More or less two years ago I ordered my first smartphone: a Fairphone (FP1). The target of the Fairphone company is to build a phone with conflict-free resources, fair working condition and a open supply chain. I’m really happy with it. It was delivered with a rooted Android 4.2 out of the box. The Google apps are optional, you do’nt have to use them. In the next weeks there will be an upgrade to Android 4.4. This Android-version is already fully supported by Google, really good for security fixes in the near feature. Due to this positive experiences, I ordered the Fairphone 2 in the second half of 2015 for my wife.
In February 2016 the FP2 was delivered without root access for the stock Android 5.1. But right after the startup the torture started. The phone crashed and restarts immediately, mostly five times a day during use and in idle mode. No reproduction possible, actually without sim-card and deactivated wifi. But I have waited, because the OS has the version 1.0.0 and I do not trust those dot zero releases. But after two updates the version number seems to be more trustworthy: 1.3.6.. Nevertheless same behavior.
I decided to switch to the OpenSource version of the FairphoneOS, which was released on the 28th of April. Now there is root access, but from then the Fairphone does not restart if it crashes, now the accumulator has to be removed for a second. After that the FP2 restarts till the next crash…
There are a lot of people out there with the same problems and the official forum contains a lot of requests according to the crashes. There were Workarounds, but none of them worked. I was very patient with Fairphone and waited a lot of time, but in June I have opened a ticket at the Fairphone support-platform, I got no response so far.
Today my wife owns a standard HTC smartphone and the FP2 crashes continuously.
Without doubt, this is the baddest solution thinkable.
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