Is the transparent backcover coming back or available elswhere?

Hi there,

I just bought a fairphone 2 with a red slim cover. I would love to have a transparent cover instead, but I can’t find it anwhere anymore (just one shop in Switserland, but it does not export).

Will the transparent cover come back soon or does anyone know a shop to get one?

Many thanks.

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As far as I know they are not producing the “old” covers anymore except the black and I think the blue translucent ones :frowning: I don’t like this either, since I have a black transparent cover and I like it very much, but I think there was a problem with the materials (especially the glue between the plastic and rubber part) which led to many broken covers in the volume button area…

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Ok, that makes sense… still hope they will come up with a solution. I like the “tech” look of the transparent cover :wink:

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Can someone from Fairphone confirm that ? @Douwe maybe ?

I’m afraid this has already been confirmed (I can’t find the exact post now, but as far as we (the Austrian Fairphoners) know, they are discontinued).

Thanks for letting me know @Stanzi :slight_smile:

According to @Douwe’s statement from November 2016 only black matte and transparent covers were to be continued, all others (including blue translucent :sob:) had been phased out already then:

However I can’t tell if they decided to also phase out the transparent one. Classic covers aren’t (currently?) available as spare parts and new FP2s can only be ordered with black matte classic covers.

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You can still order the black matte and the blue translucent covers as accessories.
And you can order a new fairphone 2 with the regular black matte case.
Any comment regarding that @Douwe ?

Ahh, was looking in the spare parts category instead of accessories. Thanks for your hint, @ced117!

Blue translucent is still alive! :thumbsup:

We’ll be selling black and blue translucent until all the currently produced cases are sold.
Then we’ll switch entirely to slim cases.

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Thank you for your answer Douwe. A pitty that you don’t produce the transparent cases anymore, very sorry to hear that.

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And is there ANY chance to get the slim cases transparent one day? the new colors are not everyones first choice…

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Yeah, thats a pity! The colours of the slim covers are terrible, sorry to say. At least black should be an option! If i had to choose between those colours i would have never become a fairphoner…

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No problem @BeMiGro :wink:
Thank you @Douwe for the information :slight_smile:

:disappointed: I like the old, “regular” covers more.

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Hmmm … I smell stock running out sooner than expected and showing up on eBay for unrealistic prices :slight_smile: .

Anyway, Thanks for being clear about that, I guess I can understand that from a business (production and stock management) point of view, Fairphone is still a small company afterall.
From the view of a customer however, that doesn’t seem very smart. The regular and slim cases give two very different statements of what they are about.

For the slim cases to be able to really replace the regular bumper cases, they would need

  • proof they are as resilient and shock-absorbing as the black regular case (I find that hard to believe for now, and I own both cases.)
  • black and (at least semi-) transparent colour, that’s not even worth a discussion :slight_smile:

Perhaps one of the Fairphone sellers would be interested in managing production and stock of (then former) regular cases, if Fairphone handed the design and specs over to them?

Come on now, they went to the lengths of making the “halfway unobtrusive blue” one for the non-fashionistas :wink: .

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Yeah, point made! But I dont want to run around with a phone that looks like a requisite in a Spongebob-Movie!!! Please Fairphone! BACK IN BLACK!!!

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In actual validation tests, the slim case performed much better than the original ‘bumper’ case. We still have some TPU to absorb a share of the impact shock inside the case, and also by the design, the case splits open and the parts separate at impact, dissipating a lot of the energy in the fall. Think of legacy stick phones that we had in times past, they would explode in a large number of parts at impact, and then you put them all together and they worked fine. During the last validation test sets of the slim case, we had to drop the test units a large number of times from a significant height before the phone refused to boot up.

The black option didn’t look quite good during trials, so that’s why it fell off the original portfolio. We’re looking at updating the colour options. Stay tuned.

Design and spec are not the problem. Getting a tool set to work properly for this design is a different thing. We’ve spent a very large amount of time and money tuning this particular tool, and it is still a fussy chunk of expensive and precise high-grade steel with lots of moving parts. If someone wants to buy the tools (and the fixtures and jigs) and keep investing in it, and then source the materials (resin is sold in half tons increments basically), and establish a production line (because there are quite a few steps to produce this kind of part anyway, with many different processes involved as well), then we would entertain it.

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Well @anon65928744, that is one comprehensive and informative answer, thank you very much :+1: .

I had hope for the black regular case at least, but in the meantime I read here that it’s coming apart for some people now as the transparent one was reported to do before … so I guess there’s no point to be made anymore regarding the regular cases :frowning: .

Punching the air for joy!
I ‘lost’ my transparent blue case when my phone had to be replaced, despite sending a note begging for it to be returned.
Have just ordered one so my phone can look cool again.