A severe crashing and restarting story just started to happen to my Fairphone. To solve the problem I already did some speculations which mainly include the energy supply.
First let me explain my problem
Since I updated my Fairphone to Kola Nut and right before did the storage update my FP1 crashes quite often. The first time this occured was during the update to Kola Nut right after the Storage Update from 1.6. I was still doing the Kola Nut Update on recovery mode so I had to find the update on the SD-Card. While browsing the phone was suddenly showing the blue start screen without any text then went off again and started the blue screen. It flashed for a while on it’s own until I got impatient and started the recovery mode again with pressing the volume up and power button. I could then update and everything seemed to work fine for a few hours. But then, all of sudden the screen went black and restarted the phone. Without any warning this “restarting” happens quite often. Sometimes it just starts normally and I need to reenter my SIM-Pin and sometimes the process failes as described with the flashing screen forcing me to restart on recovery mode and select to reboot the system.
On my search for the cause of the problem I realised that every time after a crash and restart the battery level dropped severely.
So either a component of the phone which is causing the crash consumes a large amount of power right before it crashes or the battery itself can’t supply enough power to keep the FP running.
Another minor problem I recently discovered and saw more frequently was that the power button performes unpredictable with sometimes turning off the FP’s screen just as it should and probably every second time showing the shutdown menu where to select to either restart, shutdown or put the phone into Airplane mode. I’m very sure that I pressed the button for only a short time (t < 1s).
What do you reckon? Is the crashing and failing restart connected to the battery?
Thanks for your aid!
the screenshot shows my battery graph with one crash right at the beginning (about 95% battery level), one at the first drop of energy (85%) and one at the second drop (from 65% to 20%)
I can’t say if it’s definitely battery related but whenever there is a chance that the battery causes problems it’s a good idea to test if it starts bloating e.g. with a spin test.
A bloated battery could explode so stop using it and contact support to get a new one.
If it’s not related to a bloated battery I’d still contact support
Thanks @paulakreuzer , but it’s definitely not bloating. My battery is flat as a pancake but when the battery gets fully run-down and loaded to 100% with a 2 A loader the problem doesn’t seem to reappear. However this can’t explain the behaviour of the failing restarts.
Does anyone else experiences failing restarts, which make a start via recovery mode necessary since an update?
I’ll try to contact support but I’m not confident of getting a definite solution from them
Just to be sure I’d still do the spin test as a a bloati-ng battery doesn’t have to be bloat-ed yet. (I saw @Stefan’s battery that got replaced by FP because of the spin test and it looked totally normal.
Also please post back if you get an answer from support. Even if you are right and they can’t find a solution for you they might give some additional info that helps some wise guys here on the forum to come up with a solution! (a bit of wishful thinking combined with genuine respect for the forum’s swarm intelligence )
I just want to confirm that I have the very same problem as vanSun described. On my FP1 I experience frequent (severals a day) reboots coming with severe dropping of battery status. I don’t see a real pattern, the only thing that I recognized is that the crash often happens when I am using gallery (viewing or deleting photos), or the camera.
I can also confirm that this behavior was introduced with 1.8.5 and did not occure before!
The support answered and as I imagined the reply wasn’t quite useful. I was just asked “if the situation is still the same”.
Actually it didn’t remain the same. The problems grew.
My Fairphone crashes now at least every 5 minutes when I want to use it. It fails to restart even more often than before. The power button reacts already to slight touches, even before it gets pressed properly. All this makes the phone unusable for me now.
However I could eliminate some more reasons for the crahes:
It’s not SIM related; The phone crashes with or without them
It’s not related to any connection; Wi-Fi, HSPA, EDGE, 3G or no Internet or connection at all can’t save the phone from crashing
It’s not related to an App; the very first crashes occurred in the recovery mode and right after the update before any further installations
@eMarcus Could you fix your problems already? Did you follow @Stefan’s advice to reinstall the update? I can’t because I don’t have an SD-card on hand.
You should really try to get hold of an SD-Card, to rule out a failed installation. (If you cannot borrow one from somebody else, you could maybe buy one. They aren’t very expensive anymore nowadays.
Thanks everyone again for your advices.
The support recommended me to factory reset my phone. I did, but the next crash was just minutes away. Without changing anything on the phone it crashed a few times later.
I didn’t use the phone much since the crashes occurred so I can’t tell any further Information about some possible patterns. However I could follow @DjDas advice and gather the phones activities right before the crash. I used ADB and the logcat command but I’m not that much into android to understand the information it’s giving me. I will send it to the support and if you want to have a look at it I would be happy. Anyhow I won’t post it all into the forum to keep it from becoming a data dump.
The last entry was:
“I/BufferQueue( 129): FramebufferSurface](this:0x419e9008,api:1) [queue] fps:1.
81, dur:1659.05, max:998.21, min:154.07”
(had to delete the “[” in front of “Framebuffer”)
I couldn’t find the explicit word “error” but “err”. Doesn’t seem to me, but is it androids way to tell that something wen’t wrong?
If so the only message was “I/GraphicBuffer( 129): allocate buffer (w:544 h:922 f:5) err(0)”
Can you rule out, that just the power button is defective and is unintentionally pressed which could cause reboots?
I know, sounds silly…but that is the only explanation of your quoted sentece above in my opinion. AND it would explain your reboots.
But I have no good ideas to check this, maybe you can unscrew it and check for broken/cold soldering spots or just a piece of dust makes the power button hyper-sensitive?
(But I don’t know nothing if you lose warranty by screwing around…?)
First I made a manual update (including the repartitioning) which caused my phone to be completely deleted - something I might have wanted to know earlier Anyway, the problem persisted, so I inspected the battery as some people recommended in this thread. I am not sure if it is actually bloating, but I feel a slight hill when I move my fingertips over the battery, so I decided to order a replacement battery which is still due to be delivered. I have not used the phone as a precaution until the battery is replaced. I will report if the new battery fixes the problem or not!
If your Fairphone’s battery is swollen, you’ll get a free replacement on warranty easily. (You can do the spin test to verify - put your battery on a table and spin it. If it spins easily, it’s bloated.)
)
Anyway, the problem persisted, so I inspected the battery as some people recommended in this thread. I am not sure if it is actually bloating, but I feel a slight hill when I move my fingertips over the battery, so I decided to order a replacement battery which is still due to be delivered. I have not used the phone as a precaution until the battery is replaced. I will report if the new battery fixes the problem or not!