26
votes
Advice on Fairphone
I have been an Android user for a long time, but I never bothered to buy a new phone when I didn't feel I needed one, so my current phone is very old (Android 7.0). There are several annoyances I see in modern smartphones that I'm kinda hoping to avoid, the biggest one being that I want to be able to replace the battery. I'm therefore eyeing the Fairphone for being modular and repairable.
- Has anyone used a Fairphone and can talk a bit about what it's like?
- Does anyone know the best time of year to get the best deal? Should I wait until after Christmas?
- Will I still be able to side-load/use F-Droid? I hear that Google is putting a stop to this but if I get one that allows it now, will it continue to allow it in perpetuity?
Would love to hear some input from fellow nerds who know more about this stuff than I.
Edit to add: I'm in Germany.
I got a FP5 about 2 year ago. I got it through elementary even thought I'm in Europe because I wanted to degoogle.
It works ok, mostly, but don't expect a completely seamless experience. Mostly little stuff but occasionally more serious like ignoring the sim when on for longer than 10 min and requiring a reboot, or self reboot for no reason. Those problems have always resolved by themselves with the next update within 1 or 2 weeks.
I don't mind a little more friction for using my phone, and I'm a tinkerer, so I don't mind but my wife would never tolerate this (she is an iphone user).
The way I see it, there are 2 reason to consider FP:
The hardware repairability is just bling. Most phones still have repairable screen (granted, not as easily, but I don't break my screen that often) and plenty of phone offer removable battery.
From a sustainability point of view, the biggest impact you can have is from using your phone as long as possible, and FP make kind of subpar product which don't make it easy not to want to upgrade. You might be better off getting a second hand iphone and keeping it for as long as possible.
Not shitting on FP, I believe in their mission (even if I disagree on some of their decision like not having wireless charging for BS reason, but knowing my phone wasn't made by a child slave is nice), but mass production and quality control are hard, economies of scale are a thing, so getting in with FP right now is still paying $600 to get something equivalent to a $200 phone.
TLDR : phone mostly works most of the time if you don't mind tinkering a bit. Nowhere near iphone or Samsung level of reliability. Might be worth it depending on what you value.
Thank you so much for taking the effort to type up this summary. Really appreciate it.
My caveat here is that I had a Fairphone 4, and so my experiences are more about the company and their products as a whole. Overall, I found the Fairphone 4 to be disappointing, and a significant part of that was Fairphone's poor support and development around their phones. Many of the promises of the phone seemed somewhat empty, and often felt mildly deceptive. The community around the phone seemed dominated by a small group of active supporters willing to ardently defend every problem with the phone and the company with often circuitous arguments about sustainability, including arguing that repairability was not a goal of the phone, despite it being featured prominently in the marketing. Like my experience with Planet Computers, if not to the same extent as them, Fairphone felt like a company whose business model was built more around marketing toward people who wanted a particular type of product, rather than actually being built around making that product well. I'd contrast that with Framework, which, despite faults at times, really does seem to be a company built of people who want to build a repairable, upgradeable laptop.
I bought the phone directly from Fairphone, in Europe, but used it in both Europe and the US at different times of the year. This ran into the immediate problem of the back, which was illustrative to me of the dubiousness of Fairphone's claims. Yes, the battery was replaceable, easily, just by snapping off the back case, and that was also how the SIM card needed to be changed. Of course, the snaps on the back case were not actually designed to withstand many cycles of removing and replacing the back, so if you actually wanted to replace the battery frequently, or like me, needed to sway SIMs, the snaps would often end up breaking. Battery life, too, was atrocious; I often couldn't get through a single day without charging. Actually carrying spare batteries would have been difficult, as batteries, like many parts, were out of stock whenever I checked.
Meanwhile, software was terrible. Yes, the hardware of the camera technically fit the advertising, but the camera support was horribly implemented to the point that it was largely not usable for me, despite my rather minimal requirements. Fairphone didn't implement standard Android interfaces to the cameras, instead choosing to make many core features only available in their own camera app, which was quite buggy. In particular, despite nominally capable hardware, the focus was so enormously slow and unreliable that my primary use of the camera, quick reference photos, usually of text, in good lighting, would often end up unreadably blurry.
And yes, Fairphone promised some number of years of updates, but they didn't promise how timely those updates would be, or how well they would be implemented. Security updates were often so delayed that some corporate apps would stop working. Major updates could be enormously delayed, and might introduce a variety of new, significant breakages. At least at the time, Fairphone apparently didn't do any actual software development themselves, and instead used an outside contractor who was clearly trying to minimize effort; it seem like it was not something Fairphone actually cared about. Sometimes they would make bizarre choices in the updates: in one, for example, seemingly simply as the result of a suggestion from one aggressive and vocal fan of the phone on the forums (the phone worked perfectly for his daughter, as he pointed out when anyone had a support question or problem), they once changed the minimum brightness to be extremely bright.
I did use third-party ROMs at times, in part because they would often be significantly more up to date than the official one. But doing so was tricky and potentially hazardous. While I didn't have it happen myself, bricking the phone was easy to do, and while it would have been soft-bricking had Fairphone made some files available, they instead required that bricked phones be shipped to them for a paid unbricking process. My understanding is that this was likely because of enormous security flaws on the phone: the official images were actually signed by test keys, for which the private key was available, and the phone was set up to trust those test keys. If I understand correctly, the files that would have allowed unbricking would have also allowed secure boot on the phone, at least with the official image, to be entirely broken; but this was only security through obscurity.
I usually keep phones for a few years, and repurpose them when I buy a new one. The Fairphone was an exception; I ended up finding it so unreliable that I sold it after around a year or year and a half. For context, I previously had a Pixel 2XL; I still have that, running Lineage and acting as a modem. I now use a Pixel 7 Pro running Graphene.
Wow, I was planning for my next phone to be a fairphone in a year or two, but I think you just killed that.
I have rubbish battery life now, I don't want that to remain on a new phone. Coupled with not being real-world repairable and having lowest bidder outsourced software updates....
I dunno if I would take this review as representative of having a Fairphone. The Fairphone 5 and 6 seem to be much more stable devices, and honestly I don't experience performance issues on my 5 that I can notice (and I use my phone for a lot!). I also haven't had any issues getting replacement parts, and I live in the US (which Fairphone doesn't even sell to directly)
Yes, I should point out: I have heard that the situation improved with later phones. The FP4 was perhaps Fairphone at its worst, for example, with the ridiculousness of the audio jack removal and non-replaceable-battery earphone accessories. I have also heard that they may have brought software development back in house.
But I don't really feel like I have time to give scummy companies a second chance, and with the FP4, Fairphone was quite scummy. I also tend to use devices in unusual ways, to tinker with them, and to expect that they are at least somewhat reasonably made by people who, in some Ruskinian sense, take pride in making good things. Fairphone clearly was not that, at least at the time I interacted with them. The publicly available private keys were particularly ridiculous and telling: I realize I sound a bit like the typical "this device is useless and terrible because of this one problem I had" person, but the FP4 was actually horribly implemented. And with companies like Fairphone and Planet Computers, the defence they have is always that their next device is better.
Meanwhile, I'm typing this on a laptop I originally purchased as a first-gen Framework 13; yes, it had some problems initially, and sometimes the company disappoints, but the employees actually take pride in their products, the CEO actually deeply understands them, rather than just being a salesperson. At this point, only the case of the laptop is original, but most of other parts are being used for other things. I'm glad that I bought it, after being so burned by Fairphone: I just wish that there was a phone that was similar.
Unfortunately, right now, the best phone arrangement for people who want to tinker and have something reliable is to have a Pixel with a third party ROM, which involves supporting a company actively trying to prevent exactly the sorts of uses that those phones allow.
There's also Shiftphone which I think has similasimilar goals to Fairphone.
I got a FP4 and I can't relate to much in that above review. A lot of that is probably because I don't get one with a lot of pre established expectations?
In particular I don't find the battery worse than my old Samsung. I have a spare battery (which were out of stock for some time) in my bag, though I've never yet had to resort to swapping it out.
Thank you so much for taking the trouble of typing this all out for me. I appreciate your input, although your caveat that it applies to an older product is quite a big one.
I have a Fairphone 5 that I got back in April. I used CalyxOS on it from the beginning and have used iódeOS since Calyx paused releases a few months ago. I am in the United States (using T-Mobile).
I've never had any hardware or firmware issues with the phone. Definitely none of the more serious issues that @Pepetto reported, which I'm relieved about haha.
I used an iPhone 12 before this. I actually bought this phone as a development/test device, because I needed a physical device to debug issues with my open source app, Storyteller. But once I had it set up, I decided to give it a shot.
The camera is markedly worse than my iPhone, but I have a real camera for when I care about the quality of my photos. Phone camera is just for recording momrnets, anyway!
Battery life has been decent, I think. I bought a second battery that I charge up and put in my bag before long trips as a backup, which is cool.
The screen isn't quite as beautiful as my iPhone, but it's nice enough.
If you use an alternative OS, like Lineage, /e/os, or iódeOS, you will absolutely be able to side load apps indefinitely. If you use the stock Fairphone Android, it sounds like Google is walking back its strict ban on unverified apps, and will allow users to jump through some specific hoops to enable sideloading.
Oh, might need to try out calyx OS when it comes out of pause then.
The bugs I mentioned happened for only a total of 3 weeks out of 2 years, and might be because of the way I use my phone (I play around a bit with settings, and use an always on VPN to torrent in the background, so it's no surprise I'll always be the one impacted by bugs) or I may have a faulty unit (but the spontaneous repair makes me think it's software).
How is the usability of the stock photo app with calyx/iode? The default one on eOS is awfull (not great quality and an infuriating 1 second delay between taking the picture and pressing the button) so you have to go in the settings to use the original fairphone photo app (which isn't open source) which works quite well.
You can try iódeOS now if you want! It has a very similar security profile to CalyxOS, and it like... Actually exists haha.
I have no complaints about the stock Camera app. I just tested, there's basically no delay between button press and capture, and the quality is pretty decent (like, to the point where I think the limitation is likely the hardware, not software)
Many thanks for the information you have provided. It sounds quite hopeful (I don't intend to use the camera much). You talk a lot about alternative operating systems; I'm a little scared of that personally. I'm liking the open-source idea and I would want to use F-Droid to make use of free software, but I don't know if I can live entirely with F-Droid alone without Google Play.
Oh, me neither! De-googled Android OSes almost always rely on the Aurora Store, which is an alternative frontend for the Play Store that doesn't require installing Googe Play Services on your phone. You can use almost any Play Store app, but you can't make in-app purchases (because that infrastructure is built on Google Play Services), and you can't use some apps that rely on specific "integrity checks". The latter group includes many European banking apps, as I understand it, but it's not something I've run into at all, actually.
The Aurora Store is the flakiest piece of software on my phone (it's not entirely its fault — presumably Google doesn't really want it to exist), though it has been getting slowly more reliable over time. Using a de-Googled OS is not in any way a requirement for using the Fairphone though, and it's certainly less convenient than just using the stock Android that Fairphone comes with. I only use it because I'm personally very anti-Google and really don't want my phone spying on my all the time. I thought it may be helpful for you to know as someone concerned with side loading, in case Google every really does do away with it, but for now it seems like it will still be possible even on stock Android!
I guess it depends on where you are and where you are getting service from. Fairphone is talking to carriers in the States, but they're primarily based out of Europe and have relationships with those carriers. T-Mobile is supposed to work well if you import one, but your mileage may vary and customer support can only help so much. On the other hand, you could get a Fairphone 5 or 6 with Elementary OS and not have Google Apps or Play Services on it at all should you choose to forgo them entirely.
You're implying I can't just put the SIM card from my old phone in it? I naively assumed that I could just do that. What's the obstacle there?
The radio bands that the phone operates on of may not be supported worldwide. You shouldn't have an issue with 4G, (maybe) but 5G could be incompatible.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/8873147802257-Global-network-coverage
I have a FP5, running android. I have no complaints - it's reliable, screen is great, camera is great, battery is great, performance is great. Having a replaceable battery is awesome when traveling.
Side-loading: there maybe ways round google, but I fear there may be a chilling effect that more or less kills indie Devs...
I own a Fairphone 3 that I got in May 2020. It's still going strong. Some thoughts:
It runs well on the original battery but I have an extra battery that I keep in my backpack fully charged, in case I need to switch it during the day. I don't use my phone a lot and can often go 2-3 days on one charge if I keep the phone in battery saver mode, so about 4-6 days on both batteries without having to plug it in and charge.
I use LineageOS and I'm very happy with the user experience. I've sideloaded F-Droid and Aurora Store for all apps. Works perfectly. I don't use Google Services.
The GPS is a bit hit and miss and often takes a good 5-10 minutes to get going. Not sure if this is because of my tinkering with the OS or not.
I've had some things break on the phone, most notably the screen died on me a couple of years ago. I bought a complete used extra phone from the Fairphone forum for cheap and exchanged the screen in about 10 minutes. Worked perfectly after that.
The camera on my phone really sucks. I use it very rarely and prefer to use digital cameras for taking pictures.
I love the dual sims and ability to extend the memory with an SD-card. I just got a 500 GB card, popped it in and now I never have to worry about storage space.
Love, love, love the 3.5 mm audio jack. Just pop some music on the SD-card and you're off.
I'm in Sweden and the phone's worked with all carriers that I've tried.
It is very bulky, even for a 5 year old phone.
I usually recommend the Fairphone to everybody that asks. I hope to use this phone for many more years (until they shut down 4G in my country I guess).
I have a FP4 and just wanted to add a few points.
The repairability is an important aspect. I broke my USB port, managed to get a new one for £14 or something. It was as easy as unscrewing the old one and popping the new one in. Hate to think what this repair would cost otherwise.
I use f droid and side load a bunch of stuff, no issue. It looks like Google is backing down on a lot of this stuff anyway. Let's see how it goes. https://www.androidauthority.com/android-power-users-install-unverified-apps-3615310/
Generally I am very happy and will be buying another in the future.
I used a Pixel 8 with GrapheneOS for a while and while the setup was kinda ok, I just couldn't get used to the gigantic form factor of the phone. I wish small phones would become trendy again.
My spouse has a Jelly Star. People are fascinated by it, especially the people under 25 who haven't really been exposed to the old creative days of phones, before they were all just screen slabs.
If Unihertz would put like 20% more effort into releasing updates and better software for the IR, light, and red button, I'd never buy from another company again.
Anyway, the market is there for phones like the Jelly Star, but US carrier oligarchy and Iphone walls make it near impossible.
If you get /e/ OS, then I believe yes. And more broadly, if Google tries to ban sideloading for third-party manufacturers who use both their own hardware and a modified OS, then IMO the EU antitrust law will beat them like a drum.
Just confirming that on /e/ OS you can side-load to your heart's desire. I have currently four sources for my apps: App Lounge, Aurora Store, Droidify and Obtainium.
So I recently got a FP5 (full disclosure: I didn't pay for it, the company provided it to me). They allowed me to try out /e/ OS, which I immediately did.
Up to now I'm happy with how things are going. It is a massive tinkering work, but it is what I expected going for /e/ OS. Not everything works yet as expected, and if some of those things don't work out as expected I'll probably revert to Android. The MS Authenticator app isn't working (yet), and my onboarding with Curve Pay hasn't succeeded yet. N26 app is also misbehaving. All other banking apps I use do work, so most on-line payments work.
Regarding hardware, I really don't have anything to remark on up until now.
So in conclusion, I would recommend a FP5 with /e/ OS if you are happy spending time figuring stuff out. And it gives you the happy feeling of being in control.