From the start I noticed that FP2 camera is really not great, no matter what kind of picture I want to take. Nothing to compare with lets say Samsung 6 (sorry to say but hey, I paid 550 € for the product. I know we took risk and all, but I think there is a middle term to find between reasonable expectancies and the reality of what we got).
I did not complained, being patient.
But now since last update, focus just does not work and the quality of pictures, supposed to be enhanced with last FP update in dimmer light (I am not talking extreme conditions), is just horrible and pictures useless.
I guess I am going to be redirected to similar topics about focus, which I just consulted, but do not see any significant explanation on behalf on FP team. I saw that we can return the mobile and wait for days, in not weeks. I also played with different apps, does not help.
It’s the first time I hear about this problem, so I don’t think that it’s a general bug or common issue with the update to 1.3.6. Anyway, you could try to downgrade to 1.2.8 or 1.1.7 and see if the problem still exists.
Since this is a community forum, this is not really surprising.
I’m a bit confused by your message. What do you ask exactly? Because, of course I can link you to the topics you already read about people having the same kind of problems and searching solutions. But apparently, that’s not what you are looking for. So maybe you can formulate your demand / question more clear? That way, we can try to find a solution more easily!
This is partially to do with that they don’t see the forum as an official support channel, as the welcome banner mentions (though occasionally they do post here). I’m still hoping they will shed some light on the matter on their official support pages some time soon.
The focus issue seems to likely be a hardware problem, though there seems to be some additional investigation going on as people have been asked to send in the entire phone (otherwise just a module swap would make more sense). If it is indeed a hardware problem, then software updates are not going to solve the issue. Hopefully they’ll come up with a module exchange programme to make the fix easier.
The software issue (low light conditions) is labelled as ‘initial improvements’, I’d expect some more tweaks in the next couple of versions. Not ideal, no, but at least someone is working on it.
Lastly, I would like to comment that the comparison with certain high-end phones is often made, but usually skips over a few aspects of Fairphone’s approach such as interventions for fairer working conditions and poorer economy of scale. Each of these, unfortunately, adds to the cost in way that is not immediately tangiable in the final product. Expecting the same ‘bang for buck’ is perhaps not that realistic. I’m not trying to say that there aren’t problems with the phone, I just grow weary of these comparisons.
Johannes hi,
(response to danielsjohan too)
your answer is clear, both on technical and organizational sides, thanks for that.
You name the problem well in fist paragraph. What stirred my rather aggressive post is stated by you in the second one.
I understand that you and others can grow weary of comparison with other phones produced by completely different economical ideologies.
Yet a phone is a phone and, more importantly, we still are consumers (we bought a phone, we did not make a donation). In respect to that, we the consumers could expect then a different way to address users difficulties. This is what I expected. This is also why I bought this phone and not another. What I remark is that consumers are still left with their doubts and frustrations, since their problems are not addressed differently than usual, at least in this case and what I could read in the very long and dated post on focus.
To restate, the focus on my phone just does not work, this is new, it goes constantly in and out of focus very rapidly, and what’s even newer, the image I can see on my screen while taking the pictures is pixelited ! And the result is just as I said, useless.
Cheers