Starting to lose trust in fairphone (not as bad as it sounds thanks to the awesome community here)

Discuss The Industry
21

Ok, a smartphone is still a phone and therefore obviously should work as such.

There is really no question and no discussion about this; as I understand it. (At least there shouldn’t).

Still I am absolutely with @Snafu in his reasoning.
In my personal opinion a smartphone is a nice to have gadget and an absolutely useful tool.
For some people, especially in business, it might be absolutely necessary nowadays, as customers expect them to be available round the clock.
Me, I normally don’t need a phone, ever; though it’s really nice and comfortable to have one.
But for cases of emergency, as a lifesaver?
At best one in 100 000 users (I would rather guess a million) really needs this. @DeepSea gave a good example. But that hardly applies for the average user.
Like an insurace against avalanches, when living on the Maldives, because one day you might take to mountain climbing. :wink:

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22

If its strange for you that people expect to use a FairPhone as a Phone they should rename the company to Fair, you can donate and they redistribute it how they deem it fair.

Think about how you would feel if you had hope to use it as a Phone and it does not work.
Then you get the tip to just not use your Phone and ask others.
So funny for people who had hope and often paid more then they should have.
If you are so independent of your phone why in the world did you buy it in the first place?
Just have a bit empathy for people who try their best to do a little better when they have to buy a phone.

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Made my day. Thank you :smiley: :smile: :sweat_smile: :rofl:

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@BertG, please rethink your words. My friend is a 74 year old man, he would have lost his life if he had no phone to make an emergency call after he fell on the floor with his head first! Every life counts!

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25

Wow… What a discussion, going from @sozialpr asking support and experiences of others, to a discussion of the use of a smartphone and calling, to finish on nearly sarcastical comments and half-founded arguments. Perhaps we could avoid off-topic :slight_smile:

I don’t really know what you are expecting as answers. I feel you as well, and I understand your frustration.
I don’t have a FP3, but my experience of Fairphone has not been that good all in all, I had a pretty buggy FP2. Though I ended up at the end with a working device, I personally was satisfied with the support I received. FPOOS had some annoying bugs, but eventually some got solved.
I think Fairphone proved they could achieve things, but it takes some time. The bigger they become, and the faster it will be. I understand they could be more transparent, and I have been annoyed as well sometimed by their lack of transparence. Though comparing them to many other brands, I understand, and I am not surprised, and I think people are demanding quite much from them.
I have trust in FP because they have proven to me they could do things. I am ready to be patient. I am ready to have a partly buggy device for some time. And, to say it again FP3 was a BIG improvement compared to FP2. I think FP is really improving, and I notice efforts, I notice they try, not like other big brands who have an established market and can allow theirselves some margins, some abuse also, and to do a bit what they want.

You say you are losing trust. I understand, I myself have been often annoyed by bugs, but I did not lose trust. You are asking us to give you trust again in Fairphone, I think we can only give you our experience. The answer to the question of trust is really subjective, and we can’t answer it for you. I also understand you have other imperatives that disqualifie FP, and if these are to important, then I don’t think you should feel guilty about leaving your FP3 aside. You have supported their ideals, you have tried FP and it partly failed, I understand, and it is your personal experience. Leaving FP aside doesn’t mean you are becoming a bad person by having another phone, and it doesn’t stop you from coming back to thel once they will have evolved, or when you feel like it.
Some people in this forum have left Fairphone aside, though that doesn’t mean they abandoned the community. You can be part of Fairphone without using one, Fairphone is as much a company as a movement :slight_smile: “Buy a phone, join a movement”

Hope this can help answer your interrogations :wink:

Sorry for the mistakes, am currently on mobile :sweat_smile: And sorry for the lengthy post :yum:

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26

Please, I strongly suggest you read the 2nd and 3rd of my posts above once again (they are short) and also the question I answered with my second post.

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Please read and cite the whole paragraph next time.
I fail to see, where we are in disagreement here.

I have just added bold face.
But how many people are there, that do need the phone the way your friend obviously does?

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Yes, but they are not moving towards their customers in regard to solving issues. Honestly, I am glad that any kind of hardware issue with a Fairphone can be fixed by a repair shop these days, because Lineage OS for my FP2 is rock solid and stable. Oh, and it is not provided by Fairphone, it is supported by volunteers whom - obviously - can be trusted more than Fairphone to supply instant support.

The fact is: Fairphone do not make their homework, which is the commitment to their products to give something to the customer, which has been expected for a higher price to be paid when compared with other phones, which - obviously - can be used to phone someone. Sure, we can agree on products that have the one or other fault that usually is corrected with a software update. But as far as I can see, Fairphone screw things up with every single update, making their products worse. They work on the next Android rollout when their products do not even work stable with the already supplied Android ROM.

As far as I can see, the “inability to talk issue” with the FP3(+) under certain circumstances has been existing from the very beginning, it started over a year ago. Compared with other brands, I am sorry to say that they react within a year to solve such an important issue with an update. Samsungs “battery gate” was a desaster, of course, it cannot be corrected with a software update. That is why I get the impression that some FP3 issues will not get fixed at all, because it might turn out that it is not possible to apply software patches when the cause of an issue lies deeper, in hardware architecture.

And because of these neck-stitching issues with Fairphone products combined with the lack of aftersales support, users are literally forced to “leave the movement” and buy an “unfair” product (again) that just does what it is made for: to phone someone and to be able to talk to this person. Especially old women and men rely on this basic function more than on chatting with people over the Internet.

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29

While I won’t diminish the troubles you and others are facing with their phones and the support.
Please don’t take this experience for the Fairphone normal.

There are quite a few users in this forum as well, that

  • have no issues with their phone, whatsoever
  • have had great experience with support.

It is to be expected, that a forum like this attracts those users, that run into troubles.
I came here for the breaking of my FP2 cover (which was a design flaw and returned or rather stayed for a severe reboot problem with the FP2 as well. Support fixed both issues fast and in a very friendly way.
And you will find in this forum recent reports like that from FP3 users as well. So it’s not just “good old times”.

Dont get me wrong please.
You have every right to be frustrated, annoyed and angry, when you cant make calls with your phone and support does not react.
From reading in this forum I just wouldn’t come to the conclusion, that
“Fairphone does this and does not that”

For example, it might be a good idea to work on a new OS version, that will be fixing issues, when all efforts to fix those issues have been in vain. And it obviously is always a good idea to work on a new rollout to fix software related troubles.
Any problems related to hardware on the other side don’t hinder software development, as (my guess) programmers are not hardware designers but a different workforce. Stopping OS development would therefore not speed up hardware design. (But I might be wrong here, though I doubt it.)

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30

Thank Alex, that’s all I could hope for. Just one point: It is not about feeling guilty or something like that. It is more that I am frustrated because I hoped, based on my initial positive impressions, that the FP3 would finally be a viable alternative I could recommend to my clients as business devices and I could recommend to friends and viewers - in my upcoming review . The fact that I can not do that is frustrating, that’s my main point.

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I want to believe that is the case and I am still struggeling about how to present that in my review and verdict (for my clients and readers) about the FP3.

On the one hand I hope that unsatisfied customers and support experiences like mine are the exception. On the other hand I have exactly zero data to believe that. My own experience and the feedback in the forum, facebook groups and twitter, support my impression, that the fairphone 3 ist still buggy and fairphons knows it.

I asked fairphone - this time via official press contact - about failure rates, customer satisfaction and so on. They provided a generic answer without any data, not even customer satisfaction numbers of their own.

Every other brand I ever contacted had at least self evaluated numbers to share. In combination with my experience I am sorry to say that I can not agree with you that “this experience is not normal for fairphone”.

The fairphone business and communication practices are different from the industry, I agree, but I am not sure it is for the better. Which is a shame, because their positive contribution to the industry could be so much greater.

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→ Click (absolutely not representative, I know)

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Thanks I know this chart, but with just 45 votes it is not better or worse than asking on social media for experiences. In other words: It is not what I would call good data. But thanks for reminding me, I can at least try to use it in my review.

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I hope the number of voters will increase - the poll is rather new - so the picture becomes a little clearer. Oh btw. when I first saw the poll, I thought that the unsatisfied votes will be the majority, because unhappy voices tend to be louder than happy ones. Let’s see how it unfolds further.

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My review has to go live next week, but I hope that you are right and we will see more votes until then.

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Maybe I do not get it, but why are you naming this at all? Are you serious? To me, it sounds like “Oh, who needs to do emergency calls? Just so few people, wow. So, why make such a fuss about it?”

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37

Hi everyone
I had the same problem and could solve it changing the top module. Fortunately I found someone in the used marketplace here in the community who sold it to me for a good price.
Don’t loos your passion for FAIRPHONE there have to be alternatives to the mainstream products.
Good luck
Gebhard

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Hi Gebhard, my top module works fine - except when I make calls. :slight_smile: It is sadly a software bug that I could not fix, even after resetting my phone. :frowning:

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39

Hi, I can offer my two cents about how you feel. I was the owner of a FP2, among the preordering customers. The phone is neither usable nor repairable at a reasonable price last time I checked, because the screen connector on the motherboard module is damaged, and the core module is not offered as a spare part, and the price for changing it was too high (225€ at the time). In the meantime, I kept the phone for a few years, changing the screen 3 or 4 times under warranty because the sides got unresponsive. My feeling is that the phone was a draft modular phone, and I’m a cyclist keeping it in the pocket, which is not compatible. Pieces were slightly moving due to the stress on the phone, and degraded fastly. I felt betrayed because in the few years I kept the phone, there was very few moments when it was working flawlessly, although I had payed a good lot of money for the experience of a phone supposed to last long. I therefore believe that at that moment I felt what you are feeling right now.

Then I changed my mind and although I did not buy a FP3, because a friend of mine gave me his “old” phone and I believe that the best consumption is the one you don’t do, I believe I would if my current phone breaks. My opinion now is that Fairphone is probably more a goal than a true achievement. And they are going to make it because they are gaining support and popularity, thanks to people like me with too much money to spend on gadgets. In France I would be called a Bobo (Bourgeois Boème) and I probably am one. So now I consider myself as a necessary beta tester for the company to grow and improve their product. They need bobos, and I thankfully am one. Expressing my hate or disappointment would negate my impact on that growth, so I feel no regret for giving my money for them to use it in pursuing their goal while giving me the opportunity to use exhibit my cool but sometimes buggy modular phone and feel useful. Finally I must admit that I am not among the ones for which reliability is a true necessity, so all in all that was a cool experience.

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There is something I don’t understand: What does make you think it is a software bug ? I could argue it is not since I don’t have this problem on my FP3 which uses the last software released by Fairphone.

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