the phone can no longer be assembled and disassmebled safely. Plastic parts (on display and frame) became brittle and are starting to fall off. This means some screws cannot be used and various componers are not working because they get disconnected by frame twisting. Battery life is low and phone refuses to charge. I suspect faulty USB-C port.
Do you know if the plastic frame can be replaced? And what happened to bottom module it’s out of stock for a week now. Is there a way to ressurect the USB port perhaps? I tried to clean it, but results were not good. It charges only if I keep the cable forcefully in the port. Otherwise I get slow charge or no charge.
What you need (the “plastic frame”) is most likely what the repair price list calls the “rear module”. You cannot order it directly and probably only Fairphone’s Repair Center in France has it. You will need to contact Fairphone Support to find out how this is dealt with (unfortunately I assume they won’t send out this part and only allow their Repair Centre to replace it on your FP3).
I should have taken pictures. Now I fear that if I take it apart again for pictures, the phone is done. The main body (maybe rear module) has plastic frame or “skeleton”. The parts that fall off are where the display module screws are attached. Same plastic parts also broke off from the display module.
Some cables work better than others. Direction matters for some reason too. Macbook M1 cable + charger is the most successful, but I still have to keep pressing it in to maintain charging.
FYI, if you’re annoyed of holding the USB-C cable into the phone, you may shutdown the phone, take off the battery and load it in an external, generic Li-Io loader. I use Pixo C2+ which worked for all Li-Io battery types I tried but is out of production. I strongly assume something similar is available - IIRC there was a thread out such loaders here in the forum.
True, the quality is still bad, but I think it’s stellar compared to FP2 . My FP2 started to fall apart in just two months of use, FP3 lasted over 1 year. I hope FP4 will become obsolete before dying of build quality, like other phones.