I just bought a new phone. I didn't feel good about my fairphone experience.
For what it's worth, I don't know of any systemic problems / higher than usual error rates with the Fairphone 3 main board. You got unlucky.
Consider giving them another shot sometime!
And their support tells you to pretty much f-off without are purchase receipt, even if you want to buy the part. It's garbage.
That said, one reason for the Fairphone price is the "fair to the people labouring for the parts of the phone" part. I'm unhappy with the camera quality, but honestly knowing that the premium I pay means fairer working conditions is for me an important element. I prefer to pay the small social enterprise establishing a new kind of supply chain and developing a modular phone, rather than the Samsung CEOs and stockholders.
It's probably not as suitable for phones what with changes to antenna requirements and such though.
However, I do want to point out that when such unfortunate things happen, perhaps the remaining parts that still works could be helpful to other fairphone users?
Another friend got rid of her FP2 this spring in favor of a FP4, but only because some apps she uses got really unusable. Otherwise she would've stayed.
IMO it's a fairly good platform and I'm looking forward to how it evolves in the future. Hopefully they will introduce a smaller phone at one point.
I was hoping for more upgrades to be available over time, but that was never the case. Instead, two new models appeared with a year interval and the 4 didn't even get any upgrades. Worse even, the 3.5mm jack was removed, following the trend of getting customers to buy headphones with a limited life time due to their battery. The promise of being the responsible choice for the planet is fading away.
I also faced issues when it came to repairing my device. After only 3 months the USB-C port died, impossible to charge it and once out of battery, I couldn't get my data from it. I contacted the support and they offered me two solutions: I send in the phone, it will get fixed but wiped clean or I order the part online and they reimburse me (they couldn't just send it from the repair center...). I chose the latter as I didn't want to loose my data and felt it was the more ecologically responsible choice, especially since the phone is so repairable. Well, the part was not available on their store, checked every retailer in Europe and third party parts don't exist. I was stuck with a brick for 4 months. The irony is that if I had an iPhone or Galaxy, I could get it fixed the same day at the phone repair shop around the corner...
I appreciate all the efforts Fairphone put in setting up more responsible supply chains. But in my opinion they still failed on their sustainability promise. The devices aren't well supported, it's difficult to repair them and they quickly fall behind due to the lack of upgrades (that also goes with the main board not being replaceable). New devices follow the disastrous trends of other brands with a new model each year and removing the headphone jack. Sure, they are a business and need to make money, but not by going against their own values.
I think batteries are the main consumable of a phone. It seems to me there should be an after-market of smaller batteries, and a set of universal power adapters (like you get with power supplies), and shims to fit it securely within the phone.
But I haven't seen this, so either people prefer to upgrade (demand) or manufacturers successfully made it too hard (supply).
That is the case in general with fairphone, if you just want a cheap phone you can buy an iPhone.
Out of context, this sounds so wrong.
my iPhone 4 battery went up in smoke after owning it for 1.5 years.
my iPhone 6 plus developed touch disease after 2 years, the replacement developed touch disease after a week, and the second replacement began exhibiting mild symptoms after a couple months, the nand failed after another 2 years. (applecare replacements mind you.) plus I wasn't a huge fan of apple trying to sweep the issue under the rug until it gained nationwide attention.
I think you mean a trade off.
Oh, actually, I guess I do know why an opaque part of a thousand dollar phone is made out of incredibly fragile glass, but I’ve made it two years without cutting myself too terribly badly and I’m not planning on replacing it while it still works.
(Obviously, the front glass is broken too but that’s utterly unremarkable for an apple product).
That's parent's point, don't use glass panels on the back of a phone.
I put half of the blame on reviewers promoting the idea that glass is "premium" and letting phone makers get away with this design choice.
Apple largely have the competence and the marketing power to make everyone believe that their premium plastic is amazing. In fact, they managed to make us believe that for glass which must be one of the cheapest materials on earth to produce.
> You tossed it onto a tile floor
You seem to have intentionally omitted some pretty important information there.
Which doesn't surprise me. I've dropped case-less phones on concrete and asphalt many times with only minor scratching to the frame. But I've also seen people drop phones onto decent-pile carpets and break their screens. It's hard to predict what will happen.
to get serious for a moment though, id like to go against the anti-glass grain by pointing out that supposedly, successive generations of Corning Gorilla Glass get stronger by some multiple each time, yet we see phone screens smashing with the same regularity because manufacturers are just using thinner panes each time (probably chasing thinner phones more so than some kind of planned obsolescence conspiracy, although both explanations are credible). so we end up with a tradeoff between thickness, durability and glass backs, but that beats having to rule out durable phones with glass backs entirely from being able to exist
2 years later, she broke back and screen. Mine while all scratched up is still intact. Went underwater at least 5 times. Number of falls on concrete, tiles, etc.
The options are basically just plastic or glass. At least with the current phones it's now possible to replace this glass if it breaks.
Really nothing is forbidding them to release nice plastic phones.
The only reason they won’t is that they want this shiny aspect in their App Store because the consumer will hide this under a mandatory case if they intend to keep it for years.
Well It’s a shame thinking of all those nice things we could have if we actually decided to break corporate monopolies. But now we are stuck between stupid glass phones without default applications and Google spy phones.
Of course I don't have a wireless charger but hey, progress.
I'd rather have a sturdy phone that doesn't require a separate case. In fact, the replaceable body of my old Fairphone 2 is a much better idea.