Having made a terrible mistake of buying a Fare phone I now find that my screen continually activates itself you know like on those cheap phones you get from eBay. Congratulations to the person who put a rather exposed button on the top which hits your leg whenever you walk around and then due to walking motion screen is unlocked and the phone is free to make phone calls and change settings all by itself well done!
Today’s problem is that somehow I have added dozens of clocks which try to show up on my home screen and if I go into the clock app I now have a whole list of clocks I never wanted. I have no idea of how to remove them due to the fact that the operating system of the fair phone is the most unintuitive I have ever known and of course no real instructions were ever provided.
I admire the sentiment behind creating the fair phone but this is the biggest piece of badly engineered junk I have ever possessed.
I’m sorry to hear about your problems with your fairphone.
But before posting such a scathing criticism please keep in mind that many users are very satisfied with their fairphones. Every smartphone model has faulty specimens but that doesn’t mean the design is junk.
About your problem with the screen activating on it’s own please take a look at this topic.
About your problem with the clocks: Could you please make a screenshot. I can’t really immagine what you are dealing with.
About the Operating System: I’m sorry but if you can’t handle android you shouldn’t have bought an android phone. I’m sure you have some friends who use android on their phones and you could have tested them before buying the fairphone. You can however install a custom launcher, there are even launchers out there that simulate other Operating Systems.
If any of your problems can’t be solved by the community please contact Support. As I hear they are very friendly and happy to help.
I eventually figured it out, another button that looked like it meant something else allowed me into a list of all of the clocks that can be enabled and disabled for every major town world wide…
I come from using a HTC desire actually, very happy with android but this version is very non intuitive, for example how do I delete an alarm ? no delete icon or menu option, oh yes i have to swipe it off the side of the screen… really easy to work out.
if I’m typing and make a mistake somtimes at random pressing on a correct suggestion does not correct it but brigs up a whole list of words of which the one originally diplayed it not one, it’s just an unrefined mess. it’s like the developer forgot that other people who had not developed the system had to work out how to use it.
Does this thing even have a manual ? it came with 4 pages that were not even very clear.
I’m glad you could remove the clocks that were bothering you.
Simply long tap it and tap the delete icon.
At first this confused me to but then I recognized a pattern: The suggestion in the middle is the one that is most likely and to accept it you have to press the space bar.
Fairphone only changed a few things about Android 4.2.2 and those are explained in the short manual (edge swipe, peace of mind, fairphone updater…). I don’t think the fairphone team has the resources to write a manual for android but I’m sure you can find one on the internet.
The next fairphone being intuitive is no help to me, because I actually beleive in the morals of the project and apart from being stuck with the damn thing for a 2 year contract I expect it to last at least 3, my last HTC desire HD lasted me 3-4 years after the last owner got rid of it as soon as the contract was up. I only replaced it because it really, really could not cope anymore to the point that it would not make a phone call.
Before this topic is closed, let me assure you that we all know such experiences as you had are frustrating. They can happen with every phone thought. Please also mind that if we provide simple tipps, this is not to negate you problem is real or valid, but to help have a better experience. And please keep in mind we like to be helpful here, but it does not help if you describe the phone as a complete failure because some issue(s) you face. At first, we are not the ones who build or sold it to you, but other users. But mainly, it will provoke us who have good experiences to counter your position, when the only think you are interested in is help. We are sympathetic anyway, not need to describe your whole experience as disaster to get our interest.
That said, it hope you can grow more used to your FairPhone and have a better experience in the next to two years! Come back here if you think we can help you with that!
I would recommend you to setup a PIN or Pattern for screen lock in Settings -> Security. This improves your security, but i will also prevent your phone from unlocking in your pocket.
I have heard of your problem with the phone turning on by itself before. I use one of the great protection covers, sadly no longer available, but this never happened to me, so maybe something like that could improve your experience as well.
And to finish, i think it is a good way to give your feedback to Fairphone directly through support channels, so that they know about such problems. I usually helps to be friendly and constructive, the people reading your mails there are humans as well
I don’t know how different the fair phone OS is from stock android and I don’t really care. Many people may be buying a fair phone as their 1st phone. I have even managed to lose a phone call just by tapping the wrong part of the screen by accident and not been able to then close the phone call. This machine is supposed to be a phone if I can lose control of the phone app then frankly it is not fit for purpose. I have numerous problems too many to recall and list and frankly I just get the impression that very little thought went into the usability of the operating system. If the stock android system is this bad then either another version of android should have been used or it could have been modified appropriately. I would really question if it is worth buying another fair phone myself and I’m sure many other users may feel the same granted this is not your usual phone but people do need to be able to actually use the damn thing to want to buy one and I’m afraid that this is not making marketing sense for anybody. I honestly can’t go out there and tell people “by a fair phone” because of my experience. I wanted to tell people that they should buy a fair phone and that it is as good as any other phone but I can’t and that is a pity.
Regarding self activation I have now put a pin on but frankly I don’t want to have a pin. I shouldn’t have to use workarounds like this. I’m quite happy not having a pin. In the event my phone is stolen or lost I would simply log into Google and change my password the likelihood of it being lost or stolen is remote. I had my previous phone with no pain on it and no problems for years. The main problem is the button. The button protrudes too much. If the so-called clever people who designed actually took the time to look at other phones may be phones they had on them at the time when they were designing this one they may have noticed if they could be bothered to be a little less arrogant that most phones have this button flush with the case. This means that you have to deliberately press it into the case with 8 finger or other small object in order to activate it. This provided automatic hardware prevention of an inadvertent activation so simple so cheap so effective. What ever possessed them to use and exposed button.
I don’t know who to feedback these things to if they have not already noticed then they shouldn’t be designing another phone as the problems are pretty obvious and I would dearly love a way of knowing what apps are running so that I can go back into said apps if I want to come out of 1 and go into another and then returned to it. This is something that my crusty old HTC phone from 5 years ago could do so what happened to our so-called progress?
I have had this thought also…