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I own two broken Pro1s


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This is going to be a funny one. I'm the lucky owner of two broken Pro1s. Both from mid January batch.

One I used for 6 months:

  • Relatively poorly assembled to start with as the screen does not connect to both rubber pads when open causing more rattle than it should.
  • Left ctrl key does not provide any tactile feedback anymore.
  • Touch screen triggers ghost inputs rendering the device unusable.

One I just got delivered yesterday from a gentlemen who hardly used it since he got it in January:

  • Better assembled as the screen connects to both rubber pads when opened.
  • I can tell it has hardly been used as it shows none of the unavoidable tears my first Pro1 is showing after 6 months of use, 
  • However there is a nasty electrical fault that's causing the keyboard to malfunction when charging. For instance if I hit backspace when charging caps lock goes off along with a bunch of other keys.

I'm either extremely unlucky or Pro1 has some serious quality issues, the later being expected to be honest being a first product from a new start-up.
Now I contacted support about my first Pro1 with broken touch input like a week ago and all I got was a message asking if the device was damaged by water which it was not obviously.
Since that nothing.

What is your experience with FxTec support? How do they deal with hardware defect? Will I need to send my Pro1s to England to get them fixed? How fast can they deal with repair there? Do they actually repair them or just provide brand new phones when repair is not possible? How fast do they do repair?

Edited by Slion
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Email [email protected] to arrange a warranty repair for both of them. Please note, we're a little flooded with the recent batch at the moment, it may take a few days to get a reply, and then a couple of weeks to repair it once it arrives. We're going through all the piled repairs from the last few months of lockdown.

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16 minutes ago, Erik said:

Email [email protected] to arrange a warranty repair for both of them.

I'll do one at time as the newest one seems to be usable when not charging.

17 minutes ago, Erik said:

we're a little flooded with the recent batch

It figures, keep up the good work.

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18 minutes ago, Erik said:

We're going through all the piled repairs from the last few months of lockdown.

Sounds scary hopefully some people got more lucky than I was.

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1 hour ago, Erik said:

Email [email protected] to arrange a warranty repair for both of them. Please note, we're a little flooded with the recent batch at the moment, it may take a few days to get a reply, and then a couple of weeks to repair it once it arrives. We're going through all the piled repairs from the last few months of lockdown.

I know it's not relevant but could you give us some info on bugfixes that don't need certification? Are those being worked on?

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13 hours ago, Slion said:

What is your experience with FxTec support? How do they deal with hardware defect? Will I need to send my Pro1s to England to get them fixed? How fast can they deal with repair there? Do they actually repair them or just provide brand new phones when repair is not possible? How fast do they do repair?

I contacted them about my screen not working. Explained what I had done to get it working again. Answered NO to the question if there was any water damage..
Then they asked me if I was willing to replace the screen myself, Hell yeah!
So I had to wait a couple of weeks for the screen to be sent due to COVID-19. That was all settled within a week, except for receiving the screen. That took 3/4 weeks more or less.

Edited by DieBruine
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On 6/27/2020 at 5:51 PM, Erik said:

Email [email protected] to arrange a warranty repair for both of them.

I just sent the following email:

On 6/27/2020 at 6:11 PM, Slion said:

Hi,

Could we follow up on that and organise RMA for one of my Pro1s?
As described in that forum post I have now two broken Pro1s.
I want to organise RMA for the Pro1 I used since January with the following defects:

  • Day one issue: Screen does not connect to both rubber pads when open causing more rattle than it should.
  • Started recently: Left ctrl key does not provide any tactile feedback anymore.
  • Started recently: Touch screen triggers ghost inputs rendering the device unusable.

Once you guys fixed those issues and send it back to me we can organise RMA for my second Pro1.

Cheers,
S.

 

 
 
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@Erik So it looks like you guys have your hands full.

I have a Pro1 with mostly just a broken touch panel and one with a broken keyboard.
If I were to swap the screen assembly in theory I would have a working Pro1 with just a squishy Ctrl key.
My second Pro1 would then have a broken keyboard and touch panel, I could send you guys this one for repair.

Would that void my warranty? 🤣

Edited by Slion
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On 6/30/2020 at 6:33 PM, Slion said:

@Erik So it looks like you guys have your hands full.

I have a Pro1 with mostly just a broken touch panel and one with a broken keyboard.
If I were to swap the screen assembly in theory I would have a working Pro1 with just a squishy Ctrl key.
My second Pro1 would then have a broken keyboard and touch panel, I could send you guys this one for repair.

Would that void my warranty? 🤣

So I went ahead anyway and did swap the screen assembly, that was very easy to do. Now I have one working Pro1, from which I'm writing that post, and another useless Pro1 with both a broken touch panel and a broken keyboard.

Today I also received an email from support asking me to send my Pro1 for repair. I reckon I'll post it tomorrow hoping you guys can fix both keyboard and touch panel or just send me a new phone instead.

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On 6/28/2020 at 7:27 AM, DieBruine said:

I contacted them about my screen not working. Explained what I had done to get it working again. Answered NO to the question if there was any water damage..
Then they asked me if I was willing to replace the screen myself, Hell yeah!
So I had to wait a couple of weeks for the screen to be sent due to COVID-19. That was all settled within a week, except for receiving the screen. That took 3/4 weeks more or less.

I clarified that with @DieBruine via pm and what he did is actually just swap the Pro1 screen assembly that includes display, camera, speaker, a few sensors and bezel. This is very straight forward to achieve with the proper tools. The trickiest part being to remove the stickers on those five screws without damaging them. Then you just have two cables to disconnect, swap the screen assembly, put everything back together and you are done.

Replacing the screen and touch panel itself is certainly more involving but looks doable. I got myself a couple of those Elephone U Pro panels off ebay for the long run and it looks like they would indeed fit.

Edited by Slion
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6 minutes ago, Slion said:

The trickiest part being to remove the stickers on those five screws without damaging them.

For those in the UK,  here is where I got my black stickers-- had to use a roundabout method to get them as they won't ship to US.  I don't know if they ship to EU or not. Yeah, way more than any one needs, but they fit perfectly.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1600-COLOURED-DOTS-5mm-STICKY-CIRCLE-STICKERS-CODE-PLANNER-CHART-LABELS-ROUND/181524874653?var=480486707280&hash=item2a43b9c59d:m:mETVYHv6c0nGe17rnMZwyCg

If you are in the US, I am happy to send you some in a business envelope.

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Actually I don't mind the naked screws, too bad they are not black though. I just replaced one of those silver screws with a black one from an age old Nokia E7 repair kit. Works great.

 

IMG_20200701_204102.jpg

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Support asked me to send my phone over for repair yesterday. So I did just that today providing the following explanations:

Quote

I've had two broken Pro1s. One with a broken touch screen and one with a broken keyboard. You can find the full story on the forum.
In order to have at least one working Pro1 I swapped the screen assembly as you told other customers it was ok to do that without voiding the warranty. It was indeed very straight forward and now I have at least one working Pro1 and I just sent you the broken one with both a broken touch panel and a broken keyboard hoping you are still happy to fix it under warranty.

What's wrong with the touch panel?
It's fairly easy to reproduce that issue just try a touch tester and you should see ghost inputs mostly around one line of pixels. It often happens when using the touch screen so just move two fingers around the display and you should see it.

What's wrong with the keyboard?
That one can be trickier to reproduce. While the device is fully charged and still pluged to power USB, hit the keyboard's backspace key and the caps lock key should go off too among with a bunch of other keys. Basically the keyboard sometimes sends ghost inputs that have nothing to do with the key you are pushing. It mostly happens when the battery charge is high and plugged to USB but sometimes it happens without USB being plugged. That sounds like a nasty electrical fault.

 

 

Edited by Slion
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/2/2020 at 1:20 PM, Slion said:

Support asked me to send my phone over for repair yesterday. So I did just that today providing the following explanations

FxTec received my broken phone on the 6th of July. I have not heard anything from them.

https://www.dhl.de/en/privatkunden/pakete-empfangen/verfolgen.html?piececode=CY464350053DE

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/1/2020 at 2:58 PM, Slion said:

I clarified that with @DieBruine via pm and what he did is actually just swap the Pro1 screen assembly that includes display, camera, speaker, a few sensors and bezel. This is very straight forward to achieve with the proper tools. The trickiest part being to remove the stickers on those five screws without damaging them. Then you just have two cables to disconnect, swap the screen assembly, put everything back together and you are done.

Replacing the screen and touch panel itself is certainly more involving but looks doable. I got myself a couple of those Elephone U Pro panels off ebay for the long run and it looks like they would indeed fit.

Hi, I'm thinking of buying a couple Elephone U Pro panels as well.

In AliExpress I found two options. One is the panel/screen only, and the other includes a frame.
Which one did you order? From the photos on the listing it seems the Pro' does indeed use not only the same screen but also the same frame as the U Pro. 

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On 8/28/2020 at 3:29 PM, agent008 said:

Which one did you order?

I got mines from eBay. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by frame. What you need it the whole glass including the holes for camera, earpiece, LED and other sensor.

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15 hours ago, Slion said:

I got mines from eBay. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by frame. What you need it the whole glass including the holes for camera, earpiece, LED and other sensor.

The one with the frame, includes the black "bezel" the glass is attached to. 

No frame:
image.png.945413f19f62acf1a2783f105e0d8497.png

With frame:
image.png.278d5eef85ac6d87518c9d24daed7da8.png

This is the Aliexpress link - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000523673519.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.69b03c00X4Hbs9&mp=1

Edited by agent008
Added Aliexpress link
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41 minutes ago, agent008 said:

The one with the frame, includes the black "bezel" the glass is attached to. 

No frame:
image.png.945413f19f62acf1a2783f105e0d8497.png

With frame:
image.png.278d5eef85ac6d87518c9d24daed7da8.png

This is the Aliexpress link - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000523673519.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.69b03c00X4Hbs9&mp=1

I don't think that the frame is the same since it looks so much different on Elephone U Pro.

Pictures of Pro1:

spacer.png

20200122_214230_small.jpg

https://mobile.twitter.com/chenliangchen/status/1163524008471605249

spacer.png

Edited by FlyingAntero
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@Slion
So still no word on your repairs huh? I am still waiting for a replacement screen. After I have received that one, I need to send my own phone back for investigation/repairs. Out of four phones delivered, mine has a non-working video-out. The fact that you still haven't heard from FxTec makes me shiverrrrrrrrr. Also, I'm not used to this waiting in vain game. My screen would be sent two weeks ago, should be here by now. Request for tracking info also not honored yet. 
So, long story short; 'glad' to see you're in the same boat. But very unhappy with my future. At least a month without my phone so it seems pfff

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