From dissatisfied customer to brand fanatic - Positive experience
I have known about Fairphone for some time and always really wanted to support their cause.
My first experience with them was a couple of years ago where I decided to buy the (new) Fairbuds. When they arrived I felt they were ok, I didn't like the eartips included very much but my biggest issue was the connection quality, which proved to be really intermittent. I would connect them to my Garmin watch and go running but the music would constantly drop out.
I contacted customer support who took months to respond to me and issue a refund. I left the experience with a sour taste of the brand.
Last year, my phone fell out of my bag at work onto a hard floor, the screen shattered. I replaced the screen myself with an aftermarket screen. The replacement worked but the phone was never quite right again. Extended uses of the phone would result in the screen heating up and graphical glitches. The replacement screen was obviously not of a good quality.
From this point I needed a new phone, I've always disliked OLED screen phones due to past burn in experiences but my options were quite limited for LCD screen devices with decent specs.
I decided on trying a refurbished Fairphone 5 from a certified eBay store. The device arrived, but had a persistent water damage notification and would not charge. I thought it wasn't a big deal and ordered a new port off the Fairphone website and replaced it, but the issue persisted. I ended up returning the Fairphone 5 and got a refund. I also contacted Fairphone support and within two days they responded and gave me a refund, they said to not send back the replacement port as the carbon footprint of the return outweighs the value of the part. A wholesome response.
From here, I decided I would go for a new Fairphone 6, which I have been using since. Everything has been great with the device since and I have been very happy with it. As someone who has previously always bought Snapdragon 8xx devices, I am pleasantly surprised by the performance from the FP6. I like to emulate games on my phone when I'm out and about and for the titles I'm into, it runs very well. The cameras are better than my previous devices and are good enough for daily photos (mostly of my daughter). I love that it still has an SD card reader, in a world where this is increasingly rare and we have cloud data and expensive storage upgrades.
Overall, I feel that Fairphone has gotten a lot better over time, the phone isn't perfect but it is more than usable and I am happy that I gave them another chance. There are some software bugs but they are all so small that I know that they can be fixed and they don't ruin the experience. For context, I had some really bad bugs with my previous Motorola G100 that would never get fixed as they stopped software support after 2 years.
I'm honestly excited to see Fairphone grow as a brand and fully support their vision now. I'm hoping to keep my Fairphone 6 running for as long as possible and would continue to buy their phones when the time comes.