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
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.
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.
No screen protection?
there is no screen protection on either of the 2 phones