Yeah, I can imagine that would be extremely frustrating. Something I intend to read up on after reading this thread…
This seems like a different aspect of debate to the part that I couldn’t help but respond to.
One would hope that introducing new product and rectifying existing issues aren’t mutually exclusive!
Both seem important to achieve from both a business & sustainability perspective to me. 
For potential new FP users buying a phone that was released almost 2 years ago and still has issues doesn’t seem very tempting. For longterm use i.e. sustainability buying a more recent hardware plus the potential support time span is.
No one is forcing current users to upgrade their phones. The question remains if the support for the current phones will keep up to prevent users from buying another phone before the mainboard dies.
Unfortunately hardware updates are almost impossible (they are already quite challenging on the much bigger and spacious computers), so all you can hope for is a decade of software updates, and especially security patches (having the latest fad in icon shapes and the latest poop emoji is rather vain and pointless, isn’t it).
So, either you plan on using that phone for the full decade, and hardware-wise it will be an old, ridiculously outdated jalopy for most of its lifespan, or you will bin it in a couple years and buy a new one, in which case that decade-long support is just an empty gadget you’ll never need or make use of.
My point is, long lifespan and “latest tech” is incompatible. Unless it’s a totally modular device like the desktop PCs are (were), where you have an endless supply of compatible spare parts, and can keep your computer upgraded almost forever, at some point nothing being left of the original configuration.
Both me and my SO bought a framework, and of course time will tell whether they live up to it, but this is exactly the model I had hoped Fairphone would be able to offer: when you buy into a particular model you get the latest internal hardware. Updates are released as separate modules that you can choose to get if you absolutely need them, instead of replacing the entire laptop. This is how you combine long lifespan and latest tech. Not to mention that everything in the framework is open. They even provide STL files and wiring diagrams so those so inclined can build and adapt their own modules and parts.
Just a note to keep more on topic and further talk about the Framework is better suited to
Sadly, I’ve read something almost identical in the ShiftPhone forum.
I’ve got the feeling all “good” startups get slowly corrupted by the force of capitalism in the marked around them. 
I mean “the customers want new and fast phones with fill something shiny here” is a notion which probably has an impact on most companies at some point of their development.
And I would really hope they would overcome this temptation by focussing more on the “upgrade” point, instead of following the periodical exchange (better specs only with a complete new phone) policy.
in my opinion you need to tap the best cpu/soc and components in general (still with sane mind) when you try to go for a long term supported hardware. you cant just opt for middle class everything and then even drop features on the go when you switch android levels etc (fingerprint). top notch hardware will last and satisfy longer for the average joe even after five or seven? years or more into the game. also you cant just delay android levels and steps, you ought to deliver software updates immediately and you need to take part early in the android beta and RC games and offer android kind of immediately. whats the use of offering an outdate android version jump after n years into the life cycle just right before you actually drop the whole phone as a product all together. just odd.
please do tell, how much must a fairphone5 (and later versions) need to cost that you guys really allocate sufficient (LOTS!) of funds to your software team just as well.
i have written it before but i will write it again, now that we have sufficiently? long-term funded all the miners, the diggers, the cheap laborers, and all kinds of folks… please use our funds and payments now just the same and drop huge amounts on a decent software team. seriously. you need to come to senses with this madness of never having an up to date software level not even on your flagship phone revision.
but then again i feel equally bad for the fairphone3/± people etc.
if you’d truly wanted to have a fairphone like lasting forever you’d need to go for a replacable SOC module of some kind, or at least aim high and try to come to terms with really offering lot of replacement modules, upgrades with features and all. and bring in decent people who can support your SOC of choice for a really long time properly.
do it now. thanks.
Indeed. After all al companies are there to make money, and sooner or later the bean counters take over: It’s the “coming of age” of a company (“no more silly games or unproductive ideals, all what matters now is profit”).
Unfortunately bean counters always assume there is an infinite market out there waiting for them to tap it, so for them it doesn’t really matter if you disappoint/annoy/anger some people, “there are plenty fish in the sea”.
They don’t realize those fish communicate, and your reputation is the most precious asset any company has… But then again, bean counters never think beyond their yearly bonuses…
Won’t happen. If they make more money than expected, they’ll launch the Fairphone tablet™…
“Diversification” it is called, and they clearly stepped in that path by releasing the headphones, so expect more (more or less related) products besides the phones, which will become the quaint, half-forgotten and decidedly uncool core business.
Uh-oh. I for one would never buy a battery (of all things!) on EBay, the mother lode of scams and counterfeit items.
I do not fancy waking up one night in a blazing inferno!.. 
Even original batteries from serious and reputable brands (Apple, Samsung) tend occasionally to go ballistic, so imagine some cheap, fly-by-night copy.
That strongly depends. This seller has 3rd party batteries for many, many electric devices which are long forgotten by their original producers, is based in Germany, has its own webshop (so you can skip Ebay and buy directly). I have a few of them in use for many years already and in case anything wouldn’t meet my expectations I could even cycle to their headquarters 
I know that you’ll tell me that I can only do that if I didn’t suffer any injury from their products before, but I have some confidence that a company selling batteries at that scale would have issues if they failed more often than the original ones.
Having said that I agree that with things like batteries one should be careful and have a look at who the seller is exactly.
Well, it will probably be announced in a week or so (August 30). Already too late for your needs?
I admit this might seem different and reassuring, but even if the person selling them is a friend, in absolutely good faith, and totally honest, the problem remains: He doesn’t build those batteries him/herself, they still are cheap Chinese knockoffs, and thus akin to Russian roulette. They might work as well as the originals, or they might ruin your life. And this changes from batch to batch, so prior experience is irrelevant. You might get the first of the faulty batch… 
(It’s just about risk management, I know the capacity of Chinese manufacturers to re-build about anything can be a big boon. For instance, I had an old but perfectly working laptop, and when its power adapter died, Toshiba (which at this point had ceased building laptops) didn’t have any spares left, so I ordered some “replacement” power adapters in China, from two different websites actually (so I have at least one good one), which were both built on request, took their sweet time to arrive, but worked both just fine ever since. But then again faulty power adapters usually don’t catch fire, at worst they’ll blow the fuses…)
And how is this different to the original batteries? Even a 3rd party manufacturer can have quality management (or not). Therefore I’d rather trust a bigger player in that market than buying at some unknown seller at Alibaba or whatever.
Fair question. The difference is that the bigger player will not want to risk their reputation and thus will tend to be more careful about that.
But indeed not always successfully, given we’ve seen lots of Apple and a whole series of Samsung batteries (Note 7…) go up in flames.
Let’s say manufacturer certified batteries are lower risk.
yeah I already moved on. And the A13 update hasn’t even arrived for my FP3 yet… So I guess I was too early in more ways than one 
My thoughts exactly.
For me, the most puzzling thing is that the FP5 seems to be a direct replacement (in terms of specs and market positioning) for the FP4.
I would understand if this was a much higher spec phone – a “flagship”, TBH – and not “just a better FP4”. Just my 2 cents…
With the new CPU in the FP5, Fairphone has solved the biggest issue with continued support for new Android versions.
So, it’s really something “new and better enough” to bring out a new phone.
If they made a FP6 in two years, that would be a different issue leading to questioning the sustainability part of the phones.