Fairphone 3+, Dead in 3 years

[Jens1]

The special discount offers ended at the end of july. Maybe just keep the FP3 for some time, in case an similar offer comes back or sell the working parts of your phone at the market in this forum.

PS: After the support has answered

[Javiryemi]

Hi All,
thanks for all the interesting information about this relatively “common” problem. Unfortunately it has happened to me as well. I bought an FP3 in 2020. Las week I was in a hurry and had just 10 minutes to recharge it, It went up till 15%-20% battery. I used it as a Navigation system till it went off. It hasn´t recovered and I have not been able to load it again. No LED light, not a response. I am one of these “back pocket trousers” carriers… so might be a cause.

I am feeling a bit disappointed and as well asking myself what to do next (repairing - buying an FP5 - buying something different). I will try first to check in a different motherboard - I live in Dortmund, so far I did not see any angels here in Ruhr Area - and / other the “oven” solution.
Best Regards

[ThoKu88]

Hy everyone.
I have a Fairphone 3 and this morning, liing on the table it stopped workng. Research - sudden death seems to be the case. Replacement of accumulator, bottom moduel, top module … nothing changed:
The phone showed no reaction to anything. No LED when USB-Charger is plugged in, no reaction to any button or button combination. I found the following thread:

Sudden Death (or not?)

My FP3+ stopped working a few days ago. Went black, no charging LED when plugged in, Battery was half full. Had the same issue about a year ago and ended up sending it in for repairs because it was still covered under warranty. But now i’d have to pay for a repair and it’s just not worth it. However: I discovered that if i bend and twist my phone a bit i will be able to get ist to boot. I was able to save my pictures stored on the phone but then the phone froze and i couldn’t save any more d…

I thried to twist the phone slightli - nothing happened. I connected the USB Carcher and gave pressure to several points on the motherboard to see if the LED lights somewhen up - nothing happend. I spent some time with a “professional” Mobile phone emergency repair store just to realize the guy knows nothing about fairphones.

I found this thread:

Noisy coloured pixels on my Fairphone 2

Edit by @moderators: This post contains instructions that can cause severe harm to you. So welcome in the club of broken pogo pins I am lucky that I only have trouble with these pins at work. There is one thing you could try before you swap your core module. It is a dangerous action, but if you do not have anything to loose it is worth a try. I guess you have (a) broken solder joint(s) on the pogo pin(s). Resoldering by hand would be hard, moreover most people do n…

So I had nothing to loose → The thread proposed to bake the motherboard to resolder a possibly disjunced solder part. AND IT WORKED FOR ME! Thank you @ElKrasso!!!
I took the fairphone apart until I have the motherboard naked on the table. I heated up the oven to 200C°. I put the motherboard in the oven for 8 Minutes. Then I opened the door and waited for 2 Minutes. I took out the motherboard, let it cool down, reassembling the phone and tadaaaaa - it started as if nothing had happened.

Of course i have to repeat the warnings: with this procedure you can damage your phone - and as an electrical engineer I think not the heat is the most dangerous part (ESD). But to repeat the words from @ElKrasso : If you have nothing to loose it is worth a try! I just wantd to share this experience. If someone is lost as I was it this morning it can probably help…

Thomas

[yvmuell]

I moved your post here, please ensure to back-up all data, as this might not be a permanent fix.

[ThoKu88]

Thank you for moving the post to the right place. Yes it must be clear, that the phone has obvioulsy a weak point on the motherboard and this weak point most probably does not dissappear with this method. The first thing I have done was to backup the data from the phone. I am happy to have been given this opportunity.

[ElKrasso]

Hallo Thomas,

Thanks for the flowers.
I am really happy it helped your FP3 got back to operation.

But, that may last only a few days. You probaly know as an electrical engineer, a cooking oven does not fulfil the requirements of a proper soldering and does not match any IPC standards.
I highly recommend a backup of any important data from the phone.

Sorry for the downer :-/
ElKrasso

[AnotherElk]

I moved your post here because the other topic was closed in favour of this one.
It seems @ThoKu88 was aware of the probably temporary nature of the fix.

[ElKrasso]

Thanks.
I saw that just after I posted it.

[Arno88]

Hi,
My FP3 died, too, after 4 years.
The difference compared to the previous problem is that the red LED flashes when I put it on charge.
Has anyone encountered this problem before?
Could it be a motherboard problem?
Sorry for my bad language, it-s not my main language

[Incanus]

Welcome to the Fairphone community.

That could just be a dead battery. After four years not so unlikely.

[Tobi_Kellner]

Hi,
in case this is useful for anyone else:

I am owner of a Fairphone 3, which I bought used in 2022.
Apart from many issues since the Android update, I had the following sequence of problems:

How it started:

• For a few weeks, charging became unreliable, sometimes I got “Charging slowly”, with predicted charge times of several days, phone often not charged in the morning. I did the obvious, tried all sorts of different cables and adapters, tried to clean the USB C port… nothing worked
• then the phone started switching off spontaneously - not shutting down, just going black. Initially I could then turn it on a again, or it restarted itself
• then, one day, it was dead and would not come back alive

How I fixed it
Searching the web, I found forum posts about Fairphone “Sudden Death” and about fixes that involve baking the phone.
Figuring I didn’t have much to lose, I went to my local Maker Lab to try and use a hot air gun / reflow station.

Taking the phone apart
I first followed the teardown instructions at

Fairphone 3 Teardown

With these instructions and the repair-friendly design of the FP, this was a joy (compared to what it’s like with any other phone).
I had the iFixIt repair tool kit at the maker lab, but it really didn’t require any special tools.

Removing the shield
The only issue was pulling off the shield in Step 9. Specifically, I removed the top shield on the front side, so

I had never removed a shield of this type, and initially didn’t really know what to do. Initially I got a very small screwdriver and carefully got it in at the base of the shield (where it touches the circuit board) and carefully wedged up the the shield. Then I discovered that the shield has little dents/holes on the side. With a kind of hook tool,

I managed to “hook” into those holes/dents and gently pull upwards. Doing this a bit from all sides (it’s difficult at the bottom end as the shield is close to the screen connector and the other shield) I pulled it off. Sorry if this is totally obvious to you, I had never removed a shield before and struggled, so I decided to document it here for noobs like me!

Heating it up
Having removed the shield, I now had direct access to the power management chips which, according to posts here, cause the problems due to bad solder connections. The iFixIt image below really helped me, as it clearly shows

• in orange: Qualcomm PMI632 power management IC
• in yellow: Qualcomm PM8953 power management IC

I think the issue is with the PMI632, but as I wasn’t sure, and there was nothing visible (even under the microscope), I decided to give both the heat treatment.
I used the hot air gun to directly blow hot air onto the ICs.
I did not take any protective measures for any components around them, I just made sure I wasn’t moving around too much.
Initially, I did it for a few minutes at around 250°C, without any flux. I gently pushed the IC down a bit while heating.
After maybe 5 minutes, I let things cool down again, I reattached the bottom module and the top module (which has the LED indicating charging), connected the battery and a USB charger… and the red light came on! Hurray!!
I took all the pieces, assembled them back into the frame, tried again… no red light. Damn. Perhaps whatever tender connection I had re-established had been destroyed again due to some bending stress putting it back in.
So I tool it all out again, took the shield off again, and decided I might as well go all out:
I blew 350°C air onto the ICs for at least 10 minutes, and spread some flux around the edges of the IC, making it flow underneath it, pushing the IC down a bit as I was doing it.
And it worked! The red charging light came on again, and stayed on after re-assembly. It will not last forever, I assume, but I have had a working phone for 24 hours now and can at least work on backing up stuff.

General Warning:
This is an extreme treatment, there is obviously a high risk stuff gets damaged. I would only do this if, like in my case, realistically your only alternative would be getting a new phone!!
Oh, yeah, and obviously: Your body (and the table, and…) also don’t like being blasted with 350C hot air, so be careful!

Specific Warning:
It turns out whatever material the IC is made of gets soft/brittle at these temperatures. I accidentally actually broke small flakes off the edges of the IC (which I could see under the microscope) when touching it with tools like screw drivers.

Hope this is of help for someone, comment below if you think something is wrong or unclear!

[yvmuell]

Hi and welcome, thanks for the detailed post, I moved it to an already existing topic and FYI

Fairphone 3+ is dead, will not turn on

I had a FP3 which also from one moment the other went OFF and i was not able to turn it ON again. The Battery was charged and the USB port cleaned - dissassembled all and cleaned all connections - but nothing helped. As i had a lot of Fotos and Data on the phone which i did not have backedup yet - i wanted to find a solution. So i took apart the FP3 and studied the marks on the chips of the mainboard and found by searching the ICs in the web that a defective Qualcom Power Managment Chip PMI63…