Ask Lemmy

I bought my Fairphone 3 back in January 2020. I've had it since. I love it.

Its not without its drawbacks. The camera in the stock Fairphone 3 kinda sucks. Not enough to make me buy a new phone, but compared to other phones in it's price range, it is worse.

I tried to go full 'unGoogle' back in 2020 as well which led me to install a custom operating system. Namely /e/OS. While I love their mission and vision, the OS in general has been buggy as hell.

However, that's mostly the OS. If you run stock Android, you will have a better experience.

I love how easy it is to repair. In the time I've owned it, its needed a new charging port. I ordered the part no problem from Fairphone's website. It arrived, and was installed in a few minutes. Awesome. My phone probably needs a new battery now also. The battery health right now is at about 60% and it doesn't last as long as it used to.

Overall, aside from the camera, I adore my Fairphone 3. I highly recommend it. I'm annoyed by the removal of the AUX / 3.5mm Headphone jack from the newer Fairphone 4 and 5, also I dont like how they were selling those wireless Fairbuds, those are not repairable and kind of fly in the face of their whole ethos. Their newer headphones, the Fairbuds XL are a huge improvement in that regard though. And I will probably buy them at some stage too.

So yeah 4.5/5 , it's great!

Thanks to the fact that the 4 (and the 5) do not have a headphone jack, no, I have decided against buying it. That's a damn shame

I have had a FP2 for 6,5 years and I'm pretty happy with it. It is still mostly functional but I'm having issues with the bottom mic. As I don't make phone calls so often, it is not too big of a deal for me to use my bluetooth headphones when I do. But I know that getting spare parts for FP2 has become very difficult now so if the USB plug breaks down it will probably be game over this time.

Anyway, I repaired it a few times, either with new replacement parts I bought from the fairphone shop or ones I traded on the community forum. Bottom module, screen and even mother board.

I have had a premium experience with their tech support, also. When I purchased another used FP2 on the community forum for a family relative, it happened to arrive with a broken bottom module. Mic was not working. As this part was already sold out at that time and I could not find any on the aftermarket forum, I reached out to fairphone to kindly ask if they would agree to sell me one, as they were claiming to keep a few of them in store to fulfill their legal requirements in terms of warranty and stuff (not sure any FP2 was still covered by a warranty at that time but this was what was stated on their shop). To my biggest surprise, after reading my begging, they offered to send me a refurbished module free of charge. And when I asked if I could buy a battery at the same time to avoid having a separate parcel to be shipped for that, they just slipped a free battery along with the bottom module. Free of charge. I had never had such an amazing experience with any customer service before.

I'm running LineageOS and I'm happy with it. In terms of software updates, Fairphone went beyond their initial promise and it has been only recently that they dropped support for FP2.

When my FP2 dies, I'll consider buying a FP5 and I'm happy to have this option. But for now, I'm just hoping it can last for another few months!

Why don't you flash GrapheneOS onto your P7?

Honestly, a bit of a mixed bag. The FP4 has some weird software issues sometimes, which you probably won't see at the big name brands: ghost touches, camera crashes (requires a reboot), problems with call quality, etc. I think the pros probably outweigh the cons, but something to keep in mind.

Not sure how big the problems are with custom ROMs. Also, FP5 is coming soon(-ish), so maybe some of the problems will be fixed?

I have a FP3 and I've been hugely disappointed with it. The fact that it's repairable is only useful if the specs of the hardware are good enough to also last several years at a reasonable level of performance.

Also, some of the parts are rubbish - the prime example being the fingerprint sensor which always requires several attempts and then fails as often as not.

I knew I was getting a "budget" phone and I do still use it, but I had hoped it would be a better than it is. I feel like their business model is a huge missed opportunity in terms of upgrades and modularity. In theory, if they were doing it properly, why would they ever release a new model?

Unpopular opinion but I much prefer having polished hardware like on my Pixel 7 pro and have to melt glue to repair it, all while being able to update the software after eol (lineage, pixel experience, graphene, etc) than to have an already last gen phone that'll only last for a few years more officially.

Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely behind For, but I can't even get one in the United States. Framework on the other hand has latest gen components in a repairable form factor. I'm just waiting on a 2-in-1 from them.

I have a FP4 and I'm very happy with it! It's a little chunkier than my last phone, but I think it works great. I haven't needed to repair it yet, but just knowing that I can is awesome. I never was one for the absolute cutting edge of smartphones, so I can't really tell you how it compares to those, but the camera is more than enough, and everything feels as new as it needs to be!

I had some issues with occasional ghost touches before, as someone else mentioned, but they seem to (finally) have patched them out just a couple of weeks ago :D

I haven't tried any custom roms on my FP4. But I can say I wholeheartedly support their work. Maybe the older ones had issues, but mine has been running smoothly ever since I bought it when it launched.

I've also dropped it like 200 times already, and haven't a single crack. The back cover is cracked though, but that's because I took it off so often to show people :P

All in all, 10/10.

I've had the fp4 since launch and instantly put e/os On it it works great and I love it. Hidden bonus, any in app ad/purchase straight up cannot load since the internal service is missing.

Though yes, the camera is nothing to write home about.

Edit: typos

I had a FP2 that lasted maybe twice as long as an unfair phone. Played a game on it that seemed to be too much for the processor/RAM. I bought a FP3 just after the new camera for it came out. It's starting to show similsr signs of processor/RAM issues. Thing is I haven't used the FP3 nearly as much and all my gaming is on tablets now. I'm unsure if I can justify buying another heavily expensive phone like this. Maybe a used one for me instead?

I do love the repairability tho and how it tries to be Eco and socio friendly. Installing lineageOS was super easy and I love not having google know my every move (I get adverts in Greek and ... Russian? Now as well as stuff for Muslims, I think they really don't track me well anymore.) It's probably also the only smart phone customer service who understands and was helpful when I wanted to know how to responsibly deal with a broken cover for the FP2.

I have a Fairphone 4 but it is my backup phone now. I got it over a year ago. Stock software sucked and it took forever to get Android 12, which came six months after everybody else had Android 13, and when it finally arrived it had broken bluetooth audio. So instead I ran with CalyxOS and that was fine and pretty much bleeding edge. The haptics suck and there are always ghost touches, which resulted in weird pocket dials of people on Signal and having to explain it away. The camera is not good at all, and no gCam mod makes it decent. The phone is repairable but only to a point; you can't buy a new frame which sucks because mine bent and scratched the aluminum because there are no good cases for it. The plastic back cover tore where I took it off exactly four times in its life.

The screen is very good and the fingerprint reader works well every time.

For what I paid, it's just not good hardware. The saving grace is that it's a decent software experience because you have the option to install another OS and re-lock the bootloader.

Mine was daily used and abused for over a year and didn't quite hold up to what I had previously gotten from iPhones in an Otterbox, and the selling point that I could repair it wasn't really realistic because I can't get the actual part that I need.

Fairphone really needs to partner with somebody to get a ruggedized case made.

My daily driver now is a OnePlus phone that I got for free, and OxygenOS is a better Android than stock, it has a good camera and meets my needs better. It also takes SD cards and has a 3.5mm jack and has a rugged case from Poetic.