Please fix the Fairbuds XL autopairing and missing auto turn-off

Discuss The Products
1

Hi,

I like the Fairbuds XL, but 2 things continuously annoy me:

  • That they automatically activate pairing mode if turned on and not immediately connected to a device.
  • And that they won’t turn themselves off even when inactive for hours (I have the 2025 model and even though an auto turnoff after 30 mins is stated they never ever turned off themselves – connected or unconnected – not even over night.

This topic has been mentioned several times before, but without any change or help. See here:

So please Fairphone team and community:

Is there a way to fix this?

A firmware update that allows us to turn on and off auto pairing and set the time til auto power off over the Fairbuds app for example?

2

It only does this trick when ANC is not on, since FP believes some people use ANC as a function, without connecting it to a device.

Best to contactsupport for this one and link to the forum topic to show them how old this issue is. I so far was not able to convince FP that these are issues.

3

Thanks for the ANC hint!

But this just opens 4 new issues for me:

  1. The headphones don’t save your config, so you have to turn off ANC every time after you powered them off.
  2. You can’t fast click the ANC button two times to turn it off, you always have to listen to this voice saying “Ambient sound” and only afterwards your button press is registered.
  3. They explained it wrong in their tutorial video no. 2, right? They claim that you have to press ANC to activate it, while it is actually automatically activated from the start. Did this behaviour change between the 2025 and the older model?
  4. Is this power off condition mentioned somewhere? I didn’t find it in the manual or their videos or FAQ.

Inconceivable!

I found another (abandoned) thread, that explores firmware and the chipset a bit, but sadly it received no replies. Does anybody have any information about the feasibility and possibilities of a project like this?

Cheers!

4

Since it pinged me, if you want to give it a try, many people have been using the same chipset in their custom audio setup, so you COULD in theory (if you find the right pins) connect it to your computer and reprogram it (If they didn’t lock it), both these forums are about that:

https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/qcc5125-and-qcc3034-qcc3031-programming.374322/

and https://4pda.to/forum/index.php?showtopic=1044793

5

I have the older model. They have had all those issues for years. I don’t think they’ve ever received a single firmware update for the time I’ve had it. It’s basically closed-source abandonware. The bad software really brings them down, which is a shame because the sound quality is great.

6

Thank you for the forum links @nar001 :slight_smile:
I still hope there is a less hacky way to solve the problems.

@abone mentioned the firmware has never been updated. I’ll inquire about that at Fairphone. Maybe I can get something moving there.

7

Just to be clear, what I said was that the firmware hasn’t been updating for the time I’ve had it. It might have had updates before that. I just checked, and as of today they latest firmware is still V90