Why a new FP5 now?

[yvmuell]

Software development is outsourced is what @Alain_Guillet meant

[AnotherMike]

Thanks for the clarification.

[Mixigodo]

I can understand your point of view. And, as I said before, I share many of your concerns.

My experience with Fairphone is as follows:

I have been a Fairphone 3 user since it was launched. At first the notification LED only worked to show charging status. After “protests” in the forum (and I guess in support), the Fairphone team implemented that the LED also shows notifications. That gave me a lot of confidence that they do listen to the community and try to adapt to their demands.

Recently, with the fingerprint reader issue from the FP3 update to Android 13, the same thing: the team decided to keep both an Android 11 and an Android 13 updates to mitigate the problem. It’s clearly not the perfect solution, but to me it shows interest and listening (not as much as we’d like, but more than other huge companies that are impossible to communicate with as a user).

On the other hand, I have had several problems with my FP3: I have had to open it 3 or 4 times due to contacts or cleaning problems (1, 2, 3…). After doing so (and “struggling” and learning a lot) I have managed to continue with a fully functional mobile phone with very up to date software almost 4 years later.

However, all said and done, it is not a phone I would buy for my mother (I have thought about it when she needed to change her phone; I preferred to choose a Nokia for her) and I would not recommend it “in general” to anyone. I like it because I share values with the brand and because I am a bit of a “techie”, I like to tinker and learn with my devices. However, in a few years I have had several problems that for an “ordinary” person could be frustrating and perhaps insurmountable.

That said: I think this project, Fairphone, is worth supporting, and I also think (as a regular user of the forum who reads a lot of what is posted here) that with each new model the the usability, quality and reliability is increasing. As I said, and as you say, supporting and being part of such a “small” project (in terms of resources, compared to other smartphone companies) has its problems. However, if you can live with them, they will gradually become less and less and will improve the result, proving that it is possible to do things better and inspiring other people.

Of course, all of the above is just my reflection and my personal opinion.

Thank you for sharing your concerns and promoting reflection!

Best regards!

[AnotherMike]

Thanks a lot for the insight. As I said I haven’t decided yet on how to proceed. I would rather give my money to a small company instead of feeding Apple or Samsung. I love to tinker so that’s fine for me. I’m simply not sure if the phone can be considered a “ready for production” device if you need to rely on it for work. Even in it’s modular state most problems won’t be fixable by yourself as it’s mostly still a closed system. The info about not having any engineers in-house and outsourcing everything certainly explains the state of the software. From what I read here software sounds more like an afterthought. Eh, decisions, decisions…

[Lidwien]

As this is a user forum please be aware that people that don’t have issues you seldom see here.
Yes, I am about to change my Fairphone 2 for a Fairphone 5. As the Fairphone 2 suffers from multiply reboots. Beginning of this year we changed to /e Murena for safety reasons. Otherwise it’s oke.
The Fairphone 3 in use by my partner is running smoothly on /e Murena. Because we just wanted to see if we had enought skills to change the os. He doesn’t use the fingerprint reader.
And the Fairphone 4 we use is working good execpt for the issue in bright sunlight.

[joe]

Keeping the form factor of all the modules is an interesting thought. Apart from the driver-wise challanges (every old module must be compatible with every future core module – until when?) there is a problem regarding the relativley size of the Fairphone Company:

I recently read an Interview with Fairphone: They said, since they are still a small player on the market, they do not have the possibilities they would like to have in terms of changing the hardware compared to what is already on the market.
I understand it this way: Unlike the big manufacturers who can make parts exactly as they like, Fairphone to some extents has to choose from a smaller palette, and can customize that (e.g. bare screen bought off the shelf and custom it, but cannot produce an own screen in the size they wish). That can become a problem for backwards compatibility of the modules if the form factor of the new modules does not fit.

They also said, that two years is the limit where you can get the same electronics. Afterwards, the suppliers have already new products and do not produce the old ones anymore. So, after a certain time they can only sell off what they already produced, but are not able to order the components again. That’s also a huge challenge for repair parts supply: They must estimate the need of repair parts relativeley early.