally stored data. In addition to that, I also had a complete failure, including replacement of my headphones. Of course, these things can happen; anything can happen anytime, anywhere. However, it is simply unacceptable when it occurs with devices that are intended to last and be used for as long as possible. However, fp has reached the maximum with the issue of fingerprint sensors. Consider this: FP was aware that some of their products had defective fingerprint sensors. As a user, unlike many others, I was not aware of this because I had never used the sensor ā the fact that FP did not proactively inform me about this is bitter. Then came the Android update disaster, and FPās solution was to ask me to restart seven times to solve the problem. Well, I thought, if thatās all it takes, okay. But no, that wasnāt the solution at all. My phone could never be turned off again because the reset only worked to a limited extent. After the third reset, the device was no longer usable (this happened to a lot of people ā check the forum).
How do I know all this? I had to learn everything myself. After FP had taken several weeks to organise the repair by means of a replacement (including the repeated loss of all locally stored data), I got an FP5 again. No FP6, no offer of an FP6 for an additional charge, for example. When I asked, they refused, saying no, just a new FP5 that was several years old, haha. Yes, you can do that, and of course itās all legally fine. When I tell this story to my friends, they laugh their heads off and show me the devices they already had when I proudly came around the corner with my FP3. They still use those devices, and in the meantime I have my third new FP (which Iām selling today).
fp is simply bad and sxcks; there is no one who is more sorry to say this than me.
Of course it doesnāt invalidate the complaints. But as usual, the good experience normally is not shared. So I would add myself as rather content FP user, even if I find some topic like the battery drain since A13 not handled well. In general I would say, I was lucky, too, to have a FP4 with no major defects or not to encounter problems or have really substantial requests that the customer support was not able to cover. And that means that the general picture of FP is somewhat better than you would expect when only reading the complaints here (even if they are absolutely annoying for the folks reporting them).
Also I find the communication of FP in the past two years not acceptable and I am now watching the improvements (like lately announcing and installing the new community manager @Fairphone_CM ) carefully and sceptically at the same time.
With my FP 3 the service was good. After few month my FP3 crashed. I sent it Fairphone to repaire. After one month no reaction. I contact Fairphone. The send me a new one. The repair compagny in France was the problem. The company did not respond to Fairphone either.
Have never had the FP3 or 5, only an FP4 which has been brilliantly reliable so far, but I can only echo your unhappiness about the audio products. I sold my Fairbuds XL for about half the original price on Ebay after both arms snapped and I (at the time surprisingly quickly) got free replacements under warranty. Knowing that that will almost inevitably happen again, and considering the lack of basic features like an aux jack, the unreliable joystick, and the solidly abysmal ANC, I honestly feel kind of bad for the person who bought them off of me. I replaced them with the Shiftsound BNO, which nominally are not that focused on complete repairability, but still allow for easy replacement of cushions and the battery and are overall much, much more mature headphones.
Same thing, if different issues, for the smaller buds - I only tolerate them because I donāt use them a lot. Horrible reach (you can switch to a different codec, but thatās only really an option with podcasts where audio fidelity isnāt that critical), the hinge on the charging case broke a few months in, the right one sometimes and seemingly at random mixes in a variable level of white noiseā¦ Honestly, the small replaceable batteries are just about the only thing this product has going for it. And thatās a really cool gimmick, donāt get me wrong, but overall? I wouldnāt recommend either product to anyone right now. They are in dire, dire need of a version two.
@Malte5 I agree and really understand your āfrustrationā. We were promised a telephone that would last a long time and be maintained for a long time. I have a Fairphone. It was working reasonable well. Since the beginning of this year, the battery has been draining quickly. In Juli I bought a new battery. This was wonderfull for some time, but then the 5th of septembre my phone got a security update. Since then, the new battery is empty in a few hours! Nothing else changes.
Beside that the promised updates to Android 14 never came! Now Android 15 will arrive in Novembre. But for me this is too late. I lost my confidence in this phone and this brand! Fairphone has lost another āFanā and ambassador for there brand.
Any one case experiencing problems and loosing their device āprematurellyā is frustraiting and bad. Still, in evaluation of a company and its brand, it bears to consider how wide-spread are those total-lose issuses and how hard it is (for the consumer) to overcome repairable issuses?
I donāt have the answear for the first question, but regarding the second one - my experience was quite good, solving broken devices with repair parts from FP.
And to be fair - I think we should give FP some slack. After all it is a rather small organization, trying to survive in a jungle with much larger and rich rivals, some of still were able to sell devices that literally burst in fireā¦
Hi @Malte5 , Iām sorry to hear about your experience, and I have reached out to you via DM.
Since you mentioned āyour productsā in your post, addressing this Forum: Please keep in mind that this is the Fairphone Community Forum, meaning it is primarily run by dedicated Fairphone users who volunteer their time, not company representatives or official Customer Support staff.
If you want to give feedback to Fairphone the company and make sure itās seen and heard, please reach out via an official, company-run channel (Customer Support, email, or one of the official social media accounts). Thank you!
Honest question: What is it specifically you expect to gain from the version upgrade, except for security updates beyond the EOL of 13? I donāt think Iāve cared much about the specific version of Android running on my phone sinceā¦ Ice Cream Sandwich, maybe?
I expect a kernel update (or at last an update of the current configuration) in order to fix the battery drain cause by the mobile network driver.
Besides that, newer Android version do have a much more modern look and feel and mode of operation.
I tried it in the past to run an old system like ICS and I really didnāt know how I ever could have used that productively.
And, as already mentioned, many apps need newer API versions as the ones from A13 or older.
āA much more modern look and feel and mode of operationā? From an A13 ā> A15 upgrade? You must be joking. Itās not 2010 anymore, meaningful innovation in any aspect of the Android smartphone experience is dead and buried.
I suppose I can wrap my head around the other two issues, even if Iām completely unaffected by them.
Iām sorry for your experience. Me and my wife are on our first FairPhones (FP5) and so far weāre happy.
Iāve worked in IT for 27 years and have heard claims similar to this on a regular basis about bad quality on things and that this product or solution is better than the other. Most often people that work and the customers in my industry have different experiences and statistics tends to tell the truth.
Iām not sure that there is any publicly available statistics here from FairPhone, but Iām sure that it would be possible to investigate this checking the statistics for the parts. Like what are the failure rate for the Qualcomm chipset, compared to the chipset a Pixel use etc.
I recently repaired an iPhone 11. It was not fun. I have also replaced the USB-C port on my FP5. It took under 5 minutes to replace it. After this experience, anything else is a dealbreaker for me.
Still using my FP3 5 years on here. Before that, I had an FP2 for four years that was second hand when I got it. - Had to give that up because it would shut down due to overheating when using satnav function. I think you have been unlucky. I know several others with fairphones that have not even needed the bottom module replacement I did when the USB-C socket started playing up.