The screencaps in this blog post is from a Facebook group, Firefly Mobile Aurii Envy Philippines (Official). It is a closed group so the information shared in that group is not easily accessible to non-members. The information may be helpful to others. You may join the group for tips on how to resolve the problem on your own.
The Faulty Update
Sometime in July 2017, Firefly Mobile Aurii Envy units automatically received over-the-air system updates which downloaded and installed itself
without permission from the owner of the smart phone. That update rendered numerous Envy units unusable.
Firefly Mobile was willing to repair the affected units but when asked regarding the cause of the problem, they said that they are still investigating the problem. Without knowing the cause of the problem, the earlier batch of the repaired Envy units experienced the problem again.
Firefly Mobile Service Center later realized that the problem was to due to the faulty system update, an update they knew nothing about. Firefly Mobile claimed that they did not push the system update to the smart phones. To prevent further system updates, the Service Center disabled the wireless system update in the succeeding batch of units they repaired.
It has been around one month since the problem was first reported but new units are still being affected by the faulty system update. There was no action to stop the system update since the company have no idea about the system update.
The Inconvenient Experience
If you try to contact Firefly Mobile's Facebook account, they will only advise the person to go to the store or service center. They have no information on any of their social media accounts about the problem, how to avoid it nor how to fix it; a public apology should not be expected.
It takes one to three weeks to repair the phone. If the phone was returned to the store for repair, it may take longer as delivery to/from a store is usually scheduled for only once a week. The official receipt or cash invoice is required before the phone will be accepted for repair.
The units that are still under warranty are repaired for free. Mine was still under warranty so I didn't have to pay.
The service center landline are usually busy, while some stores where the phone was returned didn't reply to the text messages and calls. With Firefly Mobile's social media account unable to address any of the repair issue, the customer is left with no proper customer support.
Reflection on the Firefly Brand
Although Aurii Envy is a smart phone that offers affordable phones, Firefly Mobile, the company that offers it does not have enough resources to control a problem like this from spreading to other units. At the moment, the company still has no official statement as to the cause of the problem. This could mean that they have no capacity to identify the cause. They do have qualified service center technicians that can fix the phone without losing valuable data on the phone.
This will probably be the last phone I will buy from this company. The few thousand peso I saved from buying this unit is not worth the weeks I have to manage without the phone.
