I am looking at getting one as my next phone when my Pixel 7 reaches EOL. Hopefully the Fairphones are still around by then and hopefully they get more support from custom ROMs. I know CalyxOS supports the Fairphone 4
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!
Been doing the same with my fp3. Then reflashed to their normal firmware. Few weeks ago there came the Android 13 update to create a lot of mess, break everything. Check the official forums for the trouble people seem to have. Team fairphone seem to be late on updates yet still manage to squeeze all the bugs into them that they could find. I’m not convinced any more. I’m sitting on a borked update with no patch on sight while they announce yet another successor. Have they gone full Apple?
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
For a phone whose entire selling point is being the cool, down-to-earth, for the people, type phone. It’s kind of odd to me they don’t include something like this.
It’s probably a demand/cost offset. The demand for it probably doesn’t outweigh the increased cost of adding that component. Simply not worth it for them in the long run.
At the end of the day they are still a business and there to make money.
I get it, at the same time. It sucks. I just wish I could buy a swappable component or something. I know that’d be more expensive than just putting a headphone jack. It just sucks the options are limited.
More importantly, BT headphones are inherently not sustainable compares to wired ones
Also this price. More expensive than a brand new iPhone, I wish I could buy one but it’s way too expensive.
Some parts of the Fairphone 3 are available anymore. A 3 years old phone that you can’t repair yourself anymore.
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?
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.
