I don't care if anyone has a Xiaomi, Oneplus, Samsung, etc. Each brand is using a modified version of Android, and they chose to be compatible with each other. But for example the "blue vs green bubble" drama is a thing specifically because of Apple locking their unsuspecting users into a closed ecosystem. And it sure isn't Android's fault for not being compatible with it.
The more power a company like this gains, the worse will it be for the whole industry.
They are all kind of terrible right now, at least for me. I hate what the big companies are doing, and the smaller projects such as Fairphone simply aren't good enough yet. Guess I'll try to make my existing one last for as long as possible, though that was already the plan.
i feel you, the fairphone 4 works well enough for me though. a lot of software/hardware bugs are yet to be ironed out fully, but fairphones are steadily getting better.
although the 6th gen needs to improve a lot, the 5's launch was disappointing to say the least.
I also have a Fairphone 4, but I have encountered no significant bugs I can remember.
Installed LineageOS on it though, with microG, instead of /e/.
Can you tell me what issues you had?
My FP4 was affected by the "ghost touch" hardware bug, i ended up getting a replacement screen after contacting support. (it never fully went away, it has a few spasms every once in a while)
also the crashing while connected to 5G put me in a few pickles. sometimes when receiving a call while watching youtube the call's notification bubble will take up to 5 seconds to appear at all.
it seems to also ocasionally forget that it has a SIM card installed, though that sim has been in use for 10+ years, so i can't say if that's the Fairphones's fault.
What is not good enough with Fairphone ?
Their 7 (?) years of software support is kind of misleading to me because they stop getting chip-level security updates after something like 3-4 years due to the specific Qualcomm chip they use. Not to mention the chip is on the slower side of today's phones, let alone phones 7 years from now.
I can see how others might be fine with that though, just my 2 cents.
Display, battery life, performance, supported bands, software reliability, camera quality, etc.
I know I am one of those weirdos that asks for a lot from a mobile device, but I want something that can act as a high speed hotspot for 5 devices and a desktop environment at the same time, while playing back high resolution media and charging fast. This kind of thing has always been possible with Samsung's flagship, but now every generation it feels like yet more is removed compared to the older one. I'm still on the S21U and while I'm not very happy with it, I haven't seen anything better, including the new Samsungs.
Maybe I should set my sights lower, but it just frustrates me because these are all things my S9+ could do in 2017.
Power users get screwed over now.