Bloated battery fairphone 2 - how to access data

Hello everyone,

the battery of my fairphone 2 (bought less than 6 months ago) is bloated. The phone stopped working today in the middle of the day. At first I thought I ran out of battery (although it was specially earlier in the day even for the normal low battery life it has…) and when it didn’t charge I open the back case to find a bloated battery…

Is there any way I can access the data my connecting to a laptop, without a battery? I did send a support request by I have important data in there, I could not wait for over 2 days, let alone for a new battery (I don’t have a fairphone shop where I live).

I was already frustrated with the low life of the battery (6 months of a reasonable use) but now this…

Any help would be much appreciated!
TB

The Fairphone 2, like most smartphones, doesn’t work without a battery.
(Well, it can boot into fastboot mode without a battery, but you can’t use that to do anything useful in that situation.)

If you happen to have fairphoneangels in your vicinity, they could perhaps help you out with a battery to transfer your data.

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At least the battery is still in warranty (6 months for the battery). Fairphone Support should send you a new one free of charge.

You could try a local repair shop, they may be able to power the device using a stable benchtop power supply and make a copy of the data for you. Finding someone who’s Fairphone battery you can borrow is the safer and cheaper option.

I feel your pain, but at the same time it seems you have mission-critical data stored only on a mobile device that is easy to lose, get stolen, or damaged beyond repair (dropping it in the toilet is all the rage these days, but there are plenty of ways). In the case of a failed battery data should be recoverable, but in many other cases it will not be. Please, check whether your backup arrangements are still sufficient for your actual need.

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It looks like you’re having a problem with the battary chargingIC/PMIC. you can try to connect a lab bench power supply to it and see how the current draw behaves. If the PMIC is dead you will have to buy a new one and solder it on, but try the trick with the lab bench power supply first and don’t charge it when the power supply is on. You might have a chance to recover data.

Thank you everyone for your replies! I have contacted the support and a battery is on the way.
You’re right, I shouldn’t keep important information just on the phone…
The most frustrating part was the fact that I could (hopefully) just replace the battery to solve the problem but there are no batteries compatible with FF and no FF shop where I can just go and buy another one…

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