Fairphone 5: A Cautionary Tale for a "Repairable" Device
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I'm all for repairable devices and empathise with your situation.
It does make sense that you can't replace the mainboard, at that point your not repairing the device your replacing it for a new one.
I would say you've been had by the reseller and Fairphone have been pretty fair with you considering the situation.
It's probably been too long but I would take it up with ebay. -
@sixwheeledbeast
Ebay will not hear it, and there is no way that I can find to modify my initial review and warn other potential buyers to look elsewhere.
I am hoping at best this post can save someone else the headache and money wasted by that seller. I still think you may be able to find an honest seller out there on ebay but I am not certain I would trust someone else given my experience.The fact that you can not send your device in and get a new mainboard from Fairphone was fairly alarming though. In no other product does replacing a main component equal replacing the entire thing, and I think suggesting it greatly discounts the devices repeatability and the right to repair in general.
Here is an example: If the engine in your car dies, you can have it replaced with a used or re-manufactured engine. The serial numbers on those components will not match the rest of your car similar to an IEMI number. But by no circumstances do you now have a new car.
The same goes for any components for a PC that have embedded addresses like a mac address.Regardless of your view, if you offer to pay the manufacturer who assembled the device and sold it to you with an IEMI that you did not own before (even if its considered a new device now) there is no reason you cant do that again.
On a side note, I reached out to Murena as their os installer bricked my phone and they sell the devices with the OS pre-installed. They were much less helpful, did not want to re-flash my device sighting that it was not initially sold with /e/OS (like the ones they sell have some different hardware). But they do offer a re-flash service for EU residents only for 99 euros which is 50 more than Fiairphone will charge.
I am pushing on with the mail forwarding service and having the phone re flashed by Fiarphone I doubt this will be a quick process, but I will keep you updated here.
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@Futura Taking your example of a car...
In this situation the vehicle chassis is the equivalent of the mainboard, the chassis number is the cars identity and in most places would then be considered a different vehicle at that point you can't swap a vehicles chassis and have the "same vehicle", however, you can swap everything else even engines.
Your unlikely to find a vehicle manufacturer that would sell you just a brand new chassis, maybe in the specialist industrial space but not domestic cars.Anyway I'm not saying I like this in any industry. It would be nice to repair everything but unless more devices are supported natively we are stuck with these workarounds and lockouts to get nicer devices running what we need.
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@sixwheeledbeast
Not to nitpick here but the Toyota Tacoma had 2 recalls to swap the chassis that did just that. You might have got a new vehicle if they agreed to buy it back. -
Update:
I set-up a postal forwarding service so I have an address in the EU. Responded to the email that was sent out after my chat where I was informed that it would not be possible to assist me in any capacity without an address in the EU.
Mind you I am paying for this and not trying to scam a warranty policy.The do not respond, I wait a few days and send a follow up email in the same email thread, no response again, I follow up again in a few more days....
Today I receive a response, do you think they opened a repair ticket or did anything at all to assist with facilitating this process? Nope, they responded with the following.
"We apologize for our delay in responding to your message.
With this message we want to assure you that your request has been received, and we are doing our best to get back to you as soon as possible.
To prevent further delay, we would like to ask you to not create multiple requests. If your request is urgent, then please reach out to our support team via Live Chat.
We also have an Online troubleshooting tool and useful Support articles to help guide you at home.
We appreciate your patience and value your continued support.
Your Fairphone Support Team" -
20 Day Update:
I can not even get a response from Fairphone support at this point.
Email support is non-existant, and chat will not talk to you at all about it if you have a seperate ticket open and claims they will "email you that day" which is a flat out lie.
If you are thinking about a Fairphone and assuming they are a good company that will support end users, you may want to reconsider.
Due to the fact that this is essentially an IOT chip there are basically no firehose files out there to re-flash the firmware and unbrick my device without Fairphone doing it. One single file is all it would take to fix this, it looks like the firmware blobs are on github.
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@Futura Wow, that's disappointing.
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Update: Day 23
I have FINALLY got a response from Fairphone support, who claim the IMEI number I had initially given to them via chat and they used to look my device and tell me the previous owner had mainboard issues is suddenly not found in the system and they can not start a repair with it.
Responding with a photo of my IMEI's on the box, lets see how long it takes to get a response and if they will have another excuse to not help this time.
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Following up with everyone here, Fairphone email support did get back to me. It took emailing them every day for two weeks and then verbally telling them "I will continue to email until I get a responce."
The goal was not to pressure them into saying yes, but rather to even respond. No response is far worse than something to effects of "We are sorry but our policy is .... and we can not help you".I will be adding a TLDR edit to my original post with some facts to hopefully help any other North American Fairphone owners.
And my quest is FAR from over of finding the Firehose files for the Qualcomm QCM6490. WHEN not if myself or someone else comes across this, I will be posting about it here.If you are wondering how this saga ends, Cordon who does the RMA process is kind enough to send you a shipping label, and packing instructions. The thing is this shipping label is assuming its coming from within the EU (where if you like me needed to setup a postal forwarding service).
I am assuming the quote I got to ship it outright to said facility is high right now due to the suboptimal geoploitical implications of where I live is imposing on the rest of the world.
That said this task would consist of the cost of shipping the device to France (North of $300 USD as of 3/28/26), then dealing with the RMA process (which is daunting regardless of the company its with), then dealing with the postal forwarding service - which accoding to some reviews is known to disappear packages, then paying the insanely high shipping price back to me.
All in financially and mentally outweighs just buying another device, so I did, my new Fairphone 5 will arrive next week and my old one will be parts. If you buy this device, and live in the US, you better have access to parts.-
Is this device repairable? Yes, to some degree.. Just because it comes apart doesnt mean you can replace it.
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Will Fairphone help you with yours? Yes, to some degree.. I had assumed getting it there would be the hard part, and it was. But so was getting an initial response.
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Will Murena help you with your Fairphone 5 in the USA? NO, even though they make the os that bricked my device, and they are the "north american distributor" they absolutely will not help you with a fairphone 5, maybe a 6 if your lucky.
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Should you try the /e/OS web installer? F*** NO! If I could go back and read the fourms of people who had their device bricked by this, and the repair process I would have never attempted it.
Happy telephoning with UT all! I'll see you again next week flashing my new device.
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@Futura Thank you for that (Murena comment).
I recently researched this via Google & reply said 'Fairphone North American support via Murena'.
Sadly, you discovered NOT the case !
It is too bad that details like this don't yet have a place on the devices pages.
It is one thing if you have an old phone, and want to try UT. Maybe you already got years of use.
But to spend new money, and then have this problem, & no forewarning about lack of support in various countries, is just depressing !
Thank you for your report on this.
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