As it has been a while since the FP2 was introduced my memory might not be 100% accurate, but even back then with the old models when software development was not outsourced, this forum wasn’t the input for development either.
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I haven’t seen it mentioned here, but didn’t FairPhone start out with the goal of just being a proof of concept? I think I remember reading somewhere that it would be great if other companies saw things like sustainability and modular design working, and tried to use that themselves. Obviously, they’re nowhere near the size of any major phone producers, and that makes development and support harder.
I tend to be an idealist, and the fact that they’re trying to make a difference in the industry is something I’m willing to pay for, and I’m also very willing to deal with some additional challenges for it.
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Yeap! that was my understanding at purchase, also why I didn’t bother until the FP3, with a daughter’s shove.
Well some reckless people managed to get/inaugurate Fair Trade gold and had to find a use for it ~ a phone seems like a great idea
Why would Fairphone need defending, it the general user that is dealing with how upset you are, and that’s partly what the forum copes with, as well as user experience is working issues with the phone.
However the users are not here to solve software issues and repeatedly having a go at Fairphone users is rather cruel.
Speaking up for an issue is something I consider positive along with the users. If Fairphone is of the opinion that you don’t need any transparency towards your customers, you shouldn’t be surprised if you use a different smartphone the next time you extend your contract.
Fairphone has the potential to take a strong position with their special smartphones. Like Apple with their iPhones, or Tesla with their cars. If you introduce a communication channel, it must also be maintained by the company and not left to the users. The special thing about the Bluetooth problem is that the users have also bought expensive headphones for their expensive premium smartphones, which currently sound like the 10€ discount devices.
It seems a regular argument that you use this forum to tell Fairphone how to behave.
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It seems Fairphone set up the forum to be used for and by the users to chat and offer casual help.
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Any help that could be supported by the warranty has to go via support, not the fourm.
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Any complaints, requests or idea that you want Fairphone to acknowledge, again contact Fairphone
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The site is especially desgined for user interaction, Fairphone do not read of interfere with it’s running or content
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The only exceptions are
- The update the discourse engine
- The add a topic when a new OS update is available and do monitor that topic
- Behind the general public use there is a Beta team that has user helper to find bugs, not to fix anything
So again you are using a topic to complain about Fairphone and try to be an authority on how they should run their business.
It would make more sense you contact them. I’m pretty aware that you want other users to know you are unhappy, got it . . .
But could you please think about what you say, maybe I don’t read as you intent as English is not your base languge
- If Fairphone is of the opinion that you don’t need any transparency towards your customers,
What is that, transparency about what? If you know what you are talking about then it is transparent.
If you don’t know what you are talking about then how can you ask someone to be transparent about something you do not know exits.
Fairphone are not going
- to tell you their every move.
- to test a phone with every conceivable app, let alone combinations
- to test all peripherals like headphones, car interfaces
- to check the adapters will work with all earbuds on the market
You keep trying to lay all the responsibility for your disappointments etc. on Fairphone’s doorstep but you have been told many times, you have the wrong address.
As a user I, not Fairphone read your comments and all that is happening is that some users will get a bit upset maybe as they try to feel for your, Fairphone won’t and it’s not their job. It’s not mine really as I have no contract to support you.
I just feel for you and can see you could do with attention, but that’s it. You don’t seem to change your outlook or actions regarding complaining about Fairphone on this forum, so I hope you are getting at least some satisfaction that you are not being totally ignored.
All the best, take care
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Your answer is kinda cute :). I don’t need attention. Everything’s ok. Thanks for your speculation on my personal references.
Your opinion is accepted, it’s ok if you see it differently.
I can see that a communication channel has been introduced and this can be used. I understood you too, don’t worry.
This is an OFFICIAL Fairphone forum and not a third party. So I’ll give my feedback here as well.
You could also deal more with the problem instead of setting yourself up as a communications policeman who says what and how.
Thanks for your understanding.
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Setting up a customer-to-customer forum is a common move meant to prune all the ID-10T (also known as PEBMAC/PEBCAK) type issues before they swamp support. It ensures support only gets the serious problems.
As such it obviously doesn’t need to be monitored, it is independent, just some kind of sedimentation tank filtering the heavier nonsense before it clogs your pipes.
So it isn’t really surprising they don’t bother with it, but they seem to forget they are not just a basely commercial, profit-driven company, they pretend to have a message, a mission. And a forum is a great (and cheap!) place for marketing to keep the flame burning and the fans motivated. Missed opportunities… -shrug-
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Its quite interesting for me that when someone is not as annoyed/angry/disappointed (or How you want to call it) as others or phrasing that annoyance the same way as others is considered to defend something or someone.
With the difference you talk to those that can fix it and not to someone on the street🤷
We all get your point and might also understand or agree, still venting it here will not help.
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Interesting that you interpret it that way instead of reflecting on your own communication. Nobody gave you a task to judge me. And still do it, very interesting, don’t you think 
?
Don’t the people who fix it use roads? What kind of comparison is that supposed to be? Are those demigods in white?
Currently they are doing very little to solve the problem. They once said they would and only fixed a small part of it. And now? Did I do something wrong to address this here?
We have a Samsung A52s and a Samsung A53 in the family, so we’ve never had these problems. I mean they’ve come to Android 13 by now, but you were totally unfamiliar with these types of problems. The FP4 and A52s have a Qualcomm platform, the A53 and S20 have their own Exynos platform
It’s also not a problem if there are problems. Anyone who deals with custom roms also knows the xda forum. Everything is written about there and traded transparently.
If a group of free developers can do it, why can’t Fairphone write, we know the problem, but are e.g. depends on third party suppliers, or we will try to roll it out with update XY. I don’t understand this mentality. There is a forum where you can talk directly to users. This is not an isolated problem, but with all devices.
I was briefly excited when someone wrote that we will fix the problem in the next update. Well… the disappointment is there as it wasn’t properly fixed.
The Fairphone 4 is a super cool product. I’m really happy with the hardware. I don’t need high-end CPUs or 120 Hz displays. It is a means to an end. It should be durable, simple in structure and easy to function. That’s what I loved about A11. It just worked and even smooth for me.
It’s like picking up your car from the workshop and somehow it’s running worse than before. Then what do you do there? You talk about the problems and expect to get feedback on them.
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Once again, disclaimer, I’m just making wild guesses here! But it is very common for companies to not want, under no circumstances, to admit any problem/wrongdoing/whatever.
As long as they don’t admit anything, all problems are just Internet rumors, but if somebody corporate admits publicly to them, they become real and kill shareholder value…
(That’s also why in court companies are willing to pay millions as long as they don’t have to admit to any wrongdoing.)
I don’t know if this is the case here, or if they are just indifferent, or swamped, or clueless, or undecided, or shy, or if maybe it is on top of an “Urgent To-Do” list currently used as a wedge for that wonky cafeteria table…
We did have some brief appearances of @Yasen_Tomov, and for a moment it looked like they might start communicating a little bit more, but that didn’t last, did it. I’m afraid we can speculate as to why till the cow come home.
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FP 1 was shipped late in 2013, they got FP4 TCO certified meaning they are trying to sell it to companies… A proof of concept in version 4?
And what you’d like to call ‘additional challenges’ other people call ‘having to fiddle with’:
Well, back to the definition of sustainability and peoples expectations. You got the most sustainably produced phone on the market, but the company has the same communication behaviour as all other phone companies. Would one trust a company communicating like this and maintaining its products like this to keep a phone securely usable for the next 4+ years?
Two parting lines here:
One goes between ‘willing to pay for’ and ‘willing to deal with some additional challenges’ / ‘having to fiddle with’
The other goes between ‘defining sustainability only by a more sustainable production process’ and ‘defining sustainability (in addition to production process) by product maintenance and product usability over the physical lifetime’.
For me it’s ‘willing to pay for’ but I don’t want a fiddlephone. And I lost the trust in the company Fairphone that they’re willing and capable to turn my FP4 into a phone I’m willing to use and that I’m able to use securely- without having to fiddle with it- for the next 4+ years. The replacement for the FP4 arrived yesterday (making my FP4 possibly the least sustainable mobile phone I ever owned).
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Only if you dump it and don‘t sell it to someone who is happy to have a fair manufactured and sustainable smartphone.
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After my earlier post, I felt like I should have rewritten a sentence in there; I don’t know if that was misunderstood, but next time I’ll be more thorough.
There was a early quote I saw from the company that basically said they were trying to demonstrate that aiming high on the fair trade and sustainability scales was something that could be done in a way that still produced a product people would buy. In other words, ‘you big companies can do better and still make a profit.’ The idea seemed to be that they were encouraging the big players to look at what they were doing, and ‘please feel free to take some of those ideas and use them yourselves.’
At the risk of starting a separate disagreement, I don’t see much evidence that the industry in general is doing much more than paying lip service to these ideas. My sense is that making the switch to FP is a way that I can make a tiny contribution to that. Big changes are often made up of countless tiny little pieces, each doing a little bit of work, but adding up to something significant.
This is strictly an analogy, but I hear people talk about not wanting to buy an electric vehicle until there is a better network of systems to support them. Whether they intended to or not, the people who jumped in earlier were an integral part of demonstrating the demand, and as a result, the infrastructure ends up getting built.
So, my comment about being a bit of an idealist was a disclaimer. I wouldn’t want to push anyone away from this, but ‘having to fiddle with it’ might still be unavoidable for a while.
A company the size of FP must have a real challenge trying to produce the next generation of their phone while still dealing with the support and updates for their existing ones. So yes, as far as I’m concerned, this is still very much a proof of concept. I hope it manages to go on and make a difference, and I look forward to trying to find little ways to contribute.
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I hadn’t yet, amoun. It looks like it is something to consider when it does get to be time for a replacement, thank you. The most sustainable phone is the one already in your pocket, though. I expect I’ve got at least 6-9 months to have deep thoughts about my next one.
What would be really great is to see at least one of the big brands do something meaningful in terms of letting people repair their own devices. I’ll have to make sure and sift through what’s out there again before I commit to anything new.
My one disappointment around FP, and it looks like Shift as well, is that the only way to get anything shipped to North America is through a third-party vendor. I haven’t seen any of those yet that also sell the components. Granted, I can’t remember the last time I broke a phone, but it would be nice to know that I could get replacement bits without a lot of hassle.
Clove UK, sell international and do sell the parts too 
but not the battery
As with a lot of things in life, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Software updates and the communication around them go through the hands of dozens of people, some of whom also work on other things.
I’m sorry to hear that some members of the community are still unhappy with our involvement on the forum, but I’m also happy to hear that our efforts in previous months were appreciated. I assure you we’re working on being more active again and staying that way for the foreseeable future.
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Hi.
It seems there is a full on Social Media Manager starting today, so that may help. I hope they will be encompassing the forum and not just the ‘Social Media’ . Maybe I’m hoping for too much, they are going to have a lot of work either way ?
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