Is the FP3 significantly better than the FP2?

I also had an early FP2 and found the battery life problematic, as well as having to replace the bottom module a couple of times due to dropping it and the microphone not working.

I’m not going to going into a full review of my FP3, which I’ve had since November, but it has exceeded my expectations. I now never worry about the battery, and even make trips without taking a charger or spare battery with me :slight_smile:

I also bought a compatible QC 3.0 portable battery charger which works very well rapidly charging the battery. Though it rarely drains to below 50%. (Just make sure you have a usb-c cable)

I’m also now using my FP3 with dual personal and work SIMs (my employer insists on the phone being encrypted for work apps/email and I didn’t trust my old FP2 to cope with encryption) I also didn’t realise how I was missing out on the fingerprint sensor - I couldn’t do without it now. As with my FP2, I’m using a 128GB memory card for my music.

Finally, the process for the 40 euro cashback for sending back my FP2 worked fine for me. When I was confident my new FP3 was working as I wanted I reset my FP2 and posted it back, and received my refund something like 4-6 weeks after.

The FP3 is a major step up from the FP2. Reliability wise, since November I’ve had 1 instance of the UI rebooting fairly soon after I received it, but that’s the only hiccough I’ve had so far.

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1:1 the same here with the FP2. For about 1.5 years everything was fine, then

  • the touchscreen lost responsivity on the left edge and had to be replaced
  • the camera in many instances only works if I bend the case (this might be due to a defect of the mainboard),
  • the battery is not to well fixated which might be the reason for the occasional reboots (about once a day)

On the positive side:

  • first and foremost the main purpose: building a business which tries to be less damaging to humans and their environment. That’s why I got in, and that is what matters more than a few Megapixels, minutes of battery duration or features I got along without fine by now…
  • despite all this the phone still works after 3 years while friends of mine had to buy new phones because of broken displays etc.
  • The service: it was no problem to get a free replacement both for my first camera and the screen in the first two years.
  • The efforts to make the phone longer lasting, especially porting Android 7 to the old chipset - respect for that. For me that was an eye opener that the old “wintel” model is alive and kicking. Force people to buy new hardware because new software that needs the new hardware is thrown on the market while the old software (e.g. older windows versions) is not supported anymore. In that way otherwise functioning hardware has to be thrashed well before time. Also works with Android and Apps.

I recommended the phone to two people, one of which is very satisfied while the other one already had to replace a few parts and is short before thrashing it. As other people in this thread I suspect that this is more a quality assurance than a design problem, nevertheless it is a problem.

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I am truely surprised about people commenting that “the majority of FP2 users” dont have any problems.
I know couple of peolle who used FP2 and all of them do have issues. Several friends have changed to other phones because they need reliable phones for their job.

I do have problems too. I dont know one single person who did not have problems.
But I know a couple of people who did know buy an FP2 because of people telling them their experience. I honestly dont believe the majority is doing fine.

About FP3 I think it is too early to tell. Most people I know had their FP2 working fine for 1-2 years and problems started then.
We will see in the long run I guess.

Anyways, I am definetely still up with this experiment. Even if I question the sustainability of FP2 due to constantly replacing parts: I still consider human rights an important factor which we often dont discuss enough.
I just dont want to support companies who give a shit about 12 year old kids climbing down mine tunnels barefoot without helmets or protection within a civil war area…

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Hi Tims,

compared to your story my FP2 experience was not remotely that bad, still I was seriously questioning whether to go for FP3 or not.
(I had a multitude of smaller issues, one complete exchange (whole device), but the phone was working stable at least, yet only on Android 6 though…)

I did go for FP3, and did not regret it yet, though also FP3 has its issues with me. Non-critical, but a bit annoying.

I believe most FP3 issues are discussed in the forum (mine are: no notification LED, and something is fishy with audio playback), so at least you can get an idea of what could go wrong.

The general feedback though, which I can confirm, is that FP3 is a solid phone.

Big BUT: if I were going to an adventure like yours with the FP2 I would never ever touch any Fairphone again (interestingly enough though you made it until here ;), considering that life is short and so is my patience, so ultimately your decision would wrap around the question of how much flawedness are you willing to accept until you start regretting your purchase?

Hope that helps!
Sebastian.

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At least I am one of (only a few?) users who are still happy with their FP2. I have had mine for three and a half years now, and mine still works fine. There is not much feedback on the forum about working FP2s at the moment, and we cannot know how many satisfied users there are outside the forum. So we cannot reasonably estimate how many FP2s have problems and how many don’t. Yet I don’t think FP2 is as bad as one might get the impression when you read the posts on this forum. Of course, I can understand that users who do run into (maybe repeated) problems may get very annoyed with their phones.
I admit that I was tempted to upgrade when FP3 was introduced, but at the moment I am quite happy with my old phone. I once bought the FP2 because I was fascinated by its modularity. But most important for me now is that it can run an alternative OS ( Lineage OS 15 with MicroG in my case) so I can ban Gxxgl as much as possible from my phone. As long as FP3 cannot run any alternative OSes, I will stick to my trusted old FP2. Apart from an indigo slim case I even still have one of the old transparent cases which hasn’t split or cracked yet, an this just looks great (I only use it now and again to show off a bit).
Battery life seems to be much better with FP3 (and that would be one strong reason to upgrade), but I manage to get through the day with my phone well enough.
But above all I think that discarding a perfectly working phone (which was designed to work for five years) wouldn’t be fair at all. So I can wait patiently for a FP3 with Open OS (or Lineage or Sailfish or /e/) and maybe more colourful bumpers and semi transparent back covers. Until this will be available, I will be satisfied with my FP2. And, while spare parts for my FP2 are still in sufficient supply, I don’t feel the need to replace my FP2 any time soon.

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Hello there,

Despite I gave up my FP2, still following it with a lot of attention hoping that it may become as reliable as their competitors.

Unfortunately I had exactly the same experience as you did, replacing every single part of the phone so many times. I guess that the FairPhone company had to take those dysfunctions in account and will likely prevent this from happening in the future since this is indeed damaging their principle of e-waste reduction, and transforming the repair it by yourself (each time one component breaks) into a big joke.

Looking forward to seeing more (advanced) users feedbacks to see how the FP3 adventure goes :slight_smile:

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Known issue. If it happened within 1,5 years after you bought it, you can issue a warranty claim.

Not sure about this one. I’m quoting it because my intention is not to downplay it.

Have you tried batteryguide?

I’d like to remind people that no smartphone (or even dumbphone) is perfect. If you read reviews, almost all of the smartphones have downsides and bugs.

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Thanks to everyone who replied to this topic. To cut a long story short, this morning I ordered a Fairphone 3. Thanks especially to @brunoenten who put it best, saying:

This was the response I wanted, and needed, really: a recognition of the significant problems the FP2 had, and a confirmation that the FP3 has largely fixed them. I don’t need the best performance phone on the market, I just want one that has been fairly sourced and manufactured without exploitation. I’m ok with paying a premium for that. But I do need a phone that works. Fingers crossed that this is this one! But whatever happens, congrats to Fairphone for making this dream at least possible. :slightly_smiling_face:

PS. With a friends & family €25 discount code, plus the €40 eventual trade-in for my old FP2, this also becomes a significantly more affordable €385 phone.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: My 6 months with my FP2 have been a BAD experience

it was the same for me, the phone crashed and restarted all the time, lost its mobile signal at least once a week, the camera needed up to 10sec until it could take a picture, the battery sometimes didn’t even had enough power for a day, etc.
So I bought the new FP3.
I’m quite happy with it, it does not have any of the problems of the FP2. It’s slightly bigger, the battery lasts usually for two days and I haven’t seen a single crash since the last two months.
But it has google on it, too bad.

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Until more open OSes might become available for the Fairphone 3 …

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Leaving a movement (FP3 Era)

Thanks - I know about that. But I just don’t want to play around for way too much time with the phone, only that it behaves, as it should.
In my perfect dream world, you would have a privacy-friendly phone by default. And if you’d like to have all that google/facebook/whatsapp/andsoon crap on it, you would have to do all the research and playing-around to get all that.
But, since I’m not in politics or in any other group, which can decide about such stuff, I’m afraid I have to live with all these privacy disadvantages. (Until I decide, to work on that topic on a daily or weekly basis with my phone.)

my 2 cnts:
I stuck with FP through the first and second model and through all difficulties. While navigating with google maps my FP1 was often completely off due to the bad GPS chip, while my FP2 was guaranteed to crash at some point. My lowest point was sitting with friends and one of them sees the phone and asks for it.
“How much?”
“525, and that’s 2nd hand already because they sold out”
“Hmm. Can I see?”
“sure, here you go” - and that’s when it crashed again. We all had a good laugh but at the same time this was really testing my patience. Here I was, the idiot do-gooder with his sub-par gadget, proving that green and fair trade IT can only work in the delusional minds of liberals.

Once or twice I met other users by chance and instead of being happy and proud they were often saying “how do you cope?”. True story.

When the FP2’s mic broke down I still had the invoice from the original buyer so I could ask for a replacement. But before I got one I basically got enlisted as 2nd line support and spent hours going through all the mandatory checks that support sent me before they would accept my broken module. With any other company you would just send them the thing and they would figure out what’s wrong with it.

But still I stuck with Fairphone because they are not like any other company and I like what they’re doing, all things considered.
And now I have been rewarded with the FP3 which finally had most kinks ironed out, is relatively affordable and, in my opinion, looks very nice. My only issue after many months of use is the fingerprint sensor and it’s so minor that I haven’t even taken the time to research fixes. Everything else just works. Battery life is great. Navigation is great.

I can finally recommend it without caveats. :slight_smile:

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Years ago I would’ve scoffed at a fairphone, but here I am, I think this is a good sign.
I think fingerprint scanner is excellent, make sure to save the fingerprint from many sides as though you were drunk, not just in the middle.

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This is exactly my history, but written way more eloquent than I could’ve ever written it. Especially FP3’s battery life is off the chart, but the rest is also fairly decent and it’s fairly priced too. I recommend it to anyone asking about it.

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Recently I have quite a number of problems with my FP2. Either WiFi is not working (switching of by itself) or none of the two SIM cards are recognized. Or an incoming call is not displayed, or there is no sound on an incoming call. Battery life is ok but sketchy. I"m about to through out the FP2 to a E-landfill as it is clearly not a very useful phone. (the FP2 have a usable life of three years)
Is the FP3 any better? What was improved? can I expect any of the troubles I have with the FP2? Is there an estimated on how long I can use a FP3 reliably? Landfilling it within two years does not seem to be really green. A Sony would last longer but might be less “green”.

I moved your post here to avoid duplicate topics, please have a look around here.

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A perfectly happy >2y FP2 user here!
The only issue I had after one year, was a bad/loose contact with the camera module, which was easy to fix (just fastening the phillips screws).

This thread is the one I was looking for, since I wanted to know is FP3 as high quality as FP2, and to me (after reading this) it seems it is :slight_smile:

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