Fairphone 3 loses wifi connection

Discuss The Products
32

For me the problem exists with 2.4 GHz.

I found a “solution”. When keeping the display active all the time (there are apps for that), the wifi is stable, no disconnects anymore.

Of course this is not a practical solution. But it shows that it could be a wrong implementation of power saving instead of an hardware issue.

I am keeping my display active all thr time now when playing music from the phone to wifi receivers, using Chromecast, etc. Working great!
Problem is, of course: Battery needs to be charged much more often.

So, still waiting for an update and a bugfix…

4 Likes
33

Good finding! Indeed, it seems that the wifi connectivity issue only shows right after the screen activates. During operation, I cannot remember an instance of WiFi losing connection. This may be different for other users, but the relation to screen activity is at least suspicious!

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34

One week without disconnections using the 2,4 Ghz band. I live in a house with thick walls and I have read the 5 Ghz suffers more in this situations. Maybe the phone struggles to reconnect when the connection is lost during the standby mode? (for example because the phone has been moved from a room to another without unlocking it)

35

Have you enabled “Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep”? Please check your Wi-Fi settings.

36

Hi DeepSea, of course I had the setting “Keep on WIFI during sleep” set to “always”. It is the default.

Unfortunately it is not possible to check this setting again because it just disappeared - same like the WIFI band switcher bug mentioned here.

miss

37

Finally I solved the issue with instable wifi, which was disconnecting and reconnecting several times per hour.

It looks like the FP3(+) is a bit picky with access points. Since I removed my older TP-Link access point and using a FritzBox 7590 instead, the reconnects are gone. There is now stable wifi on my FP3+.

And 5 GHz is working again too, after doing the workaround mentioned there.

5 Likes
38

I had this issue for months and tried all the advice from this thread to no avail. My phone was disconnecting from my wifi about every time I switched the screen off or used it more than 10 minutes. And it stopped connecting once that happened until I manually forced it to reconnect.

Yesterday I found out that there is a Reset Wi-Fi, Mobile and Bluetooth function in android (to find it search for “reset” in system settings.) I used it yesterday evening and have had a stable connection for the last 18 hours.

Just wanted to dump this here because it is the first thing I found on google whenever I was trying to find out a solution for my problem.

I’m on a FritzBox 7590 as well, WiFi is now again using same SSID for 5 and 2.4 GHz and I still seem to have a stable connection.

7 Likes
39

Thanks a lot. This did the trick. Actually on the freshly bought FP3 for my mom, this issue only appeared AFTER the android 10 update, so following the “reset WLAN” workaround really helped instantly. Regarding stability, that might still be an issue, so I will keep a watch on that before I hand it over. At least, reconnecting automatically dramatically decreases the required attention

Additional info:
Checked again, working fine.

What happened: after android 10 upgrade, the wifi settings became unstable. Noticeable, after sleep & reboot WiFi did NOT reconnect automatically to the known network.

Adittional symptom:
Under Settings → Network and Internet → Wi-Fi → Wi-Fi preferences → Turn on Wi-Fi automatically
Changing that setting did not work (tested by reboot after changing it off and on again)

FIX:
Set back/reset the network settings ( System → Advanced → Reset options → reset WiFi, Bluetooth and mobile settings). Thanks Paul121, @ontheair and @Simon1 (just changes your arrows and spacing here :wink:

For me WiFi worked directly after fixing, throughout reboots and after sleep.

No additional changes were nessessary on the FP3 to restore stable WiFi access.

Setting up the Wi-Fi connection again, rebooting (several times again) and observing over the day showed no regression, seems to be stable now.

(android build no. 8901.3.A.0107.20210503, current patch levels and updates applied on 2021-05-30)

3 Likes
40

I have this exact issue with my Fairphone 3+. It has happened the entire time I have owned it.

When connected to my home 5GHz network (Ubiquity Unify AC Pro, channel 36), my wifi connection will drop out for a period of 10-30 seconds every few minutes. The wifi symbol in the top bar will show a cross in it, and the phone will use mobile data for a brief period, then the cross will go away and the wifi connection will resume.

This only happens on my 5Ghz wifi (I have named my 5G and 2.4G networks separately so it does not auto-switch).

I cannot solve this problem by forcing the phone to use the 2.4G network, because I also experience this issue, which means I get a painfully slow 1-3Mbit/s connection speed (the wired connection speed is 30Mbit/s and the 5G network depending on signal gets about 25Mbit/s).

I tried resetting network settings via android settings as suggested by others in this thread, but the problem was immediately observed again.

I tried gathering some logs using ADB when the wifi dropped and couldn’t see much that looked relevant, however there was this:

06-30 12:10:03.727  1804  1804 I chatty  : uid=10082(com.android.systemui) identical 1 line
06-30 12:10:03.727  1804  1804 I StatusBarMobileView: lindaguo updateState activityIn =false, activityOut = false, state = MobileIconState(subId=1, strengthId=1283, roaming=false, typeId=2131231203, volteId=0, visible=true)
06-30 12:10:04.248   569  2675 W ServiceManager: Permission failure: android.permission.NETWORK_STACK from uid=1073 pid=1920
06-30 12:10:04.249   569  2675 I netd    : setProcSysNet(4, 2, "wlan0", "retrans_time_ms", "750") <1.43ms>
06-30 12:10:04.250   569  2675 W ServiceManager: Permission failure: android.permission.NETWORK_STACK from uid=1073 pid=1920
06-30 12:10:04.251   569  2675 I netd    : setProcSysNet(4, 2, "wlan0", "ucast_solicit", "5") <1.17ms>
06-30 12:10:04.252   569  2675 W ServiceManager: Permission failure: android.permission.NETWORK_STACK from uid=1073 pid=1920
06-30 12:10:04.253   569  2675 I netd    : setProcSysNet(6, 2, "wlan0", "retrans_time_ms", "750") <0.95ms>
06-30 12:10:04.254   569   569 W ServiceManager: Permission failure: android.permission.NETWORK_STACK from uid=1073 pid=1920
06-30 12:10:04.255   569   569 I netd    : setProcSysNet(6, 2, "wlan0", "ucast_solicit", "5") <1.29ms>
41

Hi @bengourley

I have only noticed this since the 0107 update ?? which came out 28th May.

A bit annoying as I use wifi calling on EE via FritzBox! 7530 on 5Ghz

Further if I try to connect manually it takes 24seconds, regularly other than the 3 seconds when wifi is initially enabled.

42

my ripoff-fairphone-3 still regularly looses wifi despite all the fixes offered.
I’ll never buy such a rubbish piece of hardware again. And I find this whole forum to be reminicent of Microsoft support: let the company rake in the money and ignore it’s users who can try to help each other out.

when this phone dies, it’s going in a landfill as ripoff-fairphone won’t even recycle from my country.

Do yourself a favour, do not ever buy products from this rubbish company again.

43

Hi @fracgeol Looks like you’re not having an easy time with your Fairphone, mind you who said being rich enough to buy a Fairphone is going the easy way.

Me disappointed, maybe with my expectations.
Rip-off Hmm! I bet the miners and factory workers are not being treated so badly, hopefull.

Support for some can be a never ending story and for some it’s never an issue. No-one can provide for exactly what I want so I learn to be tolerant of other people’s promises that turn out to be poorly understood.

Surely the country where you reside has some alternative recycling arrangement.

Well take care as I’m sure you do.

All the best

44

Yeah, unfortunately since owning one (Sept 2020), I’ve become pretty disillusioned by the Fairphone project. I’ve faced a number of issues which in isolation would be bearable, but for me it’s more a case of death by a thousand cuts. As well as the wifi issue… the fingerprint sensor rarely works, the camera is awful, the screen is not sensitive enough to register touches, and that is all on top of it being a “slow” phone performance-wise (understandably).

I used to get a new phone once every ~3 years. Now I think I will replace my Fairphone after 1 year.

45

Can you send it back under warranty, it sounds dreadful?

Have you tried the trick with the fingerprint sensor, of covering it with a piece of sellotape.

But if the screen is unresponsive it ought to be looked at by Fairphone.

Your issues are not what is generally expected, so I wouldn’t lay that as general Fairphone quality, mind you support can be unresponsive and laggy too :slight_smile:

Have you tested the modules etc. by dialling *#*#66#*#*

Service tests > Test single > . . .

1 Like
46

With another Fairphone?

48

I’m sorry that so many people are having wifi issues with this rubbish phone (terrible camera and no wifi, in 2021??)

anyway as you say:

I know that this mobile device is the first and last from this company,

49

@fracgeol @dau etc.

Have you contacted support [@] fairphone [.] com as clearly the majority of users don’t seem to have such issues and unless you have taken the phone for a swim etc. you are covered by a two year warranty from the date of purchase. If your phone is so bad why keep it, send it back.

Yes I have had a few problems and the camera output is not as good as I would like, but not much in the world is as good as I’d like. This is an investment in Fairtrade and at this end of the line there is a trade off. So whereas it’s nowhere near a good phone in terms of specs etc. it’s better than I expected from such a small company trying to set the world to rights.

2 Likes
50

It would be fair to inform customers about such trade offs before they are going to buy that product. Honestly it is a waste of resources in regard to users who rely on stability and therefore cannot live with an unreliable device. I suggest changing the name Fairphone to Trade-Off-Phone, because, as you said:

Yeah, they keep on trying… and trying… and trying… And the Fairphone users are parts of this world, too…

You have forgotten to give an advice which phone to buy afterwards…

BTW, sorry for getting off-topic here, I am just a small guy trying not to blame the Fairphone company… trying… and trying… and trying…

1 Like
51

Hello, sorry for the delay in replying to you, I was going through the rounds with fairphone support.
After a few run-of-the-mill questions: did you reboot your modem, have you tried other networks, did you reboot your phone, etc etc etc, they finally acknowledeged what I said all along: the issue lies with the phone (either the hardware, OS or software).

The only solution they can offer is for me to send it back for repairs, then wait up to 10 days with no phone and no guarantee that it’ll be fixed. Given that I bought the phone on the advertised premise that the end-user can swap out modules and fix the phone, and it is even engraved on the side that it’s “designed to open”, this is simply not acceptable as it is exactly the same solution as Apple, Google, Samsung, >insert large smart phone brand name< would offer. So in this context I bid all you kind fairphone users well, for my part this is the end of my FP adventure.

Best wishes to one and all.

52

Yes that’s a pain.

However regarding your remarks … this is not acceptable a) as you put it it’s the same as Samsung et all but b) How would anyone discover what the problem is without testing.

I’m sure if Fairphone could have identified the problem without you returning it they would have sent you a new module.

And most importantly the phone is under a two year warranty until end August 2021) so it will be fixed at no cost to you, unless they see there has been water damage. Now will Samsung give you two years?

Finally if you are to keep the phone there is still the option of a resolution maybe via a fairphoneangel

And if you are ever tempted to bin it please let me or a fairphoneangel know as it may be possible to pass it on and recoup some cash.

1 Like