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

  • kitnaht@lemmy.world
    23·
    4 months ago

    Charger port not working without jamming the charger in just sounds like pocket-lint to me. Has happened once every year or two with almost every phone I’ve ever owned. Grab a really thin needle, turn the phone off, unplug the battery, and GENTLY scrape the border of the USB-C port out. It’ll probably fix the charging port issue. Always has for me.

    • stankmut@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      4 months ago

      I’ve always felt like people were overblowing the pocket lint thing, since I’ve never had it happen to me. Just realized that it’s because my pockets are too small, so the only pocket I can use is my back pocket with the port sticking out.

  • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • flashgnash@lemm.eeOP
      1·
      4 months ago

      Are you able to do contactless payments with that os? That’s the only reason I haven’t switched

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        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.

  • LeftRedditOnJul1@lemmy.world
    5·
    4 months ago

    The same experience, sadly (Fairphone 2). I also bought mine used (so it may have had a long life before that), replaced the battery, and shortly after had enough components fail at the same time to make it not worth fixing. Mostly touchscreen problems and slowness. Shortly after I moved to a new country and found it couldn’t connect to the cell network there (even with a new SIM card) so that was the end of it.

    It’s a real shame, I love the concept of it

  • thepreciousboar@lemm.ee
    4·
    4 months ago

    Fairphone 3+ working really well for 4 yeats, but I feel it might be a little hit and miss, for example another person I know got more issues with fingerprint sensor and if it falls wrongly (like on the buttons, there might be issues you don’t have otherwise