Advice on sending to repair

Hello lovely fellow FP users,

I have a dilemma, and I’d be interested to hear what you people think.

After my previous FP2 died, I relatively recently bought a refurbished one. After the first one I got was obviously faulty, I was sent a new (refurbished) one.

Again, there were some problems, though much less serious ones, including random reboots. After communicating with the (very lovely) support team, I reset the phone and started again. The reboots didn’t go away (though weirdly seem less frequent when the SIM cards are disabled and I am on WiFi only) and there are still occasional issues with network calls (though these calls are rare these days! :joy:).

The only thing to do now is to send it to be repaired, with the core module likely to be replaced. But my first FP2 also suffered from reboots, so frankly, I’m not at all convinced that I will get a perfectly working phone back.

And the thing is, I am getting rather sick and tired of repeatedly wiping and setting up my phone. This also means more or less another two weeks back with my old and annoying phone which I used for more than three months while this whole saga was going on. It’s just not worth it if I’ll have an only marginally-better-working phone.

I’m tempted to just manage as it is for a while and wait for FP3.

Am I being silly and defeatist?

Well, I don’t like to throw a FP2 to waste even after waiting, only because it’s not working as expected while warranty is still there. On the down side, when you send your refurbished FP2 to repair, you will be without phone for some time.

2 Likes

Maybe the SIM cards are faulty, a SIM card is also a piece of hardware with microelectronic. I had several support cases as FP2 angel, where the SIM card was to old (> 4years) or damaged (proven by changing with another new SIM card).
Or sometimes the new nano SIM are too loose inside the micro SIM adapter (rim).

Edit: I had one case this month where oxidated antenna contacts seemed the source of weired network behavior and reboots. (Bad radio performance caused by oxidation and scratchmarks on display module backside contact pads)

3 Likes

Have you read ✏ A little Guide to... Random Reboots? Have you tried to attach the battery more firm with a small piece of paper?

1 Like

Thanks for your reply!

I didn’t want to make my post too long, so didn’t go into too much details, but I did change SIM card just prior to my most recent factory reset (and the reboots actually started before I even inserted the SIM card!).

But very interesting about the antenna contacts! I just checked - the pads do seem to be a bit scratched. I’m not sure after how long they are supposed to reach this state - this is supposed to be a recently renewed phone! The link adds a disclaimer that “You clean your phone at your own risk” - do you know if that invalidates the warranty?

Thanks Jeroen!

I have read several things about dealing with reboots, and went through all the suggested stages I could find. However, I don’t remember ever coming across the point about 4G vs 3G.

As my phone reboots when the network is disabled, this is probably not the only issue, but I will try now to stay on 3G and see if that at least reduces the reboots while I am connected to the network, to the levels I currently experience with the network disabled.

Well, at least now I am certain that I don’t have long to wait for FP3! (email from Fairphone strongly hinting they’re releasing it on Aug 27)

1 Like

I’ve discovered another discussion on this forum which might shed some light on your experiences. In any case, I myself found it enlightening:

1 Like

Just to report back - after being on 3G for a little while, it doesn’t seem to have affected the frequency of the reboots. Unless any improvements were cancelled out by one of the app updates… :roll_eyes:

This topic was automatically closed 182 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.