Basically I understand your concerns and also agree with you, that I also think bug fixing should be prioritized over tweaking gadgets like the camera.
But I also think that there’s no need to exaggerate. In my opinion there are no critical bugs open at the moment. I know you are very dedicated to the proximity sensor issue, and you have my sympathy. But I also think that this bug basically only affects very few users with certain third party software. SFOS is not an official port (unfortunately!), so I can see why this bug does not receive much priority. And on FPOS it only affects a few users that run certain apps which utilizes the sensor. After all, the officially supported OSs run just fine.
Then of course the annoying clock bug, which has frustrated me several times, as I am frequently in areas without a signal, not even to mention WIFI. Yet, FPOOS has a small user base, and most people in urban areas will not often be affected by it either.
I could continue this list, but I think the point here is: Yes, there are open bugs that we would love to see fixed. In the end though I think we also shouldn’t exaggerate, as most of these bugs affect very few users, while for the vast majority of users there are no critical bugs in the OS, but the FP2 runs stable and reliably.
How do you come to this assumption ? Not everybody who has a problem will show up here. Some will report the bug to their operators, other people have probably never used an online forum. Even within the forum there is no way to gather statistics about who is affected by what bug etc.etc.
For you a non working clock might be frustrating, for me it can be critical. I would not mind if I discover a bug, lets say a month before the Android 6 release and they would say we wont fix, but here we are talking about bugs that are known for over half a year.
I have to say that it disappoints me too when I see developer energy going into polishing and face lifting, while the engine suffers problems.
Does it really matter whether it was just discovered or it was discovered half a year ago but considered low priority and they never got the time to fix it? Fact is: Android 6 should be coming soon and slowing down the porting process to fix bugs in the old Android which will be discontinued anyway doesn’t make a lot of sense no matter how old the bug is.
I completely disagree: It does matter that these bugs where discovered a long time ago, because it shows that although users have repeatedly asked to have these things fixed, the user (customer!) was ignored in this case. There was not even a statement about these bugs. I have doubts that nobody had time to work on these. It took me an afternoon to find a (more or less) usable workaround for the clock-bug. And it disappoints me when I see that while people in this forum (myself included) try to find solutions, the devs, whose job should be to fix them officially put time and energy in cosmetics instead.
Android 6 will come out soon - soon is a relative word, it can mean weeks, months or more.
I also need to disagree. The actual buglist show that not only Fairphone Open OS has bugs. I used also stock Fairphone OS and i must say, its not stable as it should be. Fairphone Open has in my opinion less bugs because its more lightweight (because of the missing google services)
I don’t ask for wonders but the basic things like GSM/3G/LTE Modem, WiFi, Sensors and Power Management should work without problems. On every software release. I see much more inofficial ROMs for other Android Devices, compiled and maintained by only one person - working more stable than the official FairphoneOS Release.
I have no problem to wait - if anybody tell me, that all bugs on the list will be solved in the next releases.
That would be absolutely fine for me (and i think also for the others).
We are all human, we all have our problems and in most cases we can’t do things better than they are.
All what i want is a little bit attention from Fairphone to the community.
And i think, that should be possible.
Developers need to develop - not to write blogs. But i think @Douwe as Fairphone community manager can be here a middleman between Fairphone Developers and community. A bit more information for the community would be very welcome.
Take the clock bug. It is only present in FPOOS. I cn’t find the post now, but somewhere a FP staff member said how few people actually run FPOOS. I am almost certain it was less than 5%. if I am not mistaken I think it was not more than 2%. Out of this minority, only people without signal/WIFI are affected. Thus we are probably talking of affected users in the per mill range.
Take the battery drain because of proximity sensor bug. Only affects SFOS users (not an official port) and people who use certain 3rd party apps. Cannot estimate the percentage, but can’t imagine its a majority, beside I don’t think that the use case here is critical for operating the phone.
Take the language change bug (not fixed in over a year!!). Affects only dual SIM users residing in a country where they are not familiar with the local language. I am certain this is also just a minority of users affected, plus, while annoying, in most cases not crucial for operating the phone as in most cases you will be able to change back to the desired language.
So as I said above: Yes, I totally agree with you guys that these bugs are annoying and some users may even perceive them as critical. However, I am convinced that for the majority of users they are not, and probably most users didn’t even stumble over them or are simply not affected. And all basic things you need to run a phone[quote=“explit, post:37, topic:25400”]
like GSM/3G/LTE Modem, WiFi, Sensors and Power Management
[/quote] work.
Do I agree with the strategy that FP tweaks around with some shiny things rather than fixing bugs? No! Can I understand it? Yes. Because I could easily imagine that in absolute numbers there are more people happy with tweaking idiotic shiny things than there are people affected with certain bugs which get heavily discussed here. And that is what I meant above when I said: Yes, I agree with your arguments, but I don’t think there’s need to exaggerate on the importance of these issues.
All your arguments @freibadschwimmer seems very logical for me. But i doubt that majority of Fairphone 2 users are happy with the current Android base.
There are also several bugs, which are not very well documented or not reported at all.
One importand bug is: Reboots during calls and on GPS/Compass usage. I could reproduce this bugs on Fairphone OS several times. That seems, that this bug affect not all users and not all FP2 devices. Maybe it also affected only by some apps.
Unfortunately my FP2 is running under SailfishOS as my daily phone, and FP2 community device, which i used for debugging (Thanks @Douwe) i could use only for one week.
I hope, i get the FP2 community device again one time, so i can reproduce and report more bugs.
I also hope, things would be better with Android 6.0.
I don’t want to sound aggressive in the direction of Fairphone. I love the FP2, i see its potential, and i want, that we (FP2 users) have a cool, solid and stable device!
I am really not sure, whether that is the bug I am struggling a lot with: Sometimes my battery looses half of its charge within four hours, sometimes over night with flight mode switched on and 70% in the evening the battery is empty at the next morning and at another night it looses only 10 - 20% and at that night I had forgotten to switch into flight mode!
So I really don’t know what is going on within the phone at that dependency.
But the result is that I can’t relay on my Fairphone and therefore I have hoped very much, that this for month known battery bug would be solved, every update again, in vain!
For this issue, the way to deal with it and for the huge deficit in Fairphones communication to its customers I am not able to recommend this phone to anybody, and if it goes on like that in the end I will sell my phone and buy one I can lean on, unfortunately.
Oh, that’s another point I forgot. I’m not recommending the FP2 anymore, not teaching people how modular it is or what’s the thing with circular economy, or why security updates or an open source OS matter. I can’t. People see the graphical glitches and the 1970 clock when the phone boots up, and all this things lose their value all of a sudden. They then ask about issues I have and I have to be honest.
I know that feeling, though since I have made good experiences with the regular OS, and only perceive FPOOS a bit edgy, it is not the software that keeps me from showing the phone. In the past it got almost kind of embarrassing when people asked me to show the phone, which was inside a cover that was falling apart. Naturally then you start explaining the downsides of the phone.
Since FP so far refuses to replace a knowingly poorly designed cover, I have now about 1 or 2 months time to show again my phone, before I need to hide it again due to another cover that will fall apart.
Not good advertisement for the company.
And not related to the thread. Sorry for Off topic.
Well, I am also not sure if it could be related to that particular bug or not.
But givven from my experiences and from what I have read on the forum, it does not seem to me that the proximity bug is causing problems unless with certain 3rd party software.
Having that said, there are plenty of apps that could lead to battery drain, and you will need to find out whether you struggle with that bug or some other app. First way to do so would be checking your battery stats. There a couple of threads here which might help you to find the cause for the sporadic drains.
In short: Your described battery problems don’t necessarily need to be related to a bug in FP(O)OS.
I think, FP should priorize FP open, or they should handle it the same priority.
And they should also open a beta program for that.
A google-free device would be more fair.
It is not really clear to me, why some bugs are only either on FP open or FP stock.
Do they depend on google services? What has this clock bug todo with google services?
I remember cyanogenmod came without gapps. They could be flashed afterwards.
But there were not more or less bugs with or without gapps.
I would like them to prioritize bringing Marshmallow to Fairphone 2 IF they feel that it could noticeably improve the battery life. Otherwise bugfixing might be better, because of improved stability and me not seeing much of worth in Marshmallow.
No, you didn’t. I always try to get the best out of it. For that I have got changed my FP2 in warranty last May. But this all doesn’t help much, as long the devs don’t solve existing issues.
May I ask which specific 3rd party software you’re referring to? I’m suffering heavily under battery drainage. It got a lot better after flashing the old modem firmware, but it’s still a major issue with half the power just vanishing somewhere unknown.