Fairphone releases open letter to the Community - Apologizes for 3 month support time and says the FP4 will skip Android 14 for Android 15
Fairphone Community Forum
Have been waiting 50 days so far for a response to my ticket about a basically unusable Fairphone 4. Save to say I will never be buying from them again and actively recommend against doing so.
I would call one week slow already, but almost 2 months with no response yet? How did they even end up in this situation? I can't believe there's a sudden spike in support requests.
I wanted to get an fp5, but all I have heard is fuck up after fuck up from fairphone.
Headphone jack removal, selling shit earbuds with "repairability" that they pull from the market (and support) a year after launch, CEO being an asshole publicly, android auto not working well, months long bad bugs, severe update delays, antennas being pretty bad overall, and now literally nonexistent support.
I almost feel like in 5-10 years it will come out that this whole time they literally have just been lying about their sustainability practices and paying factory workers fair wages just to sell for a higher price.
You have the patience of a saint.
That ticket is never going to get responded to. Make another one, and if they don't answer within 3 days, start blowing up their phones.
Damn, that's bad customer service
I had a similar, but not as bad situation with my power button (it was just stuck sometimes, causing restarts and what not). I regularly waited 2-4 weeks for a reply... So yeah customer service is really bad at the moment... Still love the product, though
I understand development taking a long time and being unable to commit to timelines.
Handling support tickets is another matter entirely.
Have you tried using the support chat?
At least for me this helped to cut response time for the warranty replacement of a part way down.
It only being open 6 hours a week, and only during working hours makes things a little difficult.
This is pretty sad to hear. Fairphone was next on my list of phones to try when my current phone gets too old. With the US boycott, I might have to go back to Samsung, but I hate the bloat.
why would you choose samsung, of all?
If you are looking for a device smaller than 155mm from at least 2023, you can choose between
https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2023&nHeightMax=155&nRamMin=6000&idOS=2
Edit: Xiaomi allows third-party lauchers but blocks gestures navigation.
I've had problems with ghost touches on my fp4. customer service just doesn't respond. I also get weird app crashes. can't recommend the company like this. long term support was the whole point!!
I had ghost touches on my old Motorola. I never could figure out any pattern or cause for the problem. But a restart seemed to resolve it
My FP4 got the opposite problem where it sometimes ignores inputs when placed on a soft surface.
But I guess I'd rather have that issue than yours.
i have same problem with ghost touch, though it seems it happens only under certain kind of unknown conditions. I think it might have something to do with moisture in air and/or some other unknown thing.
Using LineageOS on my FP4, so... 🤷
I own a FP4 and I've been on Android 15 for a while now, as I run iodéOS ... To me it is astonishing how a thrid party OS can have better support than the first party one 😅
It does feel counterintuitive but it kinda makes sense since it's probably a small dev team.
The third party OS is being dogfooded and its devs probably use it on a daily basis, making minor improvements, it probably has different people working on a port for their own device, etc.
For a company that's selling products, their time is split between fixing issues in the current OS, and building the next version of the OS for new phones
I was/am definitely considering fairphone as a full european alternative, however it seems they are also plagued by support issues and delays and pixels are still the best way to go, unfortunately.
If you're comfortable with Custom ROMs, the Fairphone is still a fantastic alternative
If you're not, then nothing-phone is british
I don't get why people recommend nothing phone. They promise less years of software updates than most major brands and the best they do differently is "it's sustainable". Whatever that means.
How often do you really need the support, though? I don't think I've ever needed it in >10 years of owning smart phones. I personally couldn't be happier with the fairphone.
don’t get me wrong. it’s definitely on my top 2 , however getting timely android updates is nice and the improvements are nice to have. You don’t really need them and given current ai centered updates, I can’t say they are that meaningful anymore, however pixels have android 15 and will be getting 16 soon, with that whole DeX thingy, while fairphone is releasing statement about how they will skip 14, so their flagship is still on 13… Not great.
Imean my fp4 has ubuntu touch on it, still sad to see
I realize that I'm an asshole for telling them what to do but here's what they need to do: They should drop all development of their own Android and put significant resources to making their next phone work with GrapheneOS.
That'd make them even more of a niche option than right now, since some apps (most notably banking) will just refuse to work.
On the contrary; many people want GrapheneOS but don't want a Google phone.
Most of them work fine. Typically don't have to even enable compatibility mode.
Although Google's new Play Integrity API is breaking more apps every day.
Banking apps generally speaking work, it's the NFC payments via google pay that don't and probably never will.
By working with the real hardware vendor, they could apply for the certification, thus making the apps requiring the useless stamp from google work again.
Well, except for those apps that specifically tries to blacklist graphene. Looking at you, Revolut!
Most banking apps work with a simple app setting change
That problem with that is the Graphene devs
Probably better to make something for the general population. If nothing else maybe work with Calyx OS or /e/os
Agreed. Graphene is a fantastic product, but the devs are absolutely insufferable.
No, the hardware of Fairphones lacks certain security features.
Murena ships Fairphones with /e/os in the US
That would make their already very expensive phone even more expensive, if it were even possible at all.
they are already actively working with e/OS and iodéOS. Don't know if e/OS already supports Android 15 like iodé does, but they could just focus on that next release...