More particularly, the issue has been present for a long time now, and it makes the phone very frustrating to use, so what can we do about it? The options I see are basically
buying a new phone (either from a different brand or a more recent FP, maybe with e/os/)
wait for Fairphone to maybe someday solve the issue
take the time to root the FP4
More generally, I guess I’m asking “How to mitigate software-driven obsolescence on smartphones?”. If some people have some experience in this, I’d be glad to hear what they have to share.
Personally, I feel like I’m going to take a look at e/OS/ and rooting alternatives, but I worry about the inconvenience of leaving the mainstream ecosystem, and the stability of the community-driven projects that exist.
I have been following for months the mentioned issue as well. My GF has a FP4 as long as you (I think she said by the end of this year will be 5 years with her phone). And she is really happy with it, and I believe she is the perfect customer for this concept that Fairphone is.
Said that, she was 100% happy until the instant we decided to upgrade from A13 to A15 (the version just the last hotfix FP team released in an attempt to fix this weird issue). And from then on, it has been a hit and miss.
Even though she is not a hardcore user (far from that), she uses it daily for all kinds of things but her life around has become uneasy. Spotify background listening is a pain in the ass. Let’s say it can live without that, that she can find an alternative way, but the most annoying part is that whenever she takes a picture (or pictures) she MUST remember to not switch away from camera app otherwise the picture (or pictures) are all gone. So how did we solve it? If I’m with her, I also take a picture of the same thing and she can live in peace otherwise she has to remember to give the camera app time to process the action of taking a picture and storing it safely. But none of that is truly life. And she just wanted to emphasize that the truly annoying thing is also that opening the keyboard to type sometimes take 5 seconds to load. She feels that has gotten worse after the hotfix.
Sincerely, from my point of view, all of this feel powerless because we cannot do anything because the only we did was update the OS version of her phone. And then misery started. We saw some light when the last hotfix got released, but it has no changed. (I think we just wanted to believe it was, but I guess we were just too much into our own way of doing the things).
I know users keep repeating that FP team is focusing on it, but even if it is a hard problem to tackle I do not understand how it is impossible for them to offer quick and dirty fixes to specific people at least to attempt to bring a bit of light and improve the user experience. I’m also a developer on a different field, and we also face sometimes critical bugs, but either you find the right answer to it or in the meantime you apply a fix (a dirty one) but at least you can research a little bit on peace. But yes it is hard. However, now there is only silence from FP. Only users calming down the waters. But again it all feels powerless.
I negate to go for a full reset. We will need just to wait.
I don’t know if there is anyway we could provide something to the team that could be of help somehow, some log, anything. Because that’s also something I require when you have those weird bugs.
To not give the false impression that FP Angels speak for the company, I corrected your post and exchanged to user. An Angel is offering local help with issues and is not in any way connected to the company.
There was no hotfix released, was it?
For this use official channels and contact FP support
And reg dirty hot fixes: that will not happen, FPOS is Google certified, however you can apply for FP4 beta…
Up until last Thursday I had thought about my options every now and then. I was still stuck on A13 with the November 2025 patch level so I hadn’t known if the problem will hit me or not.
What I did in any case: I have an old backup phone and I installed banking TAN apps on it (some banks still send out snail mail for registering a device, so I didn’t want to wait until it was too late). But that was more of a measure against general major version upgrade oopsies than the app-killing problem (plus I figured I’d need to manually install A15 incl. factory reset if there would have been no solution to my not seeing any update for months; but that fortunately was resolved in the end).
And my plan B would have been to buy a refurbished Pixel 8 and put Graphene OS on it to cover the time until the FP7 came out, if I couldn’t listen to music/podcasts any longer or no more doing 2FA between two apps.
But then, last week finally the A15 update showed up on my FP4. I made a backup of the most important things, started the upgrade and kept my fingers crossed I’d be one of those who are not hit by the app-killing problem.
And now after a little more than one week on A15 I have the impression I’m not affected by the issue. So this reply isn’t a “how I’m dealing with the situation” (because now I don’t have to) but more of a “that was my plan in case I needed to deal with the situation”.
Install another OS such as /e/OS (plenty of support around for making the move) - have a look round the community over at e.foundation to get an idea of the temperature there.
Perform a full reset.
Before doing that, it’s worth starting the phone in Safe Mode to see if some of the problems go away, such as photos not getting saved quickly in the stock Camera app.
After all, there has to be an explanation of why some users are more affected than others, and the likeliest explanation is the apps they use, and how. After carrying out one of these options, I would advise starting with the most important apps, see how you get on, then add others gradually leaving time to see whether problems come back or not.
This would be a work-around, not a solution. The solution will hopefully be in an upcoming software release from Fairphone.
What I meant and emphasized by using the word “angels” is that I didn’t want to refer to any random user but users that have some status within the forum. Only that, not to point the finger into them or blame anybody. Just a reference “tag”. Now with your change I think you just change this intention, but I have this reply now as new reference, or my true intention.
What I meant, I remember there was an initial upgrade to A15 that was faulty but some time after a newer one came out. This one we installed, after postponing for “a month” (or a quite a while, let’s say) the upgrade notification. A few days into it, she starting suffering from this problem/issue, but we didn’t know what to do, so I dived into the forums and found the post (referenced on the OP) about issues with the background apps. While following this post, along the way an (call it, smaller) update (that I referred as hotfix) was dropped. It’s true that no reference to an attempt to fix this issue was in the changelog. But I think was around the time that an actual fix was released to the FP5 (which also was suffering from a similar issue). And I think this is the last update ever released now for FP4 that my GF has installed. (I can look into the actual version numbers if needed to clarify even more).
Oookey, I will read more about. I understand BETA idea, maybe that’s the way if no fix gets released on the coming time on the STABLE branch. Will discuss it with her.
On one hand it is demanded to have quick fixes on the other there should be no further bugs or regressions coming with a new release.
It is almost impossible to satisfy all those requirements by the users at the very same time.
BTW, There will be a release fixing the issue once it was thoroughly and successfully tested.
Back to topic: Which are the options to handle the problem? I did not find the hint using adb commands to mitigate the problem (at least for some time), but it would maybe be nice to have it linked here.
I advise against performing a reset and/or full installation as a solution to this problem because that’s what I had to do with my new FP4 (after FP bricked my old one) and I have the issue since day 1.
So I agree with you @OldRoutard it’s most probably the apps we use.