Fairphone has bad customer support.

It’s not an issue with the individual customer support agents, I know how difficult their job is¹, and I’m sure that they’re trying their best, but it’s a more systematic issue in the organization itself. It’s become so bad that Fairphone issued an open letter to the Fairphone community forum acknowledging the issue and steps they’re taking to fix it. Until then, I only have my experience to go by.

I’ve contacted Fairphone customer support twice, once with a question about Fairphone 5 security updates not arriving in a timely manner, and another time with a request to refund the Fairphone Fairbuds XL as part of the 14-day policy. In both cases, I received an initial reply over 1 month later. It’s not that catastrophic for a non-critical query, but in situations where you have a technical issue with a product, this can become a huge inconvenience for the customer.

I recently gave the Fairbuds XL a try because the reviews for it online were decent and I want to support the Fairphone project, but I found the sound profile very underwhelming and the noise cancelling did not work adequately.² I decided to use the 14-day return policy that Fairphone advertise, which led to the worst customer care experience I’ve had so far.³

Here’s a complete timeline of the process on how to return a set of headphones to the manufacturer for a refund.

2025-02-10: initial purchase of the headphones

2025-02-14: I receive the headphones and test them out, with disappointing results

2025-02-16: I file a support ticket with Fairphone indicating that I wish to return the headphones according to their 14-day return policy

2025-02-25: I ask again about the refund after not hearing back from Faiprhone

2025-03-07: I receive an automated message that apologized for the delay and asked me to not make any additional tickets on the matter, which I had not been doing

2025-04-01: I start the chargeback process for the payment through my bank due to Fairphone support not replying over a month later

2025-04-29: Fairphone support finally responds with instructions on how to send back the device to receive a refund

2025-05-07: after acquiring packaging material and printing out three separate documents (UPS package card, invoice, Cordon Electronics sales voucher), I hand the headphones over to UPS

2025-05-15: I ask Fairphone about when the refund will be issued

2025-05-19 16:20 EEST: I receive a notice from Cordon Electronics confirming they have received the headphones

2025-05-19 17:50 EEST: I receive a notice from Cordon Electronics letting me know that they have started the process, whatever that means

2025-05-19 20:05 EEST: I receive a notice from Cordon Electronics saying that the repairs are done and they are now shipping the device back to me (!)

2025-05-19 20:14 EEST: I contact Fairphone support about this notice that I received, asking for a clarification

2025-05-19 20:24 EEST: I also send an e-mail to Cordon Electronics clarifying the situation and asking them to not send the device back to me, but instead return it to Fairphone for a refund

2025-05-20 14:42 EEST: Cordon Electronics informs me that they have already shipped the device and cannot reverse the decision

2025-05-21: Fairphone support responds, saying that it is being sent back due to a processing error, and that I should try to “refuse the order”

2025-05-22: I inform Fairphone support about the communication with Cordon Electronics

2025-05-27: Fairphone is aware of the chargeback that I initiated and they believe the refund is issued, however I have not yet received it

2025-05-27: I receive the headphones for the second time.

2025-05-28: I inform Fairphone support about the current status of the headphones and refund (still not received)

2025-05-28: Fairphone support recommends that I ask the bank about the status of the refund, I do so but don’t receive any useful information from them

2025-06-03: Fairphone support asks if I’ve received the refund yet

2025-06-04: I receive the refund through the dispute I raised through the bank. This is almost 4 months after the initial purchase took place.

2025-06-06: Fairphone sends me instructions on how to send back the headphones for the second time.

2025-06-12: I inform Fairphone that I have prepared the package and will post it next week due to limited access to a printer and the shipping company office

2025-06-16: I ship the device back to Fairphone again.

There’s an element of human error in the whole experience, but the initial lack of communication amplified my frustrations and also contributed to my annoyances with my Fairphone 5 boiling over.

And just like that, I’ve given up on Fairphone as a brand, and will be skeptical about buying any new products from them. I was what one would call a “brand evangelist” to them, sharing my good initial experiences with the phone to my friends, family, colleagues and the world at large, but bad experiences with customer care and the devices themselves have completely turned me off.

If you have interacted with Fairphone support after this post is live, then please share your experiences in the Fairphone community forum, or reach out to me directly (with proof). I would love to update this post after getting confirmation that Fairphone has fixed the issues with their customer care and addressed the major shortcomings in their products.

I don’t want to crap on Fairphone, I want them to do better. Repairability, sustainability and longevity still matter.

I bought the Fairphone Fairbuds XL with my own money at a recent sale for 186.75 EUR, plus 15 EUR for shipping to Estonia. The normal price for these headphones is 239 EUR.

This post is not sponsored.

I admire what Fairphone wants to achieve, even going as far as getting the Fairphone 5 as a replacement for my iPhone X.

Failing to repair my current headphones, I went ahead and decided to get the Fairphone Fairbuds XL as they also advertise the active noise-cancelling feature, and I like the Fairphone brand.

Disclaimer: this review is going to be entirely subjective and based on my opinions and experiences with other audio products in the past. I also have tinnitus.¹

I consulted rtings.com review before purchasing the product to get an idea about what to expect as a consumer.

The comparison headphones

The main point of comparison for this review is going to be the Sony WH-1000XM3, which are premium high-end wireless Bluetooth headphones, with active noise-cancelling (before that feature broke). These headphones retailed at a higher price during 2020 (about 300-400 EUR) so they are technically a tier above the Fairbuds XL, but given that its successsor, the WH-1000XM4, can be bought for 239 EUR new (and often about 200-ish EUR on sale!), then it is a fair comparison in my view.

After I replaced the ear cushions on my Sony WH-1000XM3 headset, the active noise-cancelling feature started being flaky (popping and loud noises occurring with NC on). No amount of cleaning or calibrating fixed it, and even the authorized repair shop could not do anything about it. I diagnosed the issue to be with the internal noise-cancelling microphones and found that these failing is a very common issue for these headsets, even for newer versions of it.

I am unable to compare the active noise-cancelling performance side-by-side, but I can say that the NC performance on the Sony WH-1000XM3 was simply excellent when it did work, no doubt about it.

The Fairphone shop experience

The first issue I had with the product was actually buying it. For some reason, the form would not accept my legal name which has letter “Õ” in it, a common vowel in Estonia. Knowing how poorly Javascript-based client-side validation can be built, I pulled a pro gamer move and copy-pasted my name into the form, which bypassed the faulty check altogether.

Similar issue occurred with the address field, as we also have the letter “Ä” ( and “Ö”, “Ü”, for that matter).

The name

I can understand why Fairphone went with the name “Fairbuds XL”, it kind of made sense in their audio product line, and Apple set a precedent with AirPods Max.

However, there is such a big missed opportunity here: they could’ve called the product…

Fairphones.

Yes, it would cause some confusion about their other product line, which is the Fairphone, but at least I would find the name more amusing.

Packaging

The packaging for the headphones is quite similar to what you’d get with the Fairphone 5: lots of cardboard and seemingly no plastic or otherwise problematic materials.

Aside from the headphones themselves, you also get a nice egg bag, meant to protect your headphones when travelling with them.

It’s okay, but nothing special, and it won’t protect your headphones from physical damage should they fall or get thrown around in a backpack. The Sony headphones come with a solid hardcase, which have done a fantastic job of protecting the headphones over the last 4 years. Longevity of a device depends both on repairability and durability, which is why a hard case would benefit the Fairbuds XL a lot.

Factory defect

My experience with the Fairbuds XL were off to a rocky start.

I noticed that the USB-C cable that connects both sides of the headphones was inserted incorrectly. The headphones worked fine, but you could feel the flat USB-C cable being twisted inside the headband. The fix to this was to carefully push the headband back, disconnect the USB-C cable from the headphones, flip the cable around and reconnect it.

Not a good first impression, but at least the fix was simple enough.

Fit and feel

The Fairbuds XL are not as comfortable as the reference headphones. The ear cushions and headrest are quite hard and not as soft as on the Sony WH-1000XM3. If you get the fit just right, then you probably won’t have issues with wearing these for a few hours at the time, but I found myself adjusting these often to stop them from hurting my ears and head even during a short test.

The ear cups lack any kind of swiveling, which is likely contributing to the comparatively poor fit. Our ears are angled ever-so-slightly forwards, and the Sony WH-1000XM3 feels so much better on the ears as a result of its swiveling aspect.

I also noticed that you can hear some components inside the headphones rattling when moving your head. This noise is very noticeable even during music playback and you don’t need to move your head a lot to hear that rattling. In my view, this is a serious defect in the product.

When the headphones are folded in, the USB-C cable gets bent in the process and gets forced against one of the ear cushions. I suspect that within months or years of use, either the cable will fail or the ear cushion gets a permanent imprint of the USB-C cable position.

The sound

I’m not impressed with the sound that the Fairbuds XL produce. They are not in the same class as the Sony WH-1000XM3, with the default equalizer sounding incredibly bland. Most instruments and sounds are bland and not as clear. That’s the best I can describe it as.

The Fairbuds app can be used to tune the sound via the equalizer, and out of all the presets I’ve found “Boston” to be the most pleasant one to use. Unfortunately the UI does not show how the presets customize the values in the equalizer, which makes tweaking a preset all that much harder.

Compared to the Sony WH-1000XM3, I miss the cripsy sound and the all-encompassing bass, it can really bring all the satisfying details out. Given that I had used the Sony headphones for almost 5 years at this point may also just mean that I had gotten used to how it sounds.

Active noise-cancelling

The active noise-cancelling performance is nowhere near the Sony WH-1000XM3-s. The effect is very minor, and you’ll be hearing most of the surrounding sounds.

Touching the active noise-cancelling microphones on the sides of the headphones will also make a loud sound inside the speaker, and walking around in a room will result in the headphones making wind noises. Because of this, I consider the active noise-cancelling functionality to be functionally broken.

Microphone quality

I used the Fairbuds XL in a work call, and based on feedback from other attendees, the microphone quality over Bluetooth can be categorized as barely passable, getting a solid 2 points out of 5.

To be fair, Bluetooth microphone quality is also not great on the Sony WH-1000XM3-s, but compared to the Fairphone Fairbuds XL, they are still subjectively better.

Fairbuds app

The Fairbuds app is very simple, and you’d mainly want to use it for setting the equalizer settings and upgrading the firmware. The rest of the functionality seems to be a bunch of links to Fairphone articles and guides.

The first time I installed the app, it told me that a firmware upgrade version V90 is available. During the first attempt, the progress bar stopped.

Second attempt: it almost reached the end and did not complain about a firmware upgrade being available after that.

Third attempt came after I had reinstalled the app. And there it was, the version V90 update, again. This time it got stuck at 1%.

I’m probably still on the older version of the firmware, but I honestly can’t tell.

Bluetooth multi-device connecting

This is a feature that I didn’t know I needed in my life.

With the reference Sony WH-1000XM3-s, whenever I wanted to switch where I listen to music from, I had to disconnect from my phone and then reconnect on the desktop, which was an annoying and manual process.

With the Fairbuds XL, I can connect the headphones to both my laptop and phone and play media wherever, the headphones will switch to whichever device I’m actually using! This, too, has its quirks, and there might be a small delay when playing media on the other device, but I’ve grown so accustomed to using this feature now and can’t imagine myself going back to using anything else.

This feature is not unique to the Fairbuds XL as other modern wireless headphones are also likely to boast this feature, but this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to try this out myself. It’s a tremendous quality of life improvement for me.

However, this, too, is not perfect. If I have the headphones connected to my phone and laptop, and I change to headset mode on the laptop for a meeting, then the playback on the phone will be butchered until I completely disconnect the headphones from the laptop. This seems like a firmware issue to me.

The controls

The Fairbuds XL has one button and one joystick. The button controls the active noise-cancelling settings (NC on, Ambient sound, NC off), plus the Bluetooth pairing mode.

The joystick is used to turn the device on, switch songs and control the volume, and likely some other settings that relate to accepting calls and the like.

Coming from the Sony WH-1000XM3, I have to say that I absolutely LOVE having physical buttons again! It’s so much easier to change the volume level, skip songs and start/stop playback with a physical button compared to the asinine touch surface solution that Sony has going on.

The joystick is not perfect, skipping a song can be a little bit tricky due to how the joystick is positioned, you can’t always get a good handle due to your fingers hitting the rest of the headphone assembly. That’s the only concern I have with it. If the joystick was a little bit concave and larger, then that may make some of these actions easier for those of us with modest/large thumbs.

The audio cue for skipping songs is a bit annoying and cannot seemingly be disabled. The sound effect resembles someone hitting a golf ball with a very poor driver.

The ANC settings button is alright, but it’s not possible to quickly cycle between the three modes, you will have to fully listen to the nice lady speaking and then you can move on to the next setting. I wish that clicking the button in rapid succession would skip through the modes faster.

USB-C port functionality

I was curious to see if the Fairbuds XL worked as normal headphones if I just connected them up to my PC using a USB-C cable. To my surprise, they did! The audio quality was not as good as with Bluetooth, and the volume controls depended on which virtual device you select in your operating system. The Sony WH-1000XM3 do not work like this, the USB-C port is for charging only as far as I’ve tested, but it does have an actual 3.5mm port for wired use.

When connected over Bluetooth and you connect a charging cable, the Fairbuds XL will pause momentarily and then continue playback while charging the battery. This is incredibly handy for a wireless device, especially in situations where you have an important meeting coming up and you’re just about to run out of battery. The Sony WH-1000XM3 will simply power off when you connect a charger cable, rendering them unusable while charging.

Annoying issues

For some reason, whenever I charge my Fairbuds XL, they magically turn on again and I have to shut them off a second time.

I’m never quite sure if I’ve managed to shut the headphones off. It does the jingle that indicates that it’s powered off, but then I come back to it later and I find that they’re powered on again.

Customer care experience

I was so unhappy with the product that I tried out the refunding process for the Fairphone Fairbuds XL.

I ordered the Fairbuds XL on 2025-02-10 and I received them on 2025-02-14, shipped to Estonia. According to Fairphone’s own materials, I can return the headphones without any questions asked, assuming that my use of them matches what can be done at a physical store.

For Fairphone Products, including gift cards, you purchased on the Fairphone Webshop, you have a legal right to change your mind within 14 days and receive a refund amounting to the purchase price of the products and the costs of delivery and return. You are entitled to cancel your purchase within fourteen (14) days from the day the products were delivered to you, without explanation and without any penalties.

In the case of a Cool-off, Fairphone may reduce the refund of the purchase price (including delivery costs) to reflect any reduction in the value of the Products, if this has been caused by your handling them in a way which would not normally be permitted in a shop. This means You are entitled to turn on and inspect Your purchased device to familiarise yourself with its properties and ensure that it is working correctly – comparable to the conditions that are permitted within a shop.

It took me almost 4 months to receive a refund from Fairphone, and even then it happened through a chargeback that I initiated through my bank. During those 4 months, I also had to send the device back twice because of a processing error on Fairphone’s part. I have detailed the full experience in this post.

Based on the experiences by others in the Fairphone community forum, it seems that unacceptably large delays in customer service are the norm for Fairphone.

Fairphone, if you want to succeed as a company, you need to make sure that the one part of your company that’s directly interfacing with your actual paying customers needs to be appropriately staffed and resourced. A bad customer support experience can turn off a brand evangelist overnight.

Closing thoughts

I want Fairphone to succeed in their mission, but products like these do not further the cause.

The feature set of the Fairbuds XL seems competent, and I’m willing to give a pass on a few minor issues if the overall experience is good, but the unimpressive sound profile, broken active noise-cancelling mode, multiple quality issues and poor customer service mean that I can’t in good conscience recommend the Fairphone Fairbuds XL, not even on sale.

Perhaps less resources should be spent on rebranding and more on engineering good products.

2025 June update: Fairphone support is unacceptably bad. I have detailed my experience in this post where it took me almost 4 months to get a refund for the product. As a result of this experience and flaws with the phone, I have lost confidence in Fairphone, and have become skeptical of their ability to support their products long-term.

Changelog:

• 2024-03-06: 58 days, initial post
• 2024-07-28: 202 days, still going strong!
• 2024-10-15: 281 days
• 2025-01-08: 1 year!
• 2025-04-14: I’m very disappointed

After months of contemplating I finally pulled the trigger and got myself a Fairphone 5. The fact that iPhone X stopped receiving major iOS updates certainly helped make that decision.

“But why? My Xiaomi/Oneplus/Samsung/other glued-together device is like so much cheaper and faster and makes better photos and the software is good after I completely format it and install a custom ROM! And LinusTechTips said that it is trash!”

Well, it’s simple: Fairphone is the one of the few companies out there that has a good track record of long-lasting software support and the phones they produce are easily repairable.

The competition is catching on regarding the software support side, but at this time those claims have not been proven yet, unlike Fairphone.

They also make an active effort to make sure that the people behind the production of their phones are treated well.

These efforts need to be supported so that we don’t end up replacing our phones every few years because the manufacturer stopped releasing software updates or your battery died and you cannot easily replace it.

This post is not sponsored, I bought this phone with my own money. The iPhone X that I used before the Fairphone 5 got passed to someone else as an upgrade so this was not a vanity purchase.

tl;dr it’s a perfectly cromulent phone that comes with some intentional trade-offs that improve the repairability and longevity while reducing the environmental impact and human suffering.

For those who saw the LTT video: Fairphone made a response video where they address most concerns and explain some design choices and trade-offs that they made with the Fairphone 5.

The mission

I really admire what Fairphone is trying to achieve.

If you’re not sure what makes Fairphone special and different from others, then give their website a read. They also held a talk at FOSDEM 2024 which goes into more technical detail, describing their journey, goals, and challenges faced when building phones and trying to support existing ones for as long as possible (Qualcomm sucks in this regard).

In short: they build sustainable phones that you can use and repair for a very long time, made by people that get paid and treated fairly.

One of the not-so-fun facts from their FOSDEM 2024 talk was that it only takes a few extra dollars per phone to make sure that the factory workers get paid a living wage. Makes you think: if that is all it takes, then why aren’t other companies doing it?

My use case for a phone

It’s important to recognize that everyone uses their phone differently. Some expect great performance, especially if they play games. Some just want a good camera. Some just want to chat with their friends and family and share dank memes.

My expectations are very modest: a phone should make adequate pictures, be reasonably fast and get regular software updates. This post is written from my perspective and will likely conflict with your views on what a phone should be, keep that in mind.

The Fairphone 5 is the first one that I actually considered buying because it resembles a modern smartphone with relatively few compromises. This is in part thanks to the rate at which smartphones innovate slowing down, both in performance and the amount of new features that people actually care about.

The cool factor

I got the transparent edition, meaning that the backside of the phone is made out of semi-transparent plastic. I can at a moments notice flip the phone over and see the components, including the battery, SIM card and the microSD card. Absolutely unpractical, still cool though.

I wouldn’t do the “I can replace the battery in 30 seconds” party trick too much because I feel like the plastic clips holding the back cover in are quite fragile and can break if too much force is used. You can easily buy replacement covers, though.

The software

My first proper smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy Gio back in 2011. It was also my first introduction to custom ROMs and over the years I ended up running all sorts of phones with various flavours of Cyanogen and LineageOS. At one point certain banking and e-ID related apps began blocking users who decided to run custom ROMs, so I went to the Apple side for a few years.

Why this preface? Well, it’s because coming back to the Android side of things felt so refreshing and freeing.

I can:

• finally run a real version of Firefox on my phone with an actual ad blocker.
  • this is an absolute gamechanger for me and something I sorely missed on iOS
• install any app that I want.
  • there are also a lot more FOSS apps available.
• rearrange shortcuts on my home screen as I want to.
  • or hell, run a different launcher altogether
• seamlessly back up photos from my phone to PC using Syncthing!
• work with actual files!
• cram in a 512GB microSD card.

The Fairphone 5 ships with Android 13, with Android 14 upgrade currently scheduled to summer 2024. The base OS is quite clean, the only preinstalled app (other than the Google stuff) is the “My Fairphone” app that shows information about your device. That same app can also be used to verify that the functionality on your phone works, and yes, the speaker testing ones get quite loud.

If you decide that the stock Android experience isn’t for you, then know that this phone can easily run alternative operating systems. At FOSDEM 2024 almost every alternative OS booth had one or more Fairphone 5 running, including Ubuntu Touch and CalyxOS. It’s clear that the FOSS community has embraced the Fairphone.

I was a bit sad to see that a lot of open source apps that I used to run or that come up in searches are unsupported or out of date. In some cases modern forks exist, but overall the picture looks very discouraging, especially if I was new to the scene.

Performance

The performance isn’t great, but it’s good for most activities. I can feel it being sluggish from time to time or with certain animations.

This is due to an intentional trade-off that Fairphone made: to be able to properly support this device for a very long time, they had to go with a Qualcomm SoC that gets long-term support, and that ruled out the ones that provide the best performance. They ended up putting in a chip that was designed for IoT applications, funnily enough. If having a slightly slower phone is what is needed to run this phone for 5+ years, then it’s a worthwhile trade-off in my view.

Fairphone highlighted the OEM support issue in their FOSDEM 2024 talk in case you’re curious about why this trade-off needed to be made. My opinionated tl;dw: we have to get OEM-s to either open source the proprietary parts or hit them with some regulations and enforcement so that they do support the chips they produce for longer.

Battery life

The battery life is what you would expect from a typical smartphone: 1-2 days of normal use, but I once stretched it to almost 4 days during a time when I used my phone very little. Do note that this is highly dependent on your usage patterns, if you do constant video calls then you can’t expect the battery to last much.

If you want to extend the longevity of your battery, then there is an option to limit charging to 80% in battery settings. I’ve recently enabled it because it doesn’t impact my use of the phone much. Let’s see how it fares in a few years.

Size and feeling

This phone is big. Really big. Biggest one I’ve had yet.

I actually prefer smaller phones, something like the iPhone 13 mini size would be ideal (Apple stopped making smaller phones that aren’t iPhone 7 reskins after that so that’s not an option any longer). When I was in a store that sold iPhones, I compared my phone to the latest iPhone 15 offerings and was surprised to see that my phone was about the same size as an iPhone 15 Plus. Hopefully we’ll see smaller Fairphones in the future, all while not introducing too many compromises.

Some people are surprised at the thickness of the Fairphone 5. Yes, it’s thicker than most of the competitors, but note that with other phones you’ll likely buy a separate case for the phone, so you’ll end up with something just as thick anyway. At least with Fairphone 5 you don’t have a glass backside that easily shatters if you drop it.

Camera

When I bought the phone, I expected only one thing from the Fairphone 5: its camera should be better than the one on the iPhone X. GSMArena comparisons and reviews by others looked promising

The camera on the Fairphone is acceptable. I don’t have proper photography education, but in most cases the Fairphone makes OK pictures. In low light situations it seems to be inferior to flagship phones from other companies, which may often end up with smudged pictures. At least it has a low light mode, something that my previous phone (iPhone X) lacked. The colors look funky sometimes and are oversaturated.

This is a selection of photos made with the Fairphone 5. Thumbnails are compressed to avoid unnecessary bandwidth. Click on the image to view the original, full-sized version.

The headphone jack

I feel like I’m obliged to mention that this Fairphone doesn’t have a headphone jack. As someone who spent a few years on iPhones, this one doesn’t bother me too much.

USB-C port

I plugged it into an USB-C dock and it actually output to an external display in portrait mode. Not sure how practical, but really cool.

Oh, and the USB-C port is easily replaceable.

Price

If you only focus on the spec sheet and compare the Fairphone 5 to the competition, then it will strike you as an expensive phone, coming in at 699 EUR.

It is expensive, but that’s a result of a lot of small things. Fairphone tries to do their best to source the raw materials from ethical sources and that narrows down your selection by a lot. Add to that living wages to the factory workers, more repairable components, declining to add sponsored apps/ads into the OS and that’s the result.

If you take the price and divide it by the number of years that you expect to get out of this phone (5-10 years), then the price is likely much more comparable to the competition.

If a higher purchase price results in less human suffering and a longer lifetime of the device, then so be it.

Schematics

They provide schematics for the phone (direct link here).

My hours of watching Louis Rossmann do board level repairs have taught me that this is a very good thing.

It’s not perfect

Every phone has issues.

iPhone 15 had overheating problems.

That one iPhone SE 2020 that I ran for a few months had a hard to reproduce system board issue that made the phone inoperable for 5+ minutes in random situations.

Here are some issues that I’ve noticed while using the Fairphone 5

SIM card

After I set up the phone, the SIM card would stop functioning properly after a few hours of use. Reseating the SIM card did not work, and I was quite frustrated because I was expecting to send the phone back just after I set it all up. Luckily it seem to be a known issue and there is an official support article that covers it. My SIM card is much older than the specified 2 years, but I couldn’t be arsed with replacing it yet so I used pure ethanol to clean the contacts on the SIM card, popped it back in and it has worked with absolutely no issues ever since. I’m glad that I got this easily fixed, but for a normal customer this would be a very frustrating experience so hopefully there is something that Fairphone can do to fix and/or avoid this in the future.

The display

The display of the Fairphone 5 supports 90 Hz refresh rate, but ships with it set to 60 Hz. I’ve heard that most other phones do something similar with the likely reason being the negative impact that high refresh rate displays have on the battery life. At the time of writing, however, there is a known issue with the 90 Hz mode which can actually result in more lag and a worse user experience. I’ve set the display back to 60 Hz for this reason. Luckily this is something that can probably be fixed with a software update.

The automatic brightness setting is quite bad, especially when compared to any iPhone. The brightness jumps around a lot in darker conditions and it’s very irritating when driving because random street lights and cars seem to trigger the sensor often. Again, probably something that can be fixed in software.

Software stability

Overall the software is stable, but there was this one time when the phone crashed and rebooted unexpectedly. It was triggered while playing music and opening a Snapchat notification. Nothing serious and has only happened once in an almost two-month period, but still noteworthy.

The Google crapware

This isn’t really a Fairphone issue, but more of an Android gripe. I still have to mention it though. The Android 13 experience has started resembling the Windows experience. I had to toggle off countless “features” to turn off most of the Google crapware that ships with the phone, and even then I still have to stare at the unremovable Google Search bar at the home screen. That thing takes up so much useful screen real estate and is absolutely useless to me. It used to be removable according to some discussions I found online, but I guess Google noticed that feedback and made it a permanent fixture on the home screen with an update. Absolutely disgusting. You can work around this by using a launcher that’s not affected by Google. Kvaesitso is a FOSS one that seems to work well enough for me.

Final thoughts

Fairphone 5 is what you get when you focus on delivering a phone with long-term support and repairability in mind, all while doing your best to treat your workers well. This does mean that you’ll be making some trade-offs.

You won’t get the best performance, the best camera, or the smallest size. What you get in return is the ease of repairability, years of software updates with a proven track record, and the knowledge that at least those workers who assembled your phone get paid a living wage.

If you don’t expect much from a phone and are willing to pay more for a phone that you can use for a lot longer, then the Fairphone 5 is a good option.

Can I make it to 2031 with this phone? I’ll definitely give it a try.

2024-07-28 update: 202 days

My Fairphone 5 is still going strong. Here are some notes after 202 days of use.

Android 14

The promised Android 14 update is here and on time. The upgrade took a while to install but was boring, in a positive way. Nothing I relied on broke and the interface looks more-or-less the same.

The only aspect I’m not happy about with the Android 14 update is the USB webcam mode feature not being present. It’s possible that it’s an optional feature of Android 14, and none of the Fairphone 5 materials indicate it being included.

Video playback issues

I’ve noticed some oddities regarding video playback. The video playback can be choppy on higher resolutions, especially when I run them at 2x speed. Lower resolutions are fine. Sometimes the issues only occur with certain encodings, like H.265, or audio tracks where I can only seem to hear certain audio channels.

Camera in action

The camera doesn’t seem to be the best option for point-and-shoot situations where there is a lot of movement or where the lighting conditions are bad. I’ve taken my fair share of blurry photos as a result. The included microphone also seems lacking in real life use, especially when I accidentally cover them with my fingers.

If I could pick one improvement for the next Fairphone, then it will have to be the camera. A lot of people care about camera quality and might rule out getting a Fairphone as a result.

At least with the pro mode you have a lot of control over the camera, which is great for more stationary shots.

Durability

I have nothing bad to say about the durability here. I have dropped it a few times already and as a result I have two small dings on the aluminium frame.

The backside has also held firm. After one fall a couple of clips came loose, but I could easily pop them back in.

Various oils and finger grease have an interesting effect with the transparent case, resulting in the see-through effect being better. The grip has gotten better with time and negates any need for a separate case. The Fairphone 5 is still a big phone and not that easy to handle one-handed, but the grippy backside makes up for part of it.

The display glass has a few scratches, but nothing too bad. I can’t seem to find any serious scratches on the backside.

Battery

The battery has held up fine. I turned off the battery saving feature because of how simple it is to replace the battery, enabled fast charging because it’s really handy, and stopped showing the battery percentage on the notification bar to reduce battery anxiety.

5G

I switched mobile service providers during this time and could finally test the 5G capabilities of this phone. Since I went with the cheapest option at the time, then the signal strength will not be as good as with other ones, but at least I know it works in Estonia.

Maximum speeds I’ve seen are around 250 Mbit/s. Could be limited by Fairphone 5, or the service provider (more likely option).

Display brightness

At some point I got an update that seems to have improved the automatic brightness feature. It’s not as jarring as before, especially at low light levels. I’m not sure which update fixed it, but I haven’t noticed any annoyances with it for a long time.

2024-10-15 update: 281 days

I have one gripe with the software support on Fairphone 5.

The security updates are lagging behind way too much.

They’ve always come with a small delay of a few weeks, but it took over a month to get the 5th of September security patches. These are supposed to be monthly.

I finally received the 5th of September security patches today, 15th of October. There’s already a new security bulletin out with the October patches, which I don’t have on my phone.

It’s better than no updates at all, but this does not bode well for future long-term software support.

2025-01-08 update: 1 year

Well, I’ve successfully made it 1 year with the Fairphone 5.

Overall I’m impressed with how little the phone gets in the way. It just gets along with doing normal phone things.

Security updates are still lagging behind, so that’s a bit concerning.

Camera is still not the best, but not the worst.

The USB-C port is holding on nicely, but largely thanks to a few pocket lint cleanings that I’ve done using a small needle.

There have been a few unexpected quick reboots on the Android layer, but these are rare enough that I end up forgetting about them. Seems to happen about once a quarter.

I have dropped the phone at least 100 times at this point, mainly due to my clumsiness and open pockets. Fairphone 5 has shrugged it all off.

The Fairphone app also reminded me of my phone-versary and let me know that I’m 20% there towards my goal of using the Fairphone 5 for at least 5 years. It also asked for feedback regarding the Fairphone experience, which some may find annoying. I see it as a positive sign that they’re at least trying to collect feedback to improve this and any future Fairphones.

At this point in time, I’m happy with my Fairphone 5, and have not considered replacing it. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.

Here’s a cat picture to celebrate the occasion.

2025-04-14 update: I’m very disappointed

I don’t take video recordings often, but when I do, it’s about content that I care about. Unfortunately, the Fairphone 5 is butchering them.

The HDR feature is ruining the framerate of the videos. The sound is seriously lacking in videos, rendering some videos unusable, and unfortunately I’m not alone in this regard. The autofocus keeps kicking in constantly in videos with no good reason, resulting in lots of frames having blurry sections in them, repeatedly.

It’s very hard to take good non-blurry photos with the Fairphone 5. Definitely not a point-and-shoot camera.

The security updates are lagging behind by over a month, constantly. It’s April 14th, and I’m still on the March 5th security patch level. There is no news about Android 15 coming to the phone, while the people behind CalyxOS have shipped an Android 15 based version on the Fairphone 5.

The phone has rebooted on me at least 4 times within the last month, which is unusually high. The worst one was while I was driving.

And I’m still waiting for that refund on the Fairbuds XL. And yet again, I’m not alone in this.

I’m starting to feel like in order to create a well performing, sustainable and repairable phone, we first need to take a good phone and then make it repairable and support it for a long time. Fairphone is trying it the other way around, and it does not seem to be working out.

Guess I’ll have to get a glued together phone again, at least that will work well until its battery dies along with its software support.

The experiment has ended

I have stopped using the Fairphone 5. It will likely still find some use as a test bed for alternative operating systems or using it as a very fancy baby monitor. I just need a phone that I can rely on.

Sustainability and repairability does not matter if the product is unusable.

For those wondering, I bought a Google Pixel 8a as a replacement. It addresses the shortcomings of the Fairphone 5 and the battery will be completely dead by the time the software support runs out, which should be in 5-6 years or so.