Dead phone, won't respond to anything

Hello!
My phone has totally died, for a couple of days it has been working badly, suddenly turning off and the tried too reboot but without success. It just stays in a never ending loop of the screen turning blue and then black, over and over again. Eventually, when I’ve been taking the battery out like ten times and tried restart the phone it works, always at different lengths. Sometimes for the whole days, and other times just for a few minutes or some hours.

But now this Saturday evening, it died completely after starting to act up again. Now I can’t start it att all, it doesn’t charge, the computer won’t notice it when i plug it in, the red light that normally light up when charging isn’t glowing… everything just seems dead. Is there anything I can do to get it back to life? I really need to get my pictures of it at least, because of course it was like half a year since I did a back up on my SD-card.

Please help!

Take out all cards and try again. If that does not help, I suggest a broken power button. That can be fixed easily by a #localrepairshop. :slight_smile:

You mean like the motherboard and daughterboard?:sweat_smile:
Opened it up yesterday and looked at the power button but it didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. So it must be something else.

You won’t see whether your power button is broken. That’s an internal failure.

The power button might be constantly pressed and by now your battery might have gone out of juice because of the constant reboots.

Oh, I see!
But shouldn’t the phone react at least when i plug in the charger/into the computer? (I’ve been trying different ones to establish that it’s not the cable or charger itself)

If your battery is deeply discharged, it might need a kick to start charging again (see the #batteryguide for instructions on how to do a battery reset). That will only help you however, if your power button is working fine, I fear.

I read the battery guide and tried to kick it, but without results, so if it is the power button, it indeed needs to be fully functional to work.

But then, I live in Sweden, so is there a repair shop that can handle the Fairphone here you think? :sweat:

You’ll have to find out. If you find one, be sure to add it to the list! :slight_smile:

Yeah, I guess so!
Going to try leave it at one then, hope they can fix the problem.
Thanks a lot for the help, I’ve been so sad since it died. Really love this phone and it have worked so good the (almost) three years I’ve owned it, would hate to leave it in this state.:cry:

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Well, no one in my hometown is able to fix the phone.
Apparently there would be to high costs for them, so they didn’t even want to try…
Is there any other way I could get it fixed? :frowning:

Some of the #repairshops on the list ship to other countries. That’s of course more expensive and there is still a risk that your problem is not fixed. Have you tried out repair shops in bigger Swedish cities?

No I haven’t, I could try reach out to them but I’m not sure they will be able to do anything either.

The last guy I spoke to said not many of them, if anyone at all, would even try fixing the problem when it is such a complicated and expensive procedure.

But if I could get the parts I need to try fixing (the most likely) problem, would I be able to repair it myself with some kind of guide for help? Or is it to hard for someone who does not work with putting phones together? :sweat:

@dbrgn has done it on his own. Maybe he can tell you how hard it is. In any case it requires a soldering iron with a fine point and a steady hand.

The procedure is really simple for a repair shop if they can solder (which I would expect, unless it’s an Apple repair shop :wink:) . The button costs around 3€ on Ebay. Should take around half an hour with the guide at https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Fairphone+1+Motherboard+Replacement/20530. I did the procedure twice and it worked both times.

I would ask them again and show them which part needs to be obtained and that there’s a detailed guide on how to take the phone apart. If you can’t find any shop that does it you can also send me a direct message.

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Apparently they didn’t think it was, but maybe they’re just lazy :unamused:
Tried to tell them exactly what I thought was the problem, but he only talked about how expensive it would be to orders parts etc.

Do you have any link to a button I can buy of ebay?

Yeah, check out this thread.

Thank you so much for your help!
I’m going to check with the repair shops again and tell them even more thoroughly how and what they need to do. I mean, I’m not supposed to be the one telling them how to do their job but hey, if it still won’t work I’ll just have to fix it myself! :muscle:

I’m no god at soldering though, so if i need any further help, could I contact you then? Maybe you friend who did it for you could give me some advice on how I will be able to succeed doing it :blush:

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Sure. Here are some comments in advance:

  • To remove the old button, thoroughly heat it with the tip of the soldering iron and push against it until it pops off. Might require a few attempts. The goal is to get all the solder hot at the same time. Adding more solder might also help for better temperature conductivity.
  • Before adding the new button, add some solder to one of the outer pads. Then place the new button on the board, hold it down with tweezers and try to re-heat the solder until the button moves into the right position.
  • Then finish soldering the other two pads. Make sure not to bridge them with the solder.
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Thanks mate, your help is much appreciated! :smiley:

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