Fairphone 2 - dead?

[rvense]

My Fairphone 2 (original batch) has been acting weird lately - occasionally it would turn off and not respond to anything, then suddenly be fine for a few days. I though this was battery related, since it felt like pushing the battery into the contacts would make it start when nothing else would. Now it is not responding to that either. I have two batteries, both measure ~3.8 volts.

If I remove the battery and plug in the charger, I get a solid red LED, but other than that, there is no response to anything. If the battery is in, the LED doesn’t light.

I saw a post about a debug connector and internal USB test points. I am comfortable with things like that, but is there any difference between powering the phone from those test points and from the lower module? I am probably going to get a new phone next week, but there are some pictures and videos from the last few weeks that I would really like to get off this one.

[Alex.A]

@rvense

If I remove the battery and plug in the charger, I get a solid red LED, but other than that, there is no response to anything. If the battery is in, the LED doesn’t light.

This means you have a hardware problem either with the bottom module or the core module.

[rvense]

Are you able to elaborate on that? What is not being connected? As I said, it seemed like the problem was physical, about the battery making contact. Charging was never a problem.

[Alex.A]

I fear I don’t have the technical knowledge to help you further, this test is taken from the FP official support articles, stating that, when plugged without the battery, the FP2 should loop doing 1. showing the FP logo 2. vibrating 3. showing the red LED, and that if not, the problem is either with the core-module or the bottom-module, and it is a proof of a hardware problem, but not with the battery (or not only).
I once had such a problem with my FP2 (it died one day, plugging it didn’t do anything, plugging it without the battery just showed the red LED during 5 seconds then disappeared), following a battery draining issue caused by a kernel wakelock (see Process irq/288-wcd9xxx draining battery). But in my case, the phone was under warranty and I just sent it for repair and got a new core module, as it was factory defect.

@rvense

I saw a post about a debug connector and internal USB test points.

Which post was it?

[rvense]

This is the post:

Information about the "debug connector" on the FP2

Hi Luca - See the layout for the USB test points and the debug connector on the FP2 main PCBA: [image] The debug UART console is routed both to two test points and to the B2B connector. I have included the reference of the connector and the matching plug. You can order those at Digikey (and you can get just a few, not a full reel of 6k units). The USB test points are simply pads that expose the USB1 port that is going down the length of the PCB to the bottom modular connector. This is used…

I can’t get my core module out of the back case to access them, though. There are two small Torx screws under the edges of the display connector that I can’t figure out how to get to.