So, my FP2 died. A mixture of things. The replacement screen I bought from Vireo after dropping the FP2 (more accidently throwing across the street really) became very sensitive to touch in a particular place causing the phone to reboot, then to just go out. Then it started to boot into a screen of random coloured pixels (although the phone was working in the background). After many attempts to refit the screen and clean all the contacts, resulting in a damaged contact to the camera module, it died totally and would not boot at all.
Happily the good people at FP have sent me a complete replacement with a “slim” blue back instead of my lovely see through one and it is now, after three hours of fiddling and updating, working just fine. The new cover is, btw, quite nice and feels like it should carry on working.
I love the whole FP concept, I also really like the phone. But so far had to replace: the whole bottom module (the USB socket came unsoldered from the module), the screen (my fault it broke - but a shame so much had to be replaced), the cover (the orignal went “baggy” and split), the camera module (the connector was too delicate). I also had to buy a cheapo unfairphone to tide me through the repair periods. None of which is exactly eco-friendly.
SO: what kills FP2s and what changes should the FP3 incorporate to enhance the life. What have other people suffered on theirs?
Mine suffered: Poor construction quality (soldering), a design fault (the cover), modules that incorporated too many components (hence more than strictly necessary needing replacement) and the very fact of the modularity necessitating many finicky little connectors that sometimes didn’t connect and then broke during maintenance.
The support has become excellent however, and my new (refurbed) phone arrived in days.
Cover - (Replaced twice) the semitransparent grey cover because it broke in the edge by itself. Full transparent cover and the black one doesn’t have this problem.
My both FP2 run just fine since the beginning of 2016 without the need to replace anything.
The camera of my daily device recently had difficulties in focussing which was easily repairable using the information provided by this forum and the screen shows a negligible faint white spot, nothing to care about.
Cover, which also had the seperation/split problem.
Besides that my phone works great. I think it was extremely brave to build a modular device, given the fact that no one ever had sold such thing before. And I think it already payed of for most customers, the bright spots on the screen could have happend with a non-removable screen as well. In a non-modular design, this would require Fairphone to replace the entire device.
Modular devices are the right way, and Fairphone should continue to build such devices in the future.
Well, the cover has a tiny crack in one corner, but I love my blue translucent case too much to replace it. And my screen shows some bright spots almost from the beginning, but I don’t care about them.
OK, so lots of “soft” cover failures (we know about that), quite a few screen faults (there is a lot in the screen module to fail) and the odd bottom module failure (all, I suspect, the USB port).
It seems overkill to me that the screen is so easy to replace and I thought that ease of change might be affecting reliability. However, I’m probably proven incorrect. Though using failure rate data to decide what should be in each module (eg why have to replace the vibration motor when the USB port fails, or the screen electronics when the glass gets cracked) might make the FP3 even more sustainable and repairable than the FP2.
None.
I have the translucent cover, which is perfect so far.
I have the bright spot issue, but they are not a trouble to me so far.
I own my FP2 for about one year now.
If you are looking for statistical evidence as to which modules are most likely to break then a multiple choice poll would be better, but even better would be to simply ask someone at Fairphone about which modules have been shipped out the most. (I’m guessing bottom module and screen).
For me it is quite interesting to see that the bright spot issue seems to be a long runner. I think this is something a potential customer should be aware of…
The point of the thread was to determine whether modularity contributes to failure rate. IE whether the very design of the phone as modular results in more modules needing to be replaced. I suspected that the complex (and expensive) inter-module connectors might be failing quite often … but I’m the only person here who has suffered from it.
Meanwhile the thread has descended into a listing of things that have failed … but that in itself is interesting. A survey might, in retrospect, have done the job better but would be less useful for talking around the issue.
I’m also pleased to see people posting that “nothing has gone wrong” or " there is a bit of a spot on the screen but I don’t care".
Other threads have issues with the software … none of which I have experienced; and I’ve often posted in and said so.
PS: I would note that the thread started out entitiled “death of a fairphone” but Paul didn’t like the title. Too negative perhaps? But Pollyanna style positivism isn’t always the best attitude you know ;¬) It’s good to know about the bad as well as the good IMHO.
But I have come to realize that the inner modules that are stuck together are not so problematic. At first I suspected bad quality of the modules, too, but I think the problem lies with the weakest part of the phone: the core module. It just forwards too much pressure to the other modules (and back covers). The parts might be pressurized a lot and therefore tend to break quite often.
