Fairphone 4 Bricked following Android 12 update

I was really enjoying the Android 12 experience on my FP4 until my phone unexpectedly bricked itself when I was driving yesterday. The phone rebooted whilst running Android Auto and ended up on the Factory Reset screen. Now it’s stuck in a loop, I can try to restart but it crashes shortly afterwards and goes back to the Factory Reset screen and if I try to factory reset it, it gets part way through then reboots and the whole cycle starts again. Particularly frustrating as I’d saved up for over a year to buy a Fairphone 4 and it’s now useless less than 6 weeks after I received it.

I’ve now lost access to my primary number as it was stored as an eSIM on the phone and I’m unable to get a new SIM from EE as I’m away from home at the moment. Fortunately my Fairphone 3 is still working so I’ve been able to switch my secondary SIM back to that.

Has anyone else come across this issue and got any hints on how to resolve it? I’ve raised a ticket but thought I’d try here as well.

I didn’t hear of a similar issue…
Maybe you can try installing the last stock OS image (will wipe your data) but for that procedure you need the bootloader unlocked; if you didn’t unlock it beforehand I’m not sure you could do it without being able to boot to your OS :thinking:

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worth a try. data are already wiped through factory reset.
otherwise IMHO a clear warranty case

Therefore the first I did, when I received the FP4, was to enable OEM unlocking…

@hyperion4001 should you be able to unlock the bootloader and flash manually I would advise to not lock the bootloader afterwards or at least only with taking precautios before.

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Thanks all, very much appreciated. The issue seems to be with my eSIM now, I’ve managed to get a factory reset done but every time I try to setup my phone again it crashes at the SIM selection screen…

I can’t get in to delete the eSIM through the options screens so it looks like I’ll need to delete the eSIM another way. I’ve updated my support case to ask, but no response as yet.

Do you know installing the last stock OS image will overwrite the eSIM?

Cant the provider deactivate the eSIM and provide a new one?

Or maybe its possible via recovery factory reset?

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Okay, good suggestion @yvmuell , I thought my provider wouldn’t be able to help but I can take the phone into one of their stores tomorrow or Thursday at lunchtime and see if they can somehow disable the eSIM or erase it remotely. Really hoping that will do the trick, otherwise it looks like I’m going to have to send it back.

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Oh, and the factory reset won’t remove the eSIM, I’ve already tried that.

No response from Fairphone support since Thursday, I’ve chased them today.

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Its best to call them to speed things up…

Thanks Yvonne, they’ve come back to me now and are progressing a return to the service centre to see if they can fix it. Hopefully they can erase the eSIM there.

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Oh I’m sorry to hear that and I’m confident they can fix it.

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