I have nothing to complain about my FP4. It works fine since four years. I have LineageOS and MindTheGapps on it. To me it seems that the hardware is quite good but the original OS is not. I had my FP2 for nearly six years and think the FP4 will be good enough for me for at least the next two years
Well, the Fairphone is a modular unit. The GPS antenna is connected via contact springs to the electronics.
Look into this thread:
Its quite long. There is a picture from melzrob on March 24 showing the FP4. I took mine apart and bended the red circled springs for better contact, and it worked on my phone.
As some people already mentioned here - I have an average experience, but with my FP6. And when buying the phone on the release I was ready to half-ass baked software from a no-name company that has far less money that other phone companies on the market. So here I’m ok.
Where I’m not ok - communication from FP team suc ks ass. One of the worst community management I have ever seen. I mean their model of communication is like in big corps while they being small startup nobody cares about. I’m just 100% sure nobody from the company will read this post and draw some conclusions how to make FP better.
I hope that recently started Linux phone project will be ready for users when my current FP die so I can choose anything else for my next phone.
I think that the anger in the forum is the result of zero communication from FP when customers submit support tickets. We’re on our own. The A15 roll out has been disastrous for far too many, and if you dig around you see that issues were found by beta testers and yet FP still went ahead w/o fixing the issues. My wife and I both have FP4s, both have submitted support requests, and both have heard nothing for months (my wife has spent most of 2025 trying to get a response). That’s just not acceptable. With radio silence from FP, users are left to vent on the forum.
I bought the Fairphone 4 years ago, and I am quite happy with my purchase. I dare say it is one of the best purchases I have made in my life. Despite this, I have encountered a few problems, particularly with the SIM connection. I also changed the battery, but that was due to my own misuse. Four years is a good lifespan for a battery, especially considering the dangers of having one in poor condition. I also purchased two Fairbuds XL. I came from a Samsung Note 8, which lasted roughly the same amount of time I have now had the Fairphone, but it cost me double, €1000. Long live Fairphone!
There’s no software development team if I understand this correctly. Fairphone is just contracting the software part to the Chinese T2Mobile company.
So much for being an European phone.
This is not correct. The FP2 always was Inhouse, the FP3 is Inhouse (since some time now) and I’m pretty sure once the FP3 is no longer maintained the FP4 will be maintained Inhouse.
What about FP5 and FP6 which were omitted from the above enumeration?
And what does “maintained” mean? Does it mean that an in-house team does bug-fixing and routine maintenance once T2Mobile hands the original work over?
Wow, a lot to catch up on. First off, I wanna say thank to everyone for engaging in my whiny post. Didn’t think I would get any replies and really only wanted to vent.
I’ve decided to switch to LineageOS, thanks to Zebrafax for pointing out this option. (noodlejetski pointed out iodéOS as well). I did think about switching to LineageOS or /e/OS a couple of years ago, but I decided against it. I think now is the time to go for it and see how it goes. If it is unsatisfactory I’ll get myself a new phone and sell my FP4. This is I think the best action for now.
Regarding PSZs comment about the forum only consisting of grouchy users: I think that is mostly true. While a lot of FP users will never visit the forum, either because they are satisfied enough OR because they simply swap phones without going the extra effort of consulting the forum, which won’t give them any solutions from the official side either way. So yeah, the forum is probably mostly comprised of grouchy users, BUT the ones who care enough to not just switch phones without actually writing a post or comment on here first.
Regarding the whole Fairphone (as a company) doesn’t give a … about their users, I just want to add, that Lotte (Fairphone_CM) stated, that the forum is not a place to give them feedback, since it’s only run by the community. We figured as much. 
I do appreciate the monthly updates they are putting out (two so far, let’s see how long they will keep it up). Others have given good ideas on how to enhance them. Though I don’t think we’ll get any more infos on ongoing problems through them. The most we can expect will be a comment stating “we’ve flagged this issue”. Great.
They did set up their self-repair portal, which might actually help with the horrendously long waiting times on tickets, as others have expressed on this thread. Hopefully skipper’s tickets will have a chance to be answered now. 
I wonder what the daily schedule of a Fairphone Community Manager looks like. Since it doesn’t involve managing the community on their forum, where do they manage a “community”? Four posts in December, six posts in November and a whopping ten posts in October. I know presidents who post more on their Twitter, while “leading” a whole nation.
No offense, but even if the forum is run by the community, you could still chime in more often.
mc50 brought up a topic that never crossed my mind: is the Fairphone OS being coded/maintained inhouse? I always thought that it was two guys, sitting in a stuffy room in the basement, coding the customized OS and that’s why it took them so long. But as mc50 has pointed out: no. The Chinese firm T2Mobile is developing the new, customized Android versions for them, or so it seems (see here). They only state A12/A13 on there, but when we look at the gerrit commits for FP4s A15, we can see, that it’s still T2Mobile. And there I need correct mc50: T2Mobile seems to do the initial release (as stated by FP) and then it’s taken over for maintenance by … the Indian software developers. So much for “inhouse”. Please tell me I’ve got it wrong. 
Well, whatever. I’m gonna make the switch away from Fairphones Android and buy myself a new battery afterwards if LineageOS goes smoothly enough, in the hopes of using my phone for another couple of years. Hopefully with less headaches.
Thanks everyone. Love you guys. Happy holidays. 
Indian developer? Which Indian developer? The inhouse developer are working for FP since a very long time and not from India.
And reg Lottes job: she is not, and the CM never was, 100% full time forum CM only.
All this was btw discussed several times in the forum ad nauseum.
They themself stated that they are a full time Community Manager. I never said that they are full time managing the forum (we can clearly see that), but was asking what community they are managing aka what their daily schedule looks like, if there is no time to engage in the forum. I don’t wanna attack anyone, I just wanted to say, that they could make an effort to be more active in the forum, yes even if it’s a users “only” forum. I think it would benefit them.
teamb58[.]org and siliconsignals[.]io seem to be two very active Indian companies, working on the A15 for the FP4. Again, look at their gerrit. But I could be wrong. Please give me sources that prove me wrong.
Just a quick question, that I’ve had for a while now, are you @yvmuell a Fairphone employee or are you just an active community member? Your “Community Moderator” badge and the way you state facts makes it seem like you are affiliated with Fairphone.
Not sure what you see or read where. Inhouse development I speak about is not in India or any of the named “companies”. I speak of long term inhouse people and as stated above the FP4 is not (yet) maintained inhouse. TeamB58 is no company and no employee as far as I know, although they helped in the past with A10 (I think it was) upgrade for the FP2, they are a developer maintaining LOS for the FP3 which is all visible here in the forum.
Which gerrit?
Somthing else explained ad nauseum just linking this FYI contactsupport
Edit: I see where the impression is coming from, TeamB58 is a company and working for FP https://teamb58.org/ and teamb58 (Bharath) · GitHub
However I dont see TeamB58 as a company, they are a developer offering “freelance” help and yes they helped Fairphone with the FP2 which is no secret and it seems also with the FP3 and FP4 past A14 development now that Qualcomm support is no longer available making upgrades difficult. When you look at testimonials you even see some names of the FP employees I talk about when I talk about inhouse. While I dont see anything wrong with getting help from knowledgeable people/companies from India or having team parts in India.
So yes they have partner in China and India helping with development and they have long term inhouse specialist/employees in Amsterdam, maybe also in India, I dont know.
As I read your experience, I’m getting sadder and sadder.
I’m a great fan of the project, but after having seen and tried a FP5 in a shop I decided to remain on my old, refurbished Redmi Note Pro as longer as possible because I felt it was way smaller and low end to be a good phone for someone who uses it also to work, hoping for some upgrade in the future, and yet the Gen 6 came, and it brought literally only a “new ageish” switch to mechanically do what the DND function on any normal android phone can do, automatically if planned or simply toggling the menu button. So I have switched to another refurbished Redmi Note Pro 512gb for as much as 300€, and I will stick as long as possible with that, waiting again.
What the Company overlooks is that it could never compete with the fancy features of its aggressive big branded and/or Chinese competitors. They should concentrate on providing a solid, reliable, and usable phone, considering the price, which is not cheap at all. This should be something that can actually help people go through their day, and maybe also use it to pay their bills, leaving the “ethereal new age” stuff to companies that have the budget to spend on something more than utilitarian.
The money they ask for the product is not cheap, and for that they should give you something you can rely on, not something that make you live with the dilemma of “will I get to the evening with the battery? will I find a plug where I’m going?” because having a 2nd battery should be the parachute, not the business as usual to get the phone running through the working day.
I absolutely appreciate the fairness, that’s what I’m really looking for, not the fancy features, I couldn’t give less a f..k about the fancy features otherwise I wouldn’t buy refurbished Redmi Notes from the previous season, but at least a reliable and efficient device is the bare minimum I expect to get in change of my money. And also the customer care, since we aren’t talking of a monster company, but they insist they are humans, should be the bare minimum, again. Otherwise where is the difference from any other capitalistic venture?
Bharath is a marvellous developer that - among other things - maintains lineage OS for Fp3. He pushed the old device to Android 15 and keeps on providing security patches. For free in his spare time. But obviously, he also helps fairphone with their stuff as well and judging from his Website again for free…
And it does not matter where he comes from.
Another satisfied user here. I’ve been 4 years on my Fairphone 4 with very few problems. I had a little trouble with the contact of the usb-c cable adapter (for wired headphones) but Fairphone sent me a new phone. I can go for two days without charging and could probably squeeze a third if I had to. I’m on LineageOS so maybe Google not phoning home constantly has something to do with it. Broke the screen because I think unconsciously I treat the phone in a more care-free manner when I know I can buy parts. Replacing it was a breeze.
My FP4 is really fast for a four-year-old phone and I love it. It feels really weird seeing so many people unhappy. I hope there are no paid trolls here.
Here’s a clear and natural English translation for your forum post:
I have a Fairphone 4 and I’m actually quite happy with it. I’ve already replaced the screen glass twice myself after accidents—it went really smoothly!
Now, however, I’m having audio issues. People can barely hear me during calls. When I use headphones, it works fine. I installed a new audio module, but that didn’t fix the problem. So, I tried contacting customer support, but that seems impossible at the moment. The phone number is out of service, the contact form is overly long and redirects me to irrelevant pages (like earbuds, which isn’t the issue), and the Tin chatbot can’t find my support ticket.
So, the product and philosophy: great. Customer support right now: really bad.
I wish we didn’t get A15. My FP4 only got worse after the upgrade.
My FP3 is almost 6 years old so I read this thread with a bit of skepticism.
Firstly, some of the messages above will be deliberate trolling and disinformation from people with an agenda to kill the Fairphone dream. It’s not difficult to believe how some bad actors operate in these post-truth times, manufacturing the narrative they want.
Secondly, for the people who feel duped by the Fairphone “dream”, sorry but for anything good, there’s a price to pay and it’s often not just £$€ - come on, it’s worth it. Society and the economy are busy flushing our livable planet down the toilet - fixing it is going to take some sacrifice. And of course yes, FP could do it better, and I hope they do, and I suspect they wish they could too, unlike a lot of corporates out there.
I just wanna point out - before I get cancelled - that I personally don’t care which nationality this person belongs to. What I wanted to point out: they are in fact not an internal employee of Fairphone (though they do seem to have a Fairphone email, which just makes it even more convoluted).
Even when yvmuell now has partly backed away from their initial statements, they still seem to not wanna admit that FP is actively buying freelance work from all over the world and from places where working conditions, workers rights and payments are way worse than pretty much anywhere in Europe. I HOPE that Fairphone is paying this legend above the Indian norm, as Grimmwolf has pointed out their help in LineageOS and they seem to do a lot of heavy lifting with the official FP Android versions.
I think this statement was related to the LineageOS commits and not the official commits to the FP gerrit. Since yes, those are probably in their spare time, but I sure hope they get (FAIR!) compensation for their other contributions. 
So yes, their location does matter in the way how they are treated and compensated (and partly because Fairphone being a “European” phone), but it does not matter which nationality, religion, etc. they belong to per se.
Now to these statements about trolling:
Come on, this has to be a joke. Fairphone had a marketshare of .0084% in 2024… who would be intimidated enough to pay someone to post on a forum with 21000 people on it.
And about the “kill the Fairphone dream”… Fairphone is doing that themselves. As people have reported about long and bad customer support, subpar updates with never to be fixed bugs and “Angles” trying to downplay and discredit facts. No wonder people are pi***. No need for trolls, when the company itself is trolling.
What I do believe however, is that Google is a piece of s*** company and I am not ruling out, that they are actively trying to sabotage other manufactureres. Maybe the big companies will have the resources to get rid of those problems we see with the Fairphone, but FP is probably glad to get it to work at all. Seeing so many people happy with their FP when it is running under a de-googled Android just makes this even more realistic. For that reason I’m even more convinced now to leave Google Android and switch to LineageOS. All the love to the people, including Bharath, who maintain these FOSS solutions.
Good thing holidays are right around the corner, perfect timing to sit down and install a new OS on my phone. 
Long live Fairphone for their repairability, sustainability and fairness and long live FOSS. F*** big corpo.
Nice reading for you Good working conditions for people who work for Fairphone.