What are people’s experiences with the fairphone (4) in regards to build quality?
Apologies, rant ahead of my frustrations with it
I bought mine second hand and had to replace the battery immediately (maybe previous owner treated it badly)
The mic stopped working recently, which I kind of fixed by taking it apart, cleaning it out and putting it all back together but it’s still dodgey
Charger port no longer works without me jamming the charger in and holding it there
Also again from the start the actual horsepower behind it seems insufficient to run the version of android it came with smoothly sometimes, meaning at some point soon I’m going to have to replace it just so it can keep up.
It’s great that I can fix these problems by getting replacement parts rather than replacing the whole phone, but it’s getting expensive really quickly and I’m not sure I trust their build quality given how much has broken right off the bat
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Been the opposite experience for me with my Fairphone 3. I bought it for the reparability but the fucking thing refuses to break, no matter how much I mishandle it.
That sounds brilliant, I wish mine did that, this thing feels like it’s made of incredibly bulky paper mache
How does the performance hold up to modern android versions? My 4 is feeling a little slow already and supposedly the 5 has a similar CPU in it
It’s not the fastest, but it’s enough for me.
Charger port not working without jamming the charger in just sounds like pocket-lint to me. Has happened once every year or two with almost every phone I’ve ever owned. Grab a really thin needle, turn the phone off, unplug the battery, and GENTLY scrape the border of the USB-C port out. It’ll probably fix the charging port issue. Always has for me.
I worked at a Samsung mobile phone repair center and this was reason number one phones did not charge. The gross stuff that can come out of a customers phone…boh.
I’ve always felt like people were overblowing the pocket lint thing, since I’ve never had it happen to me. Just realized that it’s because my pockets are too small, so the only pocket I can use is my back pocket with the port sticking out.
I’d suggest using a plastic flosser so it’s not conductive, but this definitely breathed new life into my phone. It turns out battery lasts longer if it’s charging more consistently.
Fairphone 4 user here too. I also got it second hand, but immediately replaced the OS with CalyxOS. It seems fast to me. My last phone wasn’t.
My only problems with it so far is the lack of a jack, that I need to remove the battery to remove the SD or SIM card, and the screen seems too easily scratched. It was scratched when I got it, but not this mutch. Its in my pocket with nothing else, but the screen is basically full of micro scratches while my previous phone of 8 years has (which was a very cheap phone even back then) almost no scratches at all.
No screen protection?
there is no screen protection on either of the 2 phones
Are you able to do contactless payments with that os? That’s the only reason I haven’t switched
I can’t tell you that, sorry. I prefer cash, never paid with a phone yet. This OS can safely lock your bootloader (does so with the automatic installer), but I wouldn’t think it passes the safetynet check without some closed source magisk module that patches the verification system.
I just buy cheap refurbished few year old flagship phones and put custom android ROMs on them. You get flagship quality for cheap and its literally full on recycled.
Are there any specific brands that are good for this?
Pixels have good Graphene OS support if ur looking to run that.
Thank you.
I use cost-effective Chinese/Indian brands. Any good ones there?
i have no idea tbh. I cant even get chinese brands here cuz they’re banned id love to try some but just cant.
CalyxOS had a bit wider compatibility list than just listing Pixels if I remember correctly, so might look into that.
Thank you
The same experience, sadly (Fairphone 2). I also bought mine used (so it may have had a long life before that), replaced the battery, and shortly after had enough components fail at the same time to make it not worth fixing. Mostly touchscreen problems and slowness. Shortly after I moved to a new country and found it couldn’t connect to the cell network there (even with a new SIM card) so that was the end of it.
It’s a real shame, I love the concept of it
Fairphone 3+ working really well for 4 yeats, but I feel it might be a little hit and miss, for example another person I know got more issues with fingerprint sensor and if it falls wrongly (like on the buttons, there might be issues you don’t have otherwise
Yeat yeat yeat yeat
Mine works perfectly after two years. The microphone placement is a little wonky as it is on the left side to the screen (why?). This results in me placing my finger over it frequently which fucks the audio.
It is pretty fast and I never have issues with running any apps or android. My battery is also good.
For your charging port, have you cleaned the inside with a toothpick? Usb c ports getting gunked up is inevitable.
That being said, there was a famous problem with ghost touches on the touchscreen. I had this too, but after an update it was “fixed” with software. So whenever the ghost touches occur, the phone discards the input. That does mean no more random inputs but sometimes an unresponsive screen. So not really a perfect solution.
This issue had thousands of requests on the fairphone forum. However the response from fairphone was slow and inadequate. For such a relatively expensive phone I expected more.
Which one do you have?
I’ve also noticed the ghost touches on the 4, I don’t think it’s fixed entirely. Quite often have to physically put down the phone on a table to be able to press a button on the screen because I think it’s somehow picking up my palm even when it’s not touching the glass at all
I tried taking the whole charging port out and going at it with a little brush, no improvement.
As I use my phone as my primary means of payment I’ve unfortunately just had to shell out £20 for a new one which I am not happy about (postage, VAT, other bullshit)
I tried taking the whole charging port out and going at it with a little brush, no improvement.
Try the toothpick or something stronger than a brush anyway. I have used a toothpick and a sewing needle to dig the compacted lint out.
all those non bigname non bigmoney are
I have been using the same $20 alcatel flip phone with little degradation in quality for 2 years sounds like a skill issue.
