You may have already seen the the review from Linus Tech Tips on the FP5.
Here’s the good and the bad. Feel free to share your experiences!
Positive
The transparent cover
Ease of access to the internals
Fingerprint sensor on power button
Modern WiFi technology
Repairability
Negative
No wireless charging
Yellow tint on display at an angle
Bezels not symmetrical
Too thicc
Too heavy
Performance doesn’t impress
90Hz setting greatly limits battery life
Can’t easily differentiate volume buttons from power button when not looking at phone
Vibration not strong enough leading to missed calls
Minimum ringer volume too loud (I feel the same with the FP4 to be honest)
Stock Android/Launcher hasn’t been modified enough to ease transition for Samsung users
Various audio problems
Brightness sensor data isn’t smoothed out, so auto brightness is not reliable (same experience here on FP4, but don’t use it)
Camera isn’t comparable with current flagship phones
Repairability fixes some problems, but comes at cost of new problems
Personally I’m disappointed that they didn’t mention the possibility to install custom operating systems and the lack of focus on evaluating Fairphone’s attempts to treat workers in the supply chain better. I feel that user freedom (which depends on your ability to install the software of your choosing) and sustainability should be factors evaluated in all other tech reviews. Otherwise, it’s not a fair comparison (pun intended).
Thanks for the hint. I have yet to watch that. But I’m fairly sure that they’re going to get a good amount of feedback on this. Feel free to also send them yours.
Ultimately, a lot of the points seem very subjective. Everybody has different priorities.
Its not that easy to replace the battery, you can do the same with any phone. you just need “list special equiments and stuff that 90% of ppl wont understand”
I have now listened to it as well and actually everyone not buying a FP because of this “review” isnt a FP user anyway.
I personally cant take this “review” of a Samsung Fanboy serious. The FP4 video was less negative and overall less biased by Samsung. He was kind of exited about the fact you can change the USB-C port. And also Custom ROM were discussed as a plus as well as the software support.
I watched it as well now and well…there’s a lot of complaining because expectations seem to be quite different for some people.
The comparison to Samsung was mainly about where the navigation buttons were - and that seems to be deprecated anyway if Google has it their way. So basically he is not willing to re-learn that - or switch to gesture navigation.
The comparison with a phone where you need to carefully open the back and then unglue the battery is ridiculous. But if you don’t expect to open it and carry your iFixIt tools around anyway, that works, I guess.
It didn’t help that they got a pre-production phone, apparently. And they seem to have been keeping it for quite some time. I’m pretty sure they could have gotten hold of a production device for a test ~4 months after the official launch.
Performance is certainly not as good as the flagship phones. This is clearly a compromise. If you use your phone as your only computer/gaming device, he might be right. In that case you need a different phone.
A lot of the rest seems to have been software issues. It was not clear to me if they actually updated to the latest OS version for the test. And even then it might have been months old when they tested some things. So those things either have improved or still will, hopefully.
Felt prompted to watch it, and even bear through commercials;-)
Tbh I have mixed feelings about this review, but trying to see it as a way to be able to get insight into some other ways of judging the phone.
Obviously it’s not geared towards people enthusiastic about what FP aims to stand for.
So the interesting question is what might be the other reasons people purchase it?
Long support mentioned in the beginning was put in doubt somehow when compared with the processor assessment, increasing the fears that the phone will not be that good in a decade.
And the repairability was somehow brushed upon, with the phone being compared to 2015 Samsung (which I found a bit strange as a choice for comparison).
Overall not truly favourable. I read some comments, someone mentioned there has been not that many serious reviews of FP5. Is that so? I have seen quite a few myself.
Another point to consider is how FP would be or could be building their brand when big companies are also increasing the length of support, using the recycled materials and improving repairability. Would it keep its niche, create a common platform or increase the efforts in standing out , for example supporting the workers.
By the way I got a bit excited when he mentioned this 15 year support timeframe for the chip, I must have missed it before
Not an issue if Linus reviewed it. I bought mine for the repairability. I didn’t care about anything besides for the new 6ghz Wi-Fi in the new FP5. I don’t now how many times I had to reset the modem with the FP4 and came across a small problem with Wi-Fi 6E Security settings. The tech itself with WPA3 security was the problem being a new security standard. I never cared about performance of the phone since most apps run just fine on any 64-bit OS based on Android. Just the storage and the expandable SD card option was the only only other thing I really cared about. As long as people like me care for the environment. These repairable phones will still fly right off the shelf. In fact I still have my FP4 just lying around til my mother’s Samsung Galaxy S20 FE stops receiving updates. Now it’s just getting security patches. We only got two years of use out of it. At least the FP4 will be supported till at least 2027 and up to android 15.
WPA3 is not new It’s from 2018. And it’s a major leap in wireless security. WiFi 6E isn’t new either. And even if it was new, that doesn’t mean you should expect problems. These things are highly tested. I really like Fairphone, but the buggy stuff is not due to being “new”, unfortunately.
I’m saying the FP4 wouldn’t accept the connection. I’m aware that it has been a while. But this is an issue not just to FP4. XBOX Series X, Xbox one X, Xbox one, Nintendo Switch, 3DS, Wii U will not accept WPA3 Security due to the wireless chipset inthe devices being an older standard. They only accept Wi-Fi 5 Standards. Since my modem router setup came With Wi-Fi 6E as default. I had to manually change the settings with FP4 witch did not work due to the chipset not accepting WPA3. I had to literally connect it to a USB to ethernet adapter to manually change the settings to WPA 2 PSK (AES) in order to get all the devices mentioned to connect wirelessly. It was a pain to do. I’m just saying that the standard is to new for older devices to catch up with the new spec. I didn’t want to have a house full of wires running to all those devices. Especially when each device mentioned is in different rooms. Sorry for the misunderstanding here. That’s why I bought the FP5 was for the new Wi-Fi 6E capability plus other things mentioned in the last post.
in general, i not think problem is on HW, but on SW, as i have multiple notebooks with Wifi AC card, with older (18.04?) Xubuntu WPA3 not work, but with same AC card with Xubuntu 22.04 (maybe from 20.04?) use WPA3 without problem
(Tip: Go to settings and enable video proxy to have absolutely no connection to Google)
I just have one question: How is a fair phone not a great phone?
I mean sure, instead of fair wages, Fairphone could make sure miners get great wages.
Instead of fair working conditions there could be great working conditions.
But that’s not exactly what the companies that produce “great phones” according to this guy do, is it?
I have not found a single reason in the video that would make me hesitate about buying a Fairphone 5. My only reason not to buy it, ist that my Fairphone 3 still works great. It’s a great phone. Absolutely no flaws.
Just remember all the items mentioned will unlikely get updates. Nintendo likes leaving hardware behind. Even the Wii supported WPA 2 way after the end of online support. The only hardware I still have is the DS lite which is WPS only. I have to hook up this to another router which supports this standard when I feel like playing DS games like Mario kart online via private servers still active. Fans today still like having the ability to play these games online after the servers were shut down. These will unlikely ever get updates. The FP4 could on the other hand recieve a software patch yes. With Xbox however. Microsoft has stated recently that they are dropping support for the Xbox hardware in favor of cloud gameing. These will probably be supported for a while longer and might receive a software patch for the Xbox one series of consoles. Older hardware might not ever get a patch. Same goes for Playstation if they decide to implement it as well. It just goes to prove that no matter what platform. It most likely will not be implemented on older hardware itself.
It’s from 2018. And it’s a major leap in wireless security. WiFi 6E isn’t new either. 
And even if it was new, that doesn’t mean you should expect problems. These things are highly tested. I really like Fairphone, but the buggy stuff is not due to being “new”, unfortunately.