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"

@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.

@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.

@MrT10001 said:

@Futura Doing a bit of research, Fairphone seem to have been strangled by Qualcomm with the use of EDL, unfortunately you have to send it back to them to repair - another reason I won't buy a Fairphone as that part is just not "fair" - you should be able to repair your own device!

I could not agree more with you there! I even said to a rep "well that is not very fair" after they told me I cant just buy a replacement part that would fix all of my current problems. And really the main reason I wanted to make this post. Things I wish that I knew before I spent a lot of money on a device that is now a paperweight.

@MrT10001
Setup a w10 install on a spare drive and repeated the steps above.

Currently using "EDL utility" from here https://www.temblast.com/edl.htm
The device is detected but I keep getting a can not open device

Completely open to suggestions if anyone has any please lmk!
Going to continue troubleshooting

@kugiigi
Right, this is the reality of living outside of the serviceable area, I had not anticipated the parts to not be sold at all though.

Yes, they have to comply with EU law with IMEI thing, I don't see how buying a device with a new IMEI differs at all from buying a part with a new IMEI can they not just register it the exact same way. Its activated and registered that way with my mobile carrier.

Thanks, I am looking into a parcel forwarding service, I had fully accepted the fact that I am outside of the service area and my warranty would be void. That is not at all what my issue is with this situation. Its the whole we are not going to supply the part that has CPU/RAM/Storage soldered to it and is the common failure point of internal electronics.

@gpatel-fr
I went down the rabbit hole as far as setting up a Win10 VM, UBS pass through, installing the qualcomm drivers, booting windows into test mode and having the device (qualcomm low level firmware) fully recognized via type-c to type-c cable.
Main issue is, as you said figuring out how to use that tool, and needing the files to flash onto the device which Fairphone does not supply to anyone aside from the repair facility. At least from what I have read with anyone posing about their FP5 stuck in EDL mode.

Basically the /e/OS corrupted the bootloader and recovery partitions on the device and its stuck in a low level emergency flash state from my rough understanding.

@wgarcia
Thanks, glad to hear something might be repairable. Were you able to buy the replacement parts direct from fairphone?

I can hire a post redirection service, thing is I can get a refurb oneplus n10 or similiar device for less it would likely cost in shipping, plus whatever is going on with this tariff nonsense would hit me again.

Even if I went through with all that, I would still have a device that has a mainboard issue that FP will not replace or sell me a new one.

As a member who resides in the USA I had no choice to purchase my device on an alternative market as the supplier refuses to even ship to the USA even when you offer to pay adequately for it. This is a key part of my story that we will circle back to...

Flashing the device is straightforward as any other unlocked android phone that does not require some propiatary nonsense as some do. After testing several operating systems I decided I was going to test /e/OS as these devices are sold with the OS from Murena I assumed that it would be well supported. This was a fatal error on my part.

My /e/OS installer completely froze during the install process and it appeared to happen after the recovery images were flashed and the device rebooted to them. No problem, I'll reboot to the bootloader and just re-flash. I powered the device off and that was the last time my 3 month old Fairphone 5 operated in any capacity.

My device is now stuck in what is called EDL mode, this requires a special cable and possibly connecting to pins on the mainboard to reflash. If I lived in the EU, and purchased it from Fairphone this would likely be covered under warranty, that is far from the case.

This is where the bigger issues with Fairphone come into play:
This device is marketed as "easy to disassemble and repair with just a screwdriver" or something to that affect. The problem is Fairphone will not sell a new mainboard, and say its due to IMEI number changes.
What good is a device you can easily repair if you can not purchase the parts to do so?

One would also think that you can buy this cable it is from qualcomm due to the chipset of the phone and just restore it yourself. That is another issue that goes back to Fairphone as well. They will not release the "firehose" files that could restore my phone back to a working state. Not very "fair" if you ask me.

If something breaks on your phone there is one facility in France that you need to send the device to (that is if you have a EU address) to get it repaired. That is no better than any other device that you can not take apart.

As a technician that has worked primarily in the PC market but also cell repairs for 30 years these seem like company policies are not very repair friendly when we look at customer facing repairs. Supplying parts is a bare minimum requirement to repair anything.

Where does that leave my device? The rep that I chatted with this morning said their system will not even process a repair unless you have a EU address as its apparently "tied togther". The repair itself (mind you this is connecting a cable to my device and flashing a file) were talking 5 mins TOPS is in the ballpark of $46 USD. That hinges entirely on me having a EU address though.

I honestly thing Fairphone is a step in the right direction, but if your thinking of getting into one assuming its actually a repairable device, think again.

EDIT: I forgot my favourite part!

I bought my device on Ebay from the seller "macromart_uk" and the device was listed as new. My guess is macromart_uk repacks these because during my chat with the fairphone rep they informed me that the previous owner of the device I bought "new" had it diagnosed as an issue with the mainboard. I had them verify the IMEI again and it looks like my new device that I paid a premium for was indeed not new at all.

Word of caution to anyone out there thinking no returns is fine because the device is new, its probably not ok.

Hopefully this will helps someone else here.

This has been my experience with 24.04-01

Stable: Fingerprint sensor broken
Daily: Audio Broken (did not test BT)
RC: Everything is working

@t12392n
Less about the geopolitical aspect, FOSS phone OS state, and more of just offering some talented people who are likely already making FOSS applications a place to be welcomed and bring their talent and applications etc.

I am not sure if this is the right place for this, and even then it comes from a high level of ignorance to software development on my part.

I am sure some of you folks have seen the news about Google's impending removal of the ability to side-load any applications starting September 2026 and rolling out through 2027, as well as requiring any app developers who wish to publish apps to android in any capacity to register with them and upload a government ID.

In a recent interview F-Droid has warned that it could effectively kill alternative app stores entirely. While no one can know the exact ramifications of something like this it's easy to imagine this will likely have a negative impact and possibly leave some developers of open source apps on a platform like fdroid without a platform at all.

I am sure that porting an android application to run on UT is not a simple switch that can be toggled.
However is there a guide, roadmap, or toolkit in any capacity to do so at this point?
If not it may be worth putting something together and possibly welcoming impacted developers to an open store with a community that I am sure would be happy to welcome and see them there.

@gpatel-fr Can confirm Fairphone 5 VOLTE works as expected on 24.04.
Battery life has been great, SMS works, MMS (I have not tested with the final release of 24.04 only a RC) worked but only with WiFi off AS OF 9/16/25.
Otherwise I think its fairly solid device and works well with UT.

@domubpkm Thanks for the info! calls are my biggest issue, they just keep calling all day every day.

Thanks to @kristatos and @Vlad-Nirky I'll be flashing 24.04 beta 2 again tonight and installing this straight away!
I Appreciate you taking a moment to respond, hopefully it helps someone else as well.

@kristatos said in Blacklisting/Blocking spam calls:

exphone

On nice, apparently I completely overlooked that! Are you running 24.04 or 20.04?

I get an absurd amount of spam and calls daily, every time I look at my phone there are another 19 missed spam calls it is absolutely insane.

So I started doing some digging and came across this post from a while ago:
[HowTo] Block unwanted calls - create blacklist

Is anyone using this currently and or can confirm that it is still relevant and working?

I had to flash lineage with gapps and install pixel dialer for my sanity for a week or so which I really dislike. But I absolutely need something to block or filter spam calls with so I don't throw my phone out the window.

Thanks!

@Zardozor25 What happens when you try "fastboot devices"?
Also if this is happening on Windows I had the same trouble. I resolved this by using Linux and installing android-tools. Windows absolutely refuses to see my FP5 in fastboot no matter what.

@wally
Hey, there is zero confusion on the name for the record. I did make a joke on a thread about dailying a "daily" b/c its unstable but I knew full well what I was getting into and it was the best option at the time.
Hate to re-flash as this was the install where the stars aligned and things worked that have not the other 9 million times I have installed troubleshooting.

Is there a beta channel for the FP5 or is that just considered the daily channel?

@arubislander said in Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.0 Beta 1 is now available for testing:

@Futura Isn't daily the development release?

I am thinking this might be causing unintended confusion... it seems people might be thinking that 'daily' means it is deemed suitable for daily usage, while in fact it means there are daily updates, since it is the development version.

Yes AFAIK it is the development and it is far less problematic than 20.04 on my device.
I just want to switch from dev to beta channel prior to 24.04 beta 2. but it seems to only see daily in the updater on the device.

@peat_psuwit said in Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.0 Beta 1 is now available for testing:

gsettings set io.ubuntu-touch.system-settings.update offer-development-release true

I am currently on 24.04 daily (567) and daily is the only release channel listed in the updater, does the above command apply only to 20.04 or will it be the same on 24.04?