It has been four years, and they have not always been easy.
I loved my FP2 when I took it apart with only a screwdriver, and I hated it when it repeatedly forced me to do so. I have replaced the top module twice, the bottom module once, upgraded the camera module, and replaced the display module twice.
The third display module is failing now, and I’ve had enough. By now, I have spent enough money on spare parts that I could have bought a second phone. Not a great track record over four years.
I love some of the concepts behind FP, but it didn’t work out for me.
I hope I can get all my important data off my phone, with the ghost touches and all. I have backups, but they may not be up-to-date in all respects.
If anyone knows how to dump the phone memory without a working touch screen, I’d be grateful.
R.I.P. to your FP2. A shame it turned out this way.
To get to your data without using the touchscreen:
First, enable developer options and within those options, enable USB debugging. If your screen won’t cooperate you can hook up a USB mouse (or trackball, if you’re cool) to your phone through an OTG adapter to navigate to the necessary menus.
When that’s done, hook up your phone to a PC with a USB data cable, and then access your phone’s memory through a piece of software called the Android Debug Bridge or ADB, which permits you (through the command ‘adb shell’) to use common Unix commands such as
adb shell ls
to list folders and files in the current directory. If you want to copy something to your own PC, you can use
adb pull <file_or_folder>
which can get you anything in your phone’s storage.
adb has a backup functionality as well, but I just tested it on an FP2 and it only produces an 18kB backup file.
Please let us know how familiar with this type of stuff you are - we can guide you through it step by step if necessary, or at least provide the necessary reading to get you going.
Oh, and if you’re looking to offload any broken parts, I’m happy to take them in and take a crack at repairing them, so they can go to needy FP users.
Thank you for the detailed instructions. I have since found a hint twisting the phone on the vertical axis, and this has indeed stopped the ghost touches, at least long enough to make a backup. I’ll fall back to your solution if I missed anything, though.
Thank you kindly for your offer. I am currently trying to reactivate my FP1 until my new phone arrives (not a FP this time, the FP3 is too big for my pocket). If that doesn’t work out, I would contact you. Thanks again!
I feel for you. I too am at the end of my tether
Mine has been replaced once, has had 4 display modules and a new battery in 3.5 years. It is not only the cost, I thought the sustainability was a good thing, the use of essential minerals for one thing, but I think I would have used less if I hadn’t had to reap less parts of the phone so often.
Mine is now unuseable and when I can get hold of support (have been trying for 10 days), I want to know if it can be fixed. If it needs more money spending on it I might cut my loses
Nice concept not really working out
I’m trying a Shiftphone 4 this time. Should be the same size as the FP2, which is just about the maximum I am willing to accept. Similar in repairability, according to ifixit.
Really?
The Shift-shop just offers a display and buttons as spare-parts.
As far as I know, on iFixIT they only have analyzed the Shift 5.1 and the Shift 6m.
The 5.1 is reaching 6/10 points and the 6m is getting 9/10 points.
The Fairphones 2 and Fairphone 3 both got 10/10 points.
I have no idea, how the Shift 4 would score, but I doubt it would be better, than the 5.1.
Sorry, for that nitpicking, but to me Fairphone just still deserves the first place for a phone with an iFixIT-score of 10/10. And that even twice, i. e. for the FP2 as well as for the FP3. The Fairphone 1 got 7/10 points. And I know from my own experience, that the change of display was rather complicated, while it is a piece of cake with the FP2.
So, the points do matter.
Of course I really hope, that this will be absolutely irrelevant for you and you will never need a repair of your phone, but have years of fun with it.
You are right, I confused the models regarding repairability. And I ordered the 5me, so the score on iFixit is only 6.
Nevertheless, the FP3 is too big, and the Shift at least offers an OS without Google stuff. Plus, being able to replace battery and display easily is 80 % of the deal, given my experiences so far.
The FAQ on the spare part shop states that they do offer additional spare parts, just not “over-the-counter”, but only after receiving a support request. I’ll see how that works (or hopefully I won’t)
Just checked the specs on the Shiftphones again and while the 6mq will come with Android 10, the others seem to be on Android 8. Checking the Security Bulletin they stopped releasing updates for 7.1.1 together with 7.1.2 in November '19, which is 2y10m resp. 2y6m after their release dates. With that in mind, updates for 8 might only be getting released until somewhere from February - June '20. Maybe I am wrong, but I would check with them regarding main AOSP and security update plans for those phones.
I’d have preferred a phone with a newer Android, but anything over 5 inch is just too big, clunky, hard to hold and to carry. If I want screen real estate, I do have a tablet.
If FP came up with a 5 inch (or smaller) phone, I’d be very interested…
