Same problems as the others… Some months ago i could use the phone for several days. Now i have to charge it every day. And when it gets to 15 % the battery load drops superfast. There might be a charger problem as well but anyway, the battery loading takes several hours… Actually one of my chargers cannot be the Problem, as my friend also uses it and does not have any problems.
I will take a look on the forum if there might be help.
Dear Stefan,
Thank you for moving the post and getting back to me with an answer. I tried the solution mentioned, but unfortunately it didn’t work. (I let the battery die, charged the phone, put the battery in after that). Unfortunately it took exactly 2.5 hours to charge fully with the phone turned off. Besides, from the appearance of 94% on, the light turned green, which I guess is not correct. I can try to do it again the next couple of days but I’m not sure if I will be able to do this - reserving 2,5 hours with an off-turned phone and letting the battery die is not very practical when not being at home.
I also checked whether the battery might be bloated, but I see no signs of this.
If anyone has other possible solutions or suggestions, these are welcome! Though I don’t adopt high standards for a smartphone - if the internet and mobile connection works, that’s fine for me - I experience this battery thing as a very naughty problem as it disturbs normal use of the phone to a great extent.
Cheers
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Update on my case: I didn’t have any luck with FP support. They asked me to do a number of tests (including the “kicking” the battery as described above), but none of them solved the problem.
I sent them notes and screenshots of the results, which I don’t think they’ve fully read, since I concluded my email saying that I feft this was not normal battery degradation and I got a very short response saying “It’s normal for batteries to degrade over time, but if you feel your battery is not degrading normally please let us know and we’ll replace it”.
When I repeated that the battery was behaving abnormally and described some more tests I had done, they suggested it might be my SIM-card that’s causing the problem. I highly doubt this, but I’ve ordered a new SIM-card just to be sure. However, in the meantime they’ve closed the support ticket before the new SIM even arrived, because I didn’t respond fast enough.
I must say I’m dissapointed with this level of support. To anyone else for who the solutions posted here do not work: if you value your time (and still want to support FP), I would suggest to just order a new battery from the shop. For myself, between the hardware issues and the inability to install custom operating systems, I’m on the lookout for a new smartphone. It’s a shame, since I had really hoped this one would last longer than two years.
After doing the spin test, I found out that I had a bloated battery. Reported it before the weekend and got a new one on warranty after the weekend.
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I tried this reset on my FP1 (in use since jan. 2014). I’ll share my experiences because they were surprising and maybe helpful for support or battery software. Two days ago in the evening my battery warning at 15% popped up. Until now start loading it asap, this time I decided not to, following this post. Yesterday early morning the indicator was at 1% so I expected it to die in short. It didn’t. In fact, the phone worked until this morning, another 26 hours, all the time indicating 1%! Then of course I started recharging it again following this post, phone off. Sometimes I looked to see how far and how quick it was loading. At 46% I decided to turn the phone on again. After the start the indicator directly showed 82%…!
Until now the drainage pace of the battery looks normal to rather quick, but it’ll take some days to find out exactly. By the way: nothing visibly wrong with the battery.
So there is (was in my case?) obviously something wrong with the software registering the battery load.
I am wondering now: knowing about some physical characteristics of rechargeable batteries that recharging it halfway is bad for the lifetime: supposing the 15% warning has nothing to do with reality I probably recharged too soon for an unknown period of time and an unknown number of times. Could this have hurt the battery lifetime? And could this be (one of) the cause(s) of the problems with other batteries?
This topic might be interesting for you:
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I never experienced the “cardinal symptoms” of a battery firmware that has to be reset but I do sometimes register a slight discrepancy in the battery status displayed by my phone when turned off compared to when turned on.
This has been discussed on the forum before. Nobody could say with absolute certainty but the consensus was that “halfway recharges” are not a bad thing. (Actually (maybe) it’s even best to keep the battery status above 60%)
Update: after resetting like above and fully charging my battery lasted for 4 days (my normal habits of use) which is like before. But now, one of the 15% bugs is here: from 15% it takes about 30 sec’s to zero. Experienced it twice now, so it probably going to last. Will try another reset.
By the way: there’s still something funny in the software: charging with phone off I checked: 24%. Enough to restart: then the battery shows 64% immediately. Turned off again and check: 64%.
Check if your battery is swelling! 
E.g. do the spin test.
My Fairphone FP1 showed the same symptomps. I sent them a video of my battery spinning and got a new battery on warranty in under a week.
I have the same issues. Either the battery goes like this; down to 1% very quick and stays there for a long time and then dies:
Or it goes like this:
From 100% to 1% in 42 minutes. Tried the starter thing twice without results but will try it again. No bulging what I can see. This problem has been for a week or so, worked fine before that. I have the first edition on the phone. Would be nice with a solution…
Only since updating from 1.8 to 1.85 I also have a similar problem: down to 15% a bit faster then it was before, and then from 15% to 0% (= autoshutdown) within 2 minutes.
Until the 1.85 update no issues at all, and from the day after the update I was treated with this…
My battery is not bloated, and it’s a FP from the first batch.
Sometimes batteries that start bloating are not visually bloated yet so you’ll need to do the spin test to be sure.
If you can’t spin the battery I’d try the “kickstart” again. Watch a video at full brightness in the evening until the phone dies, plug-in the phone without the battery, after some time put it in and leave it charging over night.
If the problems still exist make some screenshots to document them and contact support. Maybe they’ll give you a new battery even without a positive spin-test.
To make sure it’s not something else you could borrow someone else’s battery to see if the problems
persist.
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Dear Paul, thank you for your answer. I already did the kickstartt several times, but unfortunately this does not solve the problem.
I’ll try the spin test ASAP.
Regarding the screen shots, of what exactly do I need to make screen shots?
Best
The ‘spintest’ showed no bloating. I did the ‘kickstart’ twice, but to no avail.
And anyway: if the problem would indeed be battery-related, it would be a very big coincidence that the problem only occurred directly after the 1.8 → 1.85 update.
It should solve then, if you downgrade, I guess (Go to Fairphone Updater > Advanced Mode > Android for Fairphone > Cherry 1.6). Could you verify that?
I can’t miss my phone long enough for such an experiment.
I have had the same problem with my battery and it really bothered me a lot. The phone wouldn’t show the proper status and sometimes over night it didn’t charge properly – that was the worst.
At some point I have cleaned the contacts on my battery. I had noticed that they were corroded. Ever since my phone is doing much better. The battery status might still drastically change when turning it off and back on after it has been running on battery for quite some time already, but other than that, if used normally, it also behaves normally.
Hope this helps more people!
I did the spinning test now again and I think it started to bloat… so maybe it has been that problem the whole time… I have written to the support about it now.
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A month later and the problem is now clear: the battery is bloated (in the middle it is 1.25mm thicker then on the edge). Support is in the process of supplying me a new battery.
So with hindsight issues like I reported can be the very first sign of a bad, bloating battery.