Software quality is terrible and every OS version upgrade brings a new grab bag of worse bugs.
- A11 had some annoyances like quick toggles turning black or non-working screen after importing settings from an OLED phone with always-on-display
- A12 had bugs that broke important functionalty: Screen can only go to 30% maximum brightness if it’s slightly warm outside, Hotspot and Tethering don’t work, GPS sometimes doesn’t work when Android Auto is used, Screen sometimes goes black for a few seconds if you receive a notification and a few other issues
- A13 straight-up bricks the phone on a failed update and freezes/reboots if you dare to use 5G
These bugs usually don’t get fixed until the next OS upgrade happens where Google rewrote that part of the software.
The hardware has a few hardware errors, like the touch not working correctly (ghost touches/unresponsive) or the speakers rattling like a snaredrum. Shouldn’t be much of an issue, the phone is modular so it shouldn’t be hard to fix the flaw and offer the fixed version of that component in their shop (or if they really had integrity, replace these parts on warranty). Instead, they keep selling the broken parts! And their warranty is not worth much at all either.
Support is basically inexistent. Of all the times I wrote them to report bugs, not a single time did they have any response other than “our experts will look into it”. Even if I give them a working bugfix, they just ignore it and don’t fix the bugs.
This is the first time ever that I wouldn’t be sad if my phone dies a tragic death.
I’m fed up of mine. The random bugs I get haven’t occurred with any other phone I’ve had. It’s all well and good telling me go and trawl through this forum and the other but I shouldn’t have to regularly waste my time doing that. My eight-month old phone should just… work. I’m a physicist that works in climate science, I’m far from technologically inept but I don’t want to spend my life e.g. researching a new OS.
I really, really wanted it to be worthwhile and was willing to compromise on performance for it. Not quality. Sometimes I feel like Fairphone relies, in an almost cult-like manner, on the people who buy it to be willing to put up with anything. And it’s worked, because on principle I will not just chuck it in and get a new one, I will persevere to avoid the waste. I feel ripped off though.
Actually that was what kept me from picking the FP5 to upgrade from my Pixel 4A. The software is really lacking and the updates are slow. Yes they come but they are extremely slow.
I do understand like Framework (a laptop brand I own), is small, in fact, their BIOS updates for the Intel 12th Gen has yet to come after at least a year. But at least I can swap the mainboard out for a new one when I need it (probably looking at Meteor Lake vs Phoenix) and use the mainboard as a secondary PC for a relative or something. So I can still swallow the price.
What’s more the Pixel 8 offered for 655 after discount with taxes+shipping vs 810 before taxes and shipping. I was surprised that I considered Samsung S23 and iPhone 15 base too. I really realised how important software is on a phone now.
Be it using a phone or using Ubuntu instead of many more distributions, sometimes, we just want things to work and less tinkering. We want the option to tinker when we feel the need/for fun, but the baseline is that it must work for all applications we are using the device is for.