Part 3/5:
The Fairphone 5 felt more like my ancient Note 9 than a modern phone in terms of performance and responsiveness. It was outperformed by both the Pixel 8 and the refurbished Galaxy Note 5 in our lab tests. This is likely due to Fairphone's choice of the Qualcomm QCM6490 SoC, which is optimized for industrial and commercial IoT applications rather than flagship smartphone performance.
Usability issues
The fingerprint sensor and volume buttons are not easily found by touch, and the vibration is weak compared to other phones. The ringer volume also has a very narrow range, making it either too quiet to hear or uncomfortably loud.
Software quirks and bugs