I’m coming a little bit late to this post, but here are my thoughts on my FP6 that I use since September.
My summary is: I would love to love it, but I can’t.
Context: I barely use my phone and for very simple tasks, I don’t really demand that much from my phone. The Oneplus 5T that I had since 2017, was still doing ok after 8 years of use. One single charge per day, working without almost any lag. I had to change because many apps stopped being supported (internet banking and other apps sadly needed for bureaucracy). I was very upset about this programmed obsolescence so I thought “if a phone designed to last 3-4 years has lasted me 8, let’s buy a phone that is designed to last 8 and who knows how long I will be able to keep it”. That, paired with the idea of fair wages and mining, drove me to Fairphone.
Reality: after several months of use, I am still wondering how this phone is going to last longer than a couple of years. At its new state is laggier and has more problems than my OP5T had at its 8th year of life. I will not list the issues I have because you can find a lot of them (even though not all) in the forum. But let’s just say that, even with my mild phone use, I run into problems on a daily basis. I cannot stop worrying how a phone is at its peak when you buy it and performance just degrades over time slowly. I am scared that this phone will become unusable for me in a relatively short time, maybe 2-4 years.
I get that there is a trade-off to make. That FP is a small company and that we are paying for a fair supply chain instead of phone specs. But having worked some years as a sustainability analyst I can’t keep wondering what has more impact: one flagship phone every 8 years or one fairphone every 2-4? Again, I would love to love my fairphone and be able to tell everyone “if you are concerened about fairness in electronics and just want a phone to do the most basic things, go for a FP!”. But sadly, I cannot. The trade-off is definitely more difficult than I had expected.
All this said, I am stoically sticking to my FP6 for now. I would love to learn to love it, so that’s what I’m going for. Specially when I think what’s my daily annoyance compared to the mining conditions in the DR of Congo. It’s becoming an interesting process of accepting limitations and minimalism as a lifestyle (Do I really need all photos to be saved in order to be happy in life? Do I really need the touchscreen to be fully responsive when browsing the newspaper?).
So if you buy a FP coming from some flagship or seamless phone experience, be warned that you are (potentially) entering into a world of glitches and bugs and that your phone experience will become a zen exercise instead of something you don’t actively have to think about.
AFAIK (I don’t have FP6) Moments is the ‘configurable dumbphone mode’ toggled by the yellow switch on FairphoneOS. Since you have eOS, it doesn’t apply to you.
Honestly, I got a fair phone 5 and while it really works for me due to the SD card, unless the 6 has far better battery life i wouldn’t recommend it. I find the drain far to high at roughly 4.2 watts while active, compared to the s26 0.8 watts.
You should be able to solve all the software issues with a custom ROM (e.g. /e/OS). I get it’s frustrating to see all those issues pop up on a brand new phone, especially from a manufacturer that aims at combating planned obsolescence notably, but I think it’s unfair (no pun intended) to put all the blame on the hardware itself. And, one of the major advantages of Fairphone when it comes to custom ROMs is that you don’t void the warranty when installing one (as long as you reinstall the stock ROM back temporarily, though).
So, if you really wanted to, you could always install a custom ROM and see if that makes the phone more usable for you. But of course, that comes with its own bells & whistles, even risks, but it could be worth it. But then, you’re hearing all of this from a beta tester, so I’m obviously biased.
Ich bin zufrieden. Ich war es mit FP2, FP3+ und nun mit FP6. Wenn etwas nicht perfekt ist, passe ich mich an, das ist in meinen Augen ein geringer Preis für alles das, wofür das FP steht.
I have the FP made adapter. I used it a few times in the past. It seems that the one offered now in the webshop is an upgraded version in comparison to the one I purchased in 2023.
I recently bought the FP6 with /e/OS (including a case and a display protector), and I am satisfied so far. I guess if anything goes wrong with /e/OS it’s also important to report the bug/problem to the /e/OS forum so that the OS can be improved.
With FP, you have to manage your expectations a bit: you’re paying for the “greenwashing”, the screws on the back and the modular design (which did have a cost). That means you’re paying a certain amount, but should not expect performance on par with similarly priced samsung, google, apple devices.
That said, I’m happy, hope I’ll be able to keep it more than 2 years. The main camera broke on a fall (more on that later), I’m ordering a replacement and seeing how it works out.
I have a number of complaints, though:
This thing is thick. With this kind of base thickness, I don’t want to add any protective case on top of it. And it’s plain plastic, so it doesn’t grip much on normal surfaces. So it slips and falls a lot. I’m actually impressed it took almost a year for something to break. I would appreciate a back side with some small silicon grips or something similar.
It lacks USB 3. This means no video output and slow data transfers with usb storage (it does have a MicroSD slot, which is supposedly faster). I am marginally bothered by this.
Camera software is hit&miss, it’s improved with time, but it’s still subpar. There’s a forum post with some FP6 pictures you can have a look at. Coming from a Pixel 6a, this was a downgrade I felt.
Fairphone likely does its best, but it lags behind on updates, especially major Android versions. AFAIK this isn’t even legal in the EU, but the enforceability of those rules is still unclear.
Update: I replaced the camera following the video instructions, all worked as intended. It was easy: the phone is designed in a way that you can’t physically access the screws in the wrong order. So, they seem to deliver on the repairability promises.
This will be my last post in this community. Fairphone 6 is a bad working joke getting worse with every update. Also, the moderation in this community is questionable because criticizing moderators is not allowed.
My FP6 = my first and my very last Fairphone.
Nice try, but failed. Getting a proper device soon.
You called the community replies arrogant, so you did not criticise you did attack people and called people names which is inappropriate in our forum and will be flagged as such.
There was even no reply yet to your recent post, you just in general called replies arrogant.
Just to clarify, neither did I call people’s names, nor did I “attack people”.
After reading through a lot of threads in this forum I consider the way this forum is moderated as arrogant, yes. This is a so called opinion. After more than a half year, I consider the Fairphone as a bad product, yes. It introduces bugs and broken behaviour on a level I never experienced with a smartphone within the last 15 years. Being sarcastic about that is not “attacking people”. This is an opinion, too.
The funny part of the whole story is that this forum runs under a subdomain of fairphone.com, but if it comes to the core “This user forum is not an official Fairphone support channel.”. In fact, the way users (=customers) are treated here is scaring.
Maybe I’m a bit late with my reply, but I indeed came from Samsung to FP6. All of them are my company’s phones: first I had an iPhone, then S20, then S22 and this time I decided to take FP6. My biggest motivation was bloated Samsung’s OS that I could stand any more. All those Bixby things and their proprietary apps. And the shape of the icons… And Settings menu structure. It seems they tried to be different, and in every way they tried to be different was making things worse.
Back to FP6:
Pros:
No bloatware!
It stays cold no matter how you load it. Very cold. So cold as your ex-gf’s heart.
Battery lasts 2x as Samsung. Can last for 2 days if I’m not using it very actively.
Camera is quite good (despite what others say), but I never used stock app, I installed ProShot immediately.
I believe that’s it for the good points.
Cons:
Design and overall feel - feels pretty much like my Nokia 2.1 I bought in 2018 for 12 EUR on eBay (B-ware/returned item). But Nokia is a little bit slimmer.
Camera cut on the front screen is way too low. I’m not even saying that with such bezels it could be inside of them. If you set the screen size to smaller it turns to be lower than status bar.
Auto brightness - this is the biggest issue. It makes the phone useless sometimes. It can jump from 70% to 10% when you slightly tilt your phone and then immediately back again. What is really bad is that it seems that its a well known issue from last year or even older, and nobody seems to care to fix it. And yes, I spent weeks of patiently trying to teach that ML algorithm without much luck.
Loudspeaker - seems to be a decent hardware (the phone really vibrates when it plays) but absolutely not tuned /EQd. There’s no bass and overall it sounds just different when playing same thing on Samsung. Different in a bad sense.
Power button - unusable. Trying to switch the phone off you rather will adjust the volume or make a screenshot. Also very difficult to find it tactilely. I’ve immediately made a task in Tasker to lock the screen with a gesture. But if you won’t do so, this will be your biggest issue.
Price - again, I haven’t bought this phone. So I didn’t take it into consideration even when choosing the next phone. But now that I have it, and overall impression… Considering a nice SOC, battery and camera, probably 150 EUR will be a fair price for it.
Conclusion:
Would I buy this phone? Never.
Would I get it as a company’s phone? Yes, if we assume auto brightness and speaker are fixed. Otherwise no.
I thought I’d also weigh in. Disclaimer: the cons made me to sell the phone through rebuy.
Pro:
I warmheartedly support the fairness mission of Fairphone.
Repairability is a great feature.
The changeable backs backs are a nice twist, I loved them.
In contrast to most phones, easily unlockeable bootloader.
Fairly wide third-party OS support (I also tried /e/OS), especially after some time.
Clean stock OS.
Looks like a good improvement over FP5, much more sleek.
Cons:
The power button placement is just annoying. Even after a few weeks I would still accidentally press the volume buttons at the same time.
The power button fingerprint reader is more clunky than under-display. I could practically only unlock my phone when holding it in my right hand. I use both hands.
The quality of the speaker was pretty bad.
The camera does ok-ish, but is way worse than some of the competition. As somebody who doesn’t carry a separate camera, I like if my phone has fairly good shots.
On /e/OS, the launcher and some apps would often drop frames/slow down. So I wasn’t really confident that the SoC would hold up well long-term. 8GiB RAM is also on the lower side for longevity.
No DisplayPort alt-mode. When we are on vacation or traveling, we often hook up a phone using a USB-C DP to HDMI connector to stream.
For various reasons, I care quite a bit about device security. Unfortunately FP6 does not have a separate secure enclave (only TrustZone, which is often vulnerable to side-channel attacks) and the kernel/driver/firmware is often quite far behind with many known CVEs.
I wanted to love it and I’m certainly keeping an eye on future models, but the downsides were too large for me. I also bought FairBuds XL and I love them and still use them.
