Fairphone 3+ dead, irregularly works but freezes during boot

Hello everyone!
Yesterday (19th of Jan 2025), my Fairphone 3+ suddenly went all black. The battery was around 70% and I didn’t drop it or anything, it literally died in my hands… The situation now is as follows:

  • The phone does not react to the charger being connected: No display output, no led indicator light.
  • The phone usually does not listen to button inputs, so it seems completely dead
  • That is until it sometimes reacts to Power+VolumeDown being held for ~30 seconds. Whether the phone reacts or not does not follow any pattern: Sometimes it works just like that, sometimes after the battery has been out for ~10 minutes, sometimes not at all.
  • I can open the bootloader menu and enter recovery mode on the rare occasion that the phone works, so content is displayed. It’s therefore not a case of the display not being connected.
  • When booting, the Fairphone logo appears, followed by the four twirling blue dots. However, these dots freeze after a few seconds, then the display goes black and the phone is absolutely dead for about 1 hour.
  • I sometimes get the vibration feedback from the phone being turned on, but nothing happens
  • There was one instance where I managed to power on the phone, but the vibration feedback kept going endlessly, essentially turning my phone into a vibrator.

Some additional info:

  • The bottom module is new (~2 months, so the phone worked fine with it)
  • The battery is fine
  • I opened the phone after it died to check connections and clean things out. Everything is in order, at least with the module/display connections and dust contents
  • Charge is, as mentioned, at around 70%. I did have it plugged in for a few hours until just now.
  • I looked through suddendeath and bootissues and could not find anything that suits my scenario

Any suggestions how I could get my phone running again? Had the phone for 3.5 years now, replacing it now kinda feels too soon for me…
Any help is highly appreciated, thank you.

2 Likes

Unfortunately this is classic motherboard failure time scale and possibly a last attempt of reflowing in oven maybe indicated. Presumably you have already since this resource?
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp3-sudden-death/100733/2?u=aspergerguy

1 Like

Hi chop,
the fact that the phone does react but not boot leads me to believe in at least a software component in the problem.
What OS did you use? Does the phone get hot during any of these powering on episodes? In recovery did you try to wipe? Do you know how to use fastboot and adb?