@formerFP.Com.Manager Please forward to the appropriate person(s) that customers are unsatisfied with this testing and have the impression that fairphone either detectes issues but does fail to communicate them effectively to customers, or that these tests are not sufficient to detect even widespread & considerable issues like unexpected loss of all local contacts or dysfunctional display of calling number (this forum thread). Please also add customers’ solution suggestions, e.g.
For communication to customers: In the update notification screen
you could put a clickable link to a support article telling what are expected changes, when the update became available to customers, and listing potential & confirmed limitations, side effects, and bugs. With that, each user can easily decide whether sufficient time went by to detect potential issues and whether they are personally perceived as severe or not, thus whether to update already or not yet, and what preparing steps they take. Alternatively to a support ticket, you could also continue with forum threads, but please add a little more info in the initial post and update it so it’s like a “sticky summary” that saves users from tedious reading through 253 posts like here.
A thread like this is a communication in the rigth direction, but for some of the updates (e.g. 6/2021), I did not find the according thread within 10 minutes time box - and quite a big number of users do not at all come up with the idea to search the forum. Thus the suggestion with the link.
For example, I don’t care about unknown calling number but the possibility to reduce screen brightness is important to me to keep eyes accustomed to darkness, or I would have done a fresh backup of my local contacts directly before upgrading from Android 9 to 10 (in fact, I was not even aware it’s an upgrade, I thought it’s just an update).
For provision of updates: Split security updates from application updates, so a user could install only security updates instantly but wait with application update until a fix for personally severe issues exists (e.g. display becoming “too dark”). Of course, this splitting does not work in 100% of cases, e.g. if both are intertwined - but I highly doubt e.g. the display brightness settings update is security relevant.
Personally, I am not asking much - just to forward a summary consolidating complaints, dissatisfaction reports and suggestions expressed by several users in forum threads I did read in around 2-3 hours. Of course, this is at the one hand a service / support for the fairphone staff, at the other hand, bringing that topic again onto the responsible’s mind makes improvements more likely than not reminding about it - and I’d clearly benefit of improvements, just like all other FP3 + FP4 users.
Also the solution ideas do - after the one-time organisational change - not cause much additional ongoing workload: Adding a link and copy & pasting the DEV’s changelog shall not take more than 5 minutes per update, so once per 3 months. Fairphone staff would use their mobiles as usual - just with the update earlier than customers, and in case that causes too much productivily loss for fairphone, it clearly means same productivily loss for customers in the current process Beta testers do receive an update just earlier - like the carriers already do, so the process does exist and considering the sheer amount of carriers the process shall already be massively automated so extending it by beta testers shall only cause minimal additional workload.
As a side note, the measurements are not unusual: An easily accessible changelog, not only naming 2-3 highlighs but more detailed what was touched and naming possibly breaking changes / incompatibilities, as well as internal testing and tests on external/customers explicit test systems (often in context of “early access”) are good practice in software industry, e.g. for “big” software like operating systems or integration engines, but also small software teams, see release notes of e.g. Locus maps or KeePass, and also hardware-bound software like Fritz!OS updates. All of these examples are not that much different from Android for Fairphones.
No, keeping the power button pressed for 10 seconds should force the reboot of the phone in whatever state the phone is, it’s like long-pressing the power button of a computer forces its shutdown. Try it out yourself
Not sure if that post was directed at me, but as I said it didn’t work ?? So I removed the battery ??
The actions are not the same. The ten second switch off doesn’t actually disconnect the phone from the battery, for example the clock is still in time and the on/off button has power going to it.
Remove the battery and all software is disconnected from power, and it can take more that a few seconds.
I have an instance where I swapped the battery and the clock was still on time ??
I’ve had situations where even that would not work, and I had to remove the battery. I also had situations with smartphones where that wouldn’t work either, as the battery was non-removable. Then you’d have to drain the device empty. (Which can suck if it has a good battery life )
@formerFP.Com.Manager
Hey, it seems the linux-86 binaries are still missing in the official package.
It would be nice, if Fairphone could provide a new download package, that includes the missing files.
Thanks.
Mh, no, I don’t think so.
It is the announcement of the latest update.
And a fairphone-employee is the thread-owner.
I can’t think of a better thread to address directly to fairphone that the download-package for manual/offline installs of this update is faulty.
You have expressed your concern to the owner of the thread by directly addressing her, which you could have done in another thread as well.
This thread originally has been an announcement of an update, and deals with issues that came along with it. Unfortunately there are quite some. It was not intended to discuss desired binaries/enhancements. You would get far more attention if you express your concern in a new thread…
Hi,
is there any update/solution to the bug with the display dropping zero and the incoming “unknown” calls?
I’m almost tired of waiting for it and handling with work-arounds.
Best regards
Georg
My solution was: buying another smartphone (not fair, not repairable but working!).
Sorry Fairphone but that was too much for me! I dont have all the time in the world to wait for your Update! The first report of the “unknown caller bug” was on 02.09.21 now is 12.10.21. This is unbelivable!!
I need the telephone for work not ( just) for a good conscience.
This is getting ridiculous. Once again. “As soon as possible”? Your devs could have reverted the changes to adaptive brightness that nobody bothered to test and push an update in a day. Here we are six weeks later. FP seem to have a different perception of time. Like with the camera software improvements that you said would come “in the coming weeks” more than a year ago.
That’s what I’m not so sure about… Anyway, I don’t want to get into an argument. This is just really frustrating, from a consumer and a person-wanting-FP-to-succeed perspective. I don’t want to speculate. If there is a reason a seemingly simple thing is taking so long, it can’t be all that difficult for FP to put that reason in a sentence and post it here.
I agree that this was poor testing on Fairphone’s side. With some proper testing, by e.g. a beta tester community (not just an automated pipeline), this issue was spotted and reported before wider release. This is really something Fairphone needs to setup. What do you think @formerFP.Com.Manager? It will boost the quality of the releases and keeps the users happy.
Beta testers do receive an update just earlier - like the carriers already do, so the process does exist and considering the sheer amount of carriers the process shall already be massively automated so extending it by beta testers shall only cause minimal additional workload.
but a) i couldn’t tell if it was off as I couldn’t see anything and b) turning on left it still dark etc.