I guess it could even deserve a discussion itself, how does fairphone’s unique selling points hold up. The fairness for sure. But the repairability and long term support perhaps not so much, the mainstream players are making strides on that front, as others already said.
To me, its also just about the replacable battery at this point.
But just to say one real compliment. The fingerprint sensor.
I’m left-handed, so I press it with my index finger. It works GREAT for me. Never had such seamless fingerprint sensor on a phone. Literally faultless. For a lefty, that is
Ugh… They also piggy ride on black friday nowadays. When I became a FP customer, they used to shun these and instead do PR on how that’s lame and against their vision, so no FP discounts for you, use the device you have.
That was the Fairphone led by Eva Gouwens…
The new bossman obviously doesn’t care about damaging the fanbase in this process of ‘inceasing sales’.
I don’t think issues like this is typical for FairPhone only. I don’t know how many phones I’ve had since my first almost 30 years ago. Issues with Android in major updates are not uncommon. Getting vendor support has been impossible for most of the brands I’ve tried on small electronics in general. iPhone must be the most reliable phones I’ve had, but then you loose a lot of options instead.
I don’t share your experience here. I’ve been in contact with support twice. Once because of a bug, which got corrected after a while and once since I was able to damage my phone. They were slow to respond, but I don’t think any of this are unrunreasonable when I compare this to my previous experience with other brands.
Fully agree, but what is it worth if you have to bridge the looong time until support responds with whatever other phone? I have had one hardware issue in my Fairphone history so far and that was the FP2 back cover that was replaced quickly after I emphasized my ticket via a phone call (back in the good old days). But I’d be afraid of the moment when my phone gave up within the warranty period and I had to hope that some day I’d get a response from them. That plus how long obvious issues can be open is what keeps me from recommending FP without restrictions.
Personally I have never contacted the phone manufacturer to get support, ever. I intentionally buy my phones from a local store so that I won’t have to deal with the manufacturer. I’ve long wished to buy from the manufacturer though, especially one like Fairphone. Now I’m happy I didn’t.
Maybe a FP6 release is only a few months away. The FP5 price would be reduced, once it hits the shelves. In that case it would be part of the normal life cycle of a product, to first bundle it if possible.
Fairphones were already bundled several times with something else, a spare part voucher, a second battery or some headphones. So speculating that‘s now because the company is struggling, doesn’t make any sense.
And as always, the headphones are not in the basket automatically, but you can add them for free, if you really want them. This was discussed already, since the first bundling offer, because it doesn’t produce as much ewaste as if they are just thrown on every customer.
Yes Google and Samsung have stepped up their support . That’s all right and well but customers will be disappointed anyway as new features will be paywalled Galaxy Ai is only free until end of the year. If companies want to keep on selling their devices in the EU they don’t have much choice to go for replacement parts because this is becoming EU law.
Miquel (Head of Product Management) was asked about the CEO situation in an interview. He stated that Fairphone is doing very well. Although 2023 had been a difficult year, the current situation was great:
“Het gaat heel goed met Fairphone. Ja, 2023 was een lastig jaar, maar nu is het great.”
for those that the website refuses to work, here is an archive link that is readable without accepting all the cookies of this world: https://archive.ph/AGvHC
the article is dutch, but firefox can translate it to english.
if they are doing well, question is what is happening with the support department
I bought my Fairphone a year ago and contacted Fairphone support first to check if they would really respond to me if I had any issues - this being a fairly small company and all. They did and promised me they would always be there.
Fast forward one year, and I contacted them 2 months ago for a really small issue, not urgent, but one I’d like to have resolved nonetheless. They are completely ghosting me and other people who have since contacted them with questions.
They have closed down and removed their phone service stating they only offer online options now (which is forbidden under Dutch/EU law, you are required to offer a phone number for customers) and even their live chat is fake - every option the topic chooser offers you just dumps you back into the online contact form. And you can log tickets all you want, they just flat out ignore you.
Is Fairphone going bust? Why are they ignoring customers tickets? I can see them being active on the news and social media about how great their products are, but they are currently not doing too great on supporting existing customers. Is anything up?
I’m literally dying to know the answer to this. At first I thought it was the flu or something else temporary, or that a lot of staff coincidentally quit all at once and that they had to hire new ones.
Now, I suspect they are just cutting down on expenses by not hiring anyone. Based on interviews with the CEO, it seems Fairphone just barely made a profit in 2024 so maybe they decided to guarantee profit in 2025 by letting the support go?
Is this a new thing? I googled and all I can find is this:
Of course they are active on social media. They will sell more devices and make more money that way
Whether they are struggling or not, there is clearly a perception being created to suggest they are in difficulty. This is a marketing and communications issue, and they should really have an official contact on their Community forum to respond to comments and questions. Most forums have negativity around them, but they usually have an employee to say 'actually it’s OK, here’s the fix…’ or 'we are working on it…’ to stop threads getting out of hand.
At present, it’s all speculation, and we all tend to speculate on the worst outcome regardless of reality. I’ve a FP4, it’s never given me an issue in 3 years, and I was considering a FP6 if it comes along this year, but based only on what I’ve read on the forum about fears over the company and the threads about silence from support, in spite of having no real hard evidence of my own, I’ll be sticking with my FP4, and to be honest I think I would buy from another company if it breaks on me.
It really seems like they put more and more budget in marketing and shorten that of support and customer communication to improve their numbers. Which is very short sighted and not contra effective for a small company. Small companies are really living from word of mouth advertisement and positive publicity. Because why should you believe a marketing post of a company you never heard of. And in the last years it is much more likely that the one person in your friend group that has a Fairphone product is telling you about negative experiences with them.
