Boot with broken power button

Help Fairphone 4
1

Hi there,
my power button on FP4 suddenly died. Fingerprint sensor is still working (I could still unlock after plugin in power cable). I then wanted to make a backup but before I had my computer prepared also the battery went out, Now I seem to be stuck.
I can charge the battery and see the battery meter when power cable is plugged in.
Since power button is broken, I cannot switch the phone on.
I figured out that there is a bootloader that I can enter by holding volume down while pluggin in power cable. There I can select actions like “recovery mode” or “start” with volume up/down.
However to select such an action like “start” it says I have to press power button.
The power button is in the housing/frame of FP4 and that cannot be ordered as spare part in the shop.
I found old posts already about fairphone1 users with dead power button.
Therefore I cannot believe that even on FP4 the designers created this bootloader and never thought about a way to use the phone when the power button gets broken or to repair it.
Is there some magic trick available (e.g. sending some data signal via USB-C) to boot the phone and make a backup?

p.s.: I found this Boot Fairphone 3 with broken power button - #3 by mxeff and already installed fastboot on my linux machine but am still unable to use it booting my phone. When I run fastboot continue the FP4 reboots and shows the battery meter again instead of booting the OS.
Any hint would be highly appreciated since I am very desperate now.

Thanks & regards
Jörg

2

What is fastboot reboot doing?

2 Likes
3

This made the trick: fastboot reboot emergency
hurray, I can at least backup my phone

4 Likes
4

Also I found this: Activate screen without power button
Now I can still unlock my device without power button but just fingerprint sensor working around my problems so the device is still usable. Using NovaLauncher and Screen Lock Widget, I can also lock the screen with a touch of the widget on my desktop. Great!

5

If someone is looking for a way to unlock with partly broken touch and or screen there are options for that [if you have the debugger enabled and stored the access key on your computer]. An example is scrcpy where you can see you phones screen on your computer (for security reasons this only works for some areas) .

6

You can boot an FP3 with a broken power button by plugging in the charger then disconnecting it when the Fairphone and Android logos appear. I don’t know if this works for the FP4, though. Just thought I’d mention it on the off chance.

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