Fairphone 2 gets slower and more and more problematic

Help Fairphone 2
1

Dear Fairphone Angels and fellow sufferers,
My FP2 (5,5 years) gets slower and slower. Sometimes the screen doesn’t react (I used the distance sensor, it does not really help), sometimes it freezes. Sometimes means several times a day.
It opens sites very, very slowly.
And obviously it reboots quite often, too. Sometimes this results in a completely frozen screen I can reanimate only by taking out and putting back the battery.
I’m loth to abandon the phone and purchase a new one. Even my mother’s iPhone still works, and it is over six years old.
Would I need to replace something?
I have the newest operating system.

Thanks for any hint that might help me to keep using the phone!

Best regards,

Eva

2

Please check Settings > Storage – how full is your storage?

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86 % full.
Very astonishing.
I store no videos, no photos.
And I throw out superfluous apps quite frequently.
But it shows 18 GB for apps…

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4

I think freeing up space is very likely to help with the slowness.

18 GB for apps is quite a lot, perhaps most of your media (photos, videos) are integrated in WhatsApp? Usually photos and videos are stored in the DCIM folder, but when they are used in WhatsApp, they might end up in a different place in your storage.

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Thanks a lot. I found what it is. I saved all old editions of “Die ZEIT” - 3,87 GB.
Will throw them out.
But then - Google Play services: 3,38 GB.
How can I reduce THAT?
I’ll have to check each single app.
But thanks a lot - I’d never have thought that web based applications also eat up so much storage in the phone.

6

I have a similar problem, my internal memory is 73% full, the internal memory is 18GB and is occupied by the system. Can this be reduced somehow?

7

I cannot give much advice here and even how much space should be left “free” is more or less a guess of mine. I’d vaguely recommend to always stay below 80%.

If you really cannot find the “culprit”, you might want to backup data that’s important to you and do a factory reset.

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I’ve already done that with the factory setting, it took about 1-2 months and the memory allocation from the system was ready again.

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Maybe others have an idea what might blow up the share of the System so much. I can only say that on my Test FP2 running Fairphone Open (the upcoming Android 10 beta) in near-virgin state, System only occupies 5.1 GB.

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Factory reset was the only thing that helped with my FP2. Backup Data, pictures, conversations etc. Do only restore the Data / Apps you really need. There are still some random freezes (since A9), but generally it works.

Important: Install the latest firmware before factory reset.

Good luck

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That looks not normal. Without knowing what data that should be, I would delete Storage of the App under settings-apps-play services-storage

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Where could this be found?

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Thanks a lot.
I’m just deleting all useless storage of the different apps…
I really don’t need Google to store my search history - 377 MB (for example).
I never went so much into the app details. Very helpful remarks, I really appreciate that.
Maybe that helps me use the FP2 some more years :slight_smile:

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Without knowing your individual set up its most likely difficult, however mine was never that huge. Currently its with FPOS Android 9 inkl Google but without any Apps only 5GB. But with LOS18.1+GApps as daily driver it was neither more

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Interesting. Why?

Considering that the so-called factory reset only wipes the data partition (mainly user data + Apps installed by the user and their data) and the cache partition … where does the firmware come into play?
And what kind of “firmware” are we talking about in this context? The OS? The modem firmware ZIP for Custom ROMs (not needed when using Fairphone OS or Fairphone Open OS)?

The factory reset touches neither the installed OS nor any firmware parts. If that limitation itself is suspected to be a problem, then a complete reinstall from scratch should be considered?

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Assuming Eva ist using the standard Fairphone OS, she should use the builtin App “Fairphone Updater”. First Update this App to the latest version via Google Playstore.

It’s my experience that every Firmware Version for the FP2 solved some problems, and brought new ones at the same time. And of course brought security updates (current level is 5 of january 2022!) So in the over 5 years of using my FP2, I made about 2 or 3 factory resets, after which the phone ran better and more reliable. For examble, after the last firmware update, which reduced my frequent display freezes, the vibration motor didn’t work any longer (only at startup). I checked and toggled all settings without success. After factory reset everything worked fine.

Reinstall from scratch would have been the last option, but for me it seemed not to be necessary. And I’m not familiar whith this.

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I have the setup LOS 18.1 and Gapps

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I don’t know which version of Android OS you are using because I am using a FB3+, in internal storage, check the size of the data cache which keeps growing unless it cleared, by clearing it a new data cache will start to be built, a large data cache can slow your system, by clearing the data cache also frees space on the system partition on the Internal storage.

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Dear all,
thank you very much for the feedback. I managed to free some 6 GB of storage.
And I have Fairphone OS 21.12, that’s the last version, isn’t it? I’ll also
So I sincerely hope that this is sufficient, and I don’t have to reset my phone to factory settings…
All the best,
Eva

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I think a factory reset should be a last resort.

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