Software Update: Android 11 for Fairphone 3 and 3+

Discuss The Products
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You may like to see what apps are using the battery so much and you could use the option to do a safe start to eliminate any custom apps you have installed.

The update could have changed some settings and maybe Wi-Fi is different. For example before the update the phone would use whichever Wi-Fi band was pre selected, in my case 5Ghz but now it roams a bit and looks for the ‘best’ signal, which of course may not work out that well and continuous searching is battery usage.

You could try switching of Wi-Fi for a day in this example.

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Hi Fairphone afficionados,
Today I received the A11 update over the air.
I can only say “wow!”.
My F3 is much more snappy and fluent than it used to be.
For now, I’m an extremely happy customer!
Thanks Fairphone, good job.

By the way, I can’t say much about the battery usage.
Since the update I’ve used my phone very intensively, so high battery usage is to be expected.

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Welcome to the forum @tvdp
Great to hear from a happy user.

Stay in touch :slight_smile:

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I also lost 4G connection after installing android 11. Network ist Deutsche Telekom, Provider klarmobil. Restart didn’t solve the problem. I hat to change to 2G in the Preferences (Mobilfunknetz/Mobile Network - Bevorzugter Netzwerktyp/Preferred Network type). Then restart. Connection with 2G (Edge) was successful. Afterwards I changed again to automatic (4G/3G/2G). Connection to 4G was successful.

It kept stable even after restart or changing from WiFi to Mobile Data.

Hope this can be helpfull :slight_smile:

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This is a real problem for me as it makes my Fairphone virtually unusable. I have to manually connect to the WiFi everytime I want to use the internet, and even then it regularly drops out. I don’t want to start fiddling with my router as this will also affect others in the household, so unless this is going to get fixed I will have to get another phone - which rather defeats the objectives of getting a Fairphone in the first place.

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To add and sadly repeat a lot that has been said

Any phone with Android 11 will have this as it now a core function.

The option to set each band, the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz with separate names (SSIDs) is not a big deal. They will both keep the same password. The only difference is that you can see each band separately and choose, similar to before.

This won’t effect any other device in any serious manner. Each other device will have the option of selecting either or as it the case of Android 11 can be allowed to search for either and select the better signal.

The main difference is whereas before a specific band could be chosen 2.4 or 5 now the options are

  • select a different SSID, once you have separated them, which is allways a great idea ~ I had before this A11 issue

  • then you can under each SSID 2.4 or 5 choose them to be automatic or not.

As I always use 5Ghz at home I have the SSID(5) set to automatic and the SSID(2,4) not set to automatic so my phone doesn’t switch between them.

Prior to the A11 changes and since the only problem I may encounter by not having both SSID’s on auto-connect is that if I go out of range of the 5GHz I have to manually switch to 2.4Ghz. Which as I said, I had to do before and presumably you had to too?

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Which alternative camera app are you using? I am having the exact same problem with my SD card/default camera app, so will need to use a different one until this issue is resolved. Thanks!

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Not sure what you mean as I think it was explained earlier that there is nothing to fix.

After Android 10 Google do not permit storing on externally formatted SD cards unless there is a specific flag set, as is done in Open Camera.

See the image in Software Update: Android 11 for Fairphone 3 and 3+ - #61 by amoun

It isn’t available in the standard google or android cameras, i.e. not in the default Fairphone version or the Google offshoots GCams

So there is no issue to fix, apart from removing the now defunct option in the default Fairphone camera. I doubt Fairphone will override the Google specs as they are bound by a license from Google.

It may be worth noting that as photos get more demanding it is quicker for the phone to store to internal memory, which does not include formatting an SD card as Internal.

So the best all round option is to use any camera and then move the images to the SD card, regularly, and out of the internal memory.

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The problem is that the camera app tells us that the ‘SD card is full’ and doesn’t want to take a picture, even if it is set to store the picture on the phone (not to mention that the SD card is far from full, but that’s beside this point here)

EDIT: turns out that even though the camera app warned me about the SD card, the actual problem was that the phone’s internal memory was too full. Once I emptied that a bit, it was fine taking pictures.

Might this info be useful to @Leonie ?

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We have Google Wifi and this doesn’t allow the splitting of the 2.4GHz and 5 GHz signals, so this workaround won’t work for us. Thanks for trying though! The fundamental problem is the FP3, well mine at least, wifi connection is unstable. The previous fix of tying it to 2.4GHz worked as I think it was flicking between the two signals, but now it just repeatedly drops out for no apparent reason. Other A11 phones may not allow wifi freq selection, but they will not have this annoying glitch I imagine. It’s just frustrating that FP can’t provide a decent product along with the environmental credentials

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Thanks for the hint. The internal memory is not full, but I will try to make some more space and see If that helps. I use OpenCamera now, but probably that is not of interest anymore.

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I’m in the same situation. This seems to occur only with AVM routers as documented extensively here. No other devices have this problem connecting to AVM routers. I and others have contacted support many times to no avail, they’ll just throw standard text blocks at you.
I too will probably get another phone. I don’t want to (mis-)configure my own router just to make it compatible with the FP3’s broken WiFi implementation. Also I often connect to other AVM router networks and I certainly won’t ask the owners of these routers to change their configuration for me.
I was planning to keep my FP3 until it stopped being supported. But I won’t keep using it if such an important part of its functionality is not working.

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@RuthiB @Leonie

You may find that even 6GB is not enough.

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As mentioned this is not an FP3 issue but an Android 11 one. You can downgrade to Android 10 if you like.

You may find others have already adapted and almost certainly will if they don’t like the Android 11 set up. :slight_smile:

Of course there’s always a possibility that Fairphone will introduce this older feature, but it is exactly that now ~ an old feature.

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Not sure if you can only blame Fairphone even if other devices (with A11) have no issues with AVM router. I have no issues at all and never had with neither the FP2 nor the FP3, the difference is, I dont use an AVM Router.

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The AVM router I use is a FritzBox 7530 and is fine.

As mentioned: before this update of Android 11 I had set each band to a different SSID and never had a problem since, with A10 or A11

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Yes we all understood I guess and the difference is that some dont want to split SSIDs and I dont have split SSIDs and still never had any issues also not with Android 11 what I use already since a longer time on the FP2. I neither never told the FP3 to only use one Band in the FP settings. So the issue itself that FPs are often unstable when used with AVM Router has nothing todo with A11 and google remoevd a setting to easily deal with this issue

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There is an issue about interference and power usage.

The interference on 2.4Ghz is well known as it can be impacted by Bluetooth etc. which is why I separated the 2.4G and 5G

I can then switch off the 2.4GHz transmitter in the router and save electricity, which in my off grid situation can be critical sometimes.

This hopefully can apply to the phone, though I don’t know if it does.

By switching off 2.4Ghz I would hopefully save some battery energy, and reduce heat, something I don’t imaging Google really care or think about.

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I don’t have the update yet, but I have a question about the WiFi discussion going on here: Do I understand it right, that the complaints are about the fact that the phone is toggling between 2.4GHz and 5GHz?

If this is the case: This is usually intended behaviour between modern phones and modern routers.
The FP3+ supports IEEE 802.11k, which enables phone and router to talk about the best possible connection; especially important if you have “repeaters” (nowadays: intelligent mesh networks). This standard is called Radio Resource Measurement.
Also the FP3+ supports IEEE 802.11v, which allows the router to tell the FP3 how to behave (which frequency bands to use, switching to another band, going to energy save mode, switching to another AP, etc.)

For example: if there is a PC doing a big download, the router will tell the PC to switch to 5GHz if SNR is ok to do that. And it will tell the FP3+ to switch to 2.4GHz to keep the band as free as possible for the PC.
And even if there is no other device demanding traffic, the router will often tell the phone to switch to 2.4GHz, especially if there is a bit of distance. The router knows that the FP3 is a battery powered device, it knows that there is (let’s assume) not much traffic going on, it knows that SNR is maybe not that good on 5GHz, so it tells the FP3+ to switch to 2.4GHz.
On the other hand: With traffic that needs low delay and high bandwith, the router will tell the FP3+ to switch to 5GHz - if this band and channel has enough ressources and it sees an advantage to use this band.

All these logics are especially important when using a mesh network (as supported by all modern routers). In this case there is not just connections between AP and devices, but also between APs, which need a wireless backbone channel which is dynamically controlled by the overall bandwidth in respective channels and bands in the whole network.

Unlike 10 years before, these standards are much more complex nowadays. By simply separating the bands (eg. naming the SSIDs different), most of these advantages are not working anymore.
Of course, you can do whatever you want with your router, but from a technical point of view, it makes all these logics impossible, which are needed nowadays in crowded (mesh) wireless networks.

So maybe I get the discussion wrong (please correct me!) but if it is about the FP3 switching WiFi bands without any obvious reason: That’s how these IEEE standards work.

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Yes you are correct and your details may help ‘comfort’ some with the issues.

The two points are

  • In Android 10 it was possible to select a band (2.4 or 5) so giving extra control, that is removed in Android 11

  • Even so using A10 I went without the auto switching as
    a) I was at home and could control the routers SSID and
    b) It was necessary so as not to interfere with other and older systems that could only use 2.4Ghz
    c) Further separating 2.4 from 5 now has to be done on an SSID basic, so clearlt isn’t available often when out and about. Before it was a simple choice 2.4 o5 or both. Now it’s a fussy SSID game to play, not really any improvement, and clearly not appreciated by some.

There is a problem in that it isn’t happening seemlessly for some, so being able to select either 2.4 or 5 resloves that.

Thanks for your input.