Thinking of buying a Fairphone 2? Don't do it!

Just to say I am so disappointed in my Fairphone 2, having fully bought in to the idea of a sustainable, fairtrade, ethical shake-up of the phone industry.

After months and months of my brand new phone not woking - cutting out intermittently when I make or receive calls so that the person on the end of the line cannot hear me but I can hear them, often waiting for over a month for a response from them, going to the forum and jumping through all the hoops Fairphone set me such as checking sensors, replacing a module etc, Fairphone asked me to post my phone to them at my expense so that they can test it. Testing it has involved one of their staff using my now restored to factory setting phone for a couple of days with no problem (the problem is intermittent). They are refusing to refund me and have “on this occasion” decided not to charge me for the cost of using my phone for two days by way of their diagnosis methods! It’s their word against mine. Why would I go through the bother of all of this if I wasn’t having issues with my phone??

I have never commented on forums in my life before but feel compelled to now.Their phones may be ethically made but this forum is awash with people who struggle with Fairphones. I am so disappointed and should have known my ethical stance on life in general would make me a target for this sort of bad purchase. Don’t be duped like me!

Sorry for you, … but I do have a fully working Fairphone 2 since January 2016.

Ok, there are some annoying bugs, but everything is working.

So, its better not to generalise your (bad) experience.

Stefan

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Hi,

it is sad to hear that you are having had such troubles with your phone and that you are disappointed.

In some cases the source of the problem was the SIM card or the SDCard, this could be the reason why the Fairphone staff did not find the problems you had. Some people had to replace their SIM cards (also with other smartphone brands) to get rid of the problems they had.

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I’m setting this topic to auto close soon.
We had this “discussion” a million times already.

@Babayaga Forums are great for getting help by the community - but one has to seek help and not sign up when they already gave up. Forums are not great to forge an opinion about the quality of a product as mostly people who have problems come here.

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This problem is not easy to fix, because (imho) it is a design fault. I had the same problem, and since I’m using my FP2 for work it was not acceptable that it would mute me. Other users have this problem too and it relates to the vicinity sensor. Basically it sometimes does not turn off the display and touch sensitivity, leading to shennenigans when the users ear touches the display while having a phone conversation. There has been a patch allowing the user to adjust the sensors sensitivity, but it does not work as a solution for me becaue of the following: i hold the phone in the left hand (to free my right) and since the phone is quite big, the sensor is just flat out of the ear area. So it thinks it is in the air instead off on the ear. This is also why not everyone can reproduce the problem, they just holding the FP2 in another way.

possible solutions:
- phone with the right hand (on the right ear)
- learn to hold it less sloppy
- adjust the sensor to 1,5 cm distance
(all 3 did not really work for me)
- map the on/off key to toggle off the display and activate it manually just after starting/accepting a phone call (thats what i do)

patching it, so that the microphone does not mute when the call gets put in the backgrund could be a software stopgap solution, but only in some cases and it would just elimitant the symptoms.

On the Fairphone 3 the sensor has to be placed nearer to the ear speaker. I also would buy a replacement module with the sensor on the other side of the ear speaker if it was available.

Hope one of the solutions help, Kurt

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I can speak for myself. I have a perfect working FP2. Even with SailfishOS.
Yes, there are some bugs here and there, but in the whole case - the FP2 working fine.

If you have such big problems, try maybe update to FairphoneOpen (which is IMHO a better Android OS without Google-mess) and compare. As an Appstore you can try F-Droid and Aptoid. Both working fine.

If it doesn’t help - call Fairphone Support. You have 24 Month full Warranty in Europe.

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My fp2 also working fine since jan 2016. A few issues, but generally I love it. Had a Samsung previously that cut every call, was inaudibly quiet and finally fell to bits.

Much happier with my fp2.

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