Battery life of FP2

I have had my FP2 since October 2016. I love it for how ethical it is - but it is becoming unusable :frowning: I have replaced the battery twice now and gone through the battery improvement fix, but it can barely handle GPS or playing music so I never use it for that or podcasts. If I put the GPS on for a 30 minute journey, I’ve lost 30% of the battery by the time I reach the location (for comparison, my 2 year old Samsung work phone loses at max 5%). Phone calls also use huge amounts. It freezes regularly and is generally very slow and get a hot very quickly. I run it with the GPS and Bluetooth off pretty much all the time.

Does anyone have any recommendations for what I can do beyond replacing the battery again please?

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What you describe is not normal battery behaviour if the battery is not that old (for reference, Fairphone’s warranty for the battery spans 1 year, but depending on individual usage the batteries can perform well even longer).

A first trivial measure would be rebooting the phone to shutdown processes eating battery because they somehow hung themselves up.
Else there are general hints on improving battery life in the batteryguide.

You might consider looking into how to backup your important data, and then do a factory reset, which often helps in cases where the phone becomes slow and unresponsive …

https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001610926-How-to-make-a-Factory-reset-on-Fairphone-2-

… or, in case of an OS problem or you just wanting to be more thorough about it, completely wipe the phone and install from scratch (which a factory reset on the Fairphone 2 will not do) …

Then … Which OS are you running, and are you running a current OS version or an older one?

Since every major Android version upgrade so far includes battery life improvements, there are differences depending on which OS you run, and which version of it.
Fairphone’s own OSes are at Android 7 (Nougat) currently, which should have better battery life than Android 6 (Marshmallow) before or Android 5 (Lollipop) which the Fairphone 2 was originally shipped with back when it came out.
LineageOS on the Fairphone 2 is at Android 9 (Pie) currently and should have better battery life than Android 7, but it is not officially supported by Fairphone, it is a community effort.

Apart from that, Google Apps and services are known to eat battery compared to when you not have them.
Fairphone OS includes Google Apps and services, as most people want to have them.
Fairphone Open OS and LineageOS don’t include them by default.
If you want to consider this, here’s a tag for a start … livingwogoogle.

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Thank you so much for this - this is all really helpful. I’m running Fairphone OS Android 7. I do use some Google apps, not all. I’ve actually just backed all my WhatsApp photos up to Google photos so I can factory reset (that’s the only thing not saved online; I’ve been resisting uploading to Google but it’s the fastest way to back up 3 yrs of photos. I just lost 90% battery uploading the photos over an hour (granted there were a LOT of them).

Mine is pretty much the same. I’ve noticed it getting very hot too. AIDA64 shows many of the temperature sensors over 80 degrees (one always to hit 93!) and the battery as ‘overheating’ too. It got worse with the latest update along with the WiFi issues.

I think calling out major apps like the Google apps suite a bit problematic here. They are used without issue on millions of phones.

This feels like some thermal paste having failed under a heatsink or some sort of bug causing the cpu to run away :confused:

I’ve had my upgraded camera fail and I’ve had my second microphone fail too but I can’t face replacing it or the battery as I feel the main module is on the way out now. It’s really disappointing as I don’t feel Iike I’ve had a fully working phone since getting my original fairphone when it was released years ago :(. (It’s a joke among my friends)

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