Fairphone 6 suddenly stuck at the "I" during boot

Help Fairphone 6
1

Hello, I have my Fairphone 6 since October 2025 and am on stock Android. Model was bought directly from Fairphone in EU. Last Update installed is FP6.QREL.15.178.0 a few days ago, which worked fine.

Today the phone turned off due to low battery because I forgot to charge it in time. I plugged it in, let it charge to 95% and then pressed the power button to boot it up again. However the phone just got stuck at the “I” after the “fairphone” animation with green background. I let it sit there for 5 Minutes before pressing the power button for a reboot. It started the reboot and again got stuck at the “I” after the fairpone animation. This time i let it sit in this state for half an hour, where it just stayed at the “I” with screen on for the whole time. I then unplugged the battery, waited a few minutes and tried another boot. It got stuck at the “I” again.

I can boot to the recovery menu “Volume up + Power button” and run the options displayed there. I also tried this: FP5 not booting after update to Android 15 - #102 by anon76468197 which did not help.

What else could I try? I would really like to avoid a factory reset before being able to back up my data. My last backup is a month old and I would really like to avoid loosing the last month in pictures and messages.

Thank you all in advance :slightly_smiling_face:

2

So you already tried at least 7 times? And you have tried the next reboot faster?

If this doesnt work and the bootloader is locked, I dont think you will be able to fix this on your own.

I would just try to boot without SIM and SD card as last option.

1 Like
3

Yes I already tried that. I repeated the boot/reboot 8 times and started pressing as soon as the fairphone + android text lit up - as mentioned in the citation. Sadly that did not change anything for me. Will try without the SIM card.

4

Without SIM/SD card did not change anything either, sadly.

Is there any way to rollback or reinstall the last software update through adb? Or debug possible errors/crashes at startup using adb?

5

that does sound silly but have you tried this?

6

I am all for silly solutions, so thanks for bringing this to my attention :slight_smile:
Sadly no change here as well. This fix seems to only work for the Fairphone 5.

Meanwhile I tried my best tackling this situation with adb and fastboot, but no luck here as well. Via Adb I do not get access to /system nor was I able to retrieve logcat output. Fastboot did not help either, as my bootloader is locked (I intended to keep this phone as my stable daily driver so did not plan to tamper with it).

Kinda annoying that I now have to arrange myself with loosing a month worth of personal data. Never happened to me on any other phone.

1 Like
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Hi @samp, today I’m in your same boat: I restarted the FP6 using the Android menu, like usual. But now it is stucked at the “I” during the boot.

How did you manage to recover your phone? I don’t want to loose the data, only few things are not synced but I want them.

The only thing that works is the Recovery menu, there I can see that my version is 14/FP6.QREL.16.48.0/WS15. I think that is a problem with Android because the “Run graphics test” shows an Android robot with its head popped open and a warning triangle.

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Hello, sadly I did not :frowning:

I wrote a support ticket to Fairphone but they never answered. I then tried contacting them directly via their chat a few weeks after, but they only apologized and did nothing further to help me with my problem. They neither offered to look into this error nor helped me recover the data in any way. They also could not promise me that this won’t happen again.

So basically I am using my old phone since while the bricked Fairphone is laying around. I am very unsure if I can return using the Fairphone when all data could be gone any moment. Never happened to me with any phone ever before, not even when I was installing custom OSes on a weekly basis. I just do not understand how such a bug can slip their tests, when all other OS publishers manage to prevent that, why they do not allow mounting /data on their recovery like TWRP does (whats the recovery even for then, if my only option is to wipe everything?) and why they do not provide an OTA that I can sideload over ADB to fix this boot issue. Because I am sure it is not rocket science to find that issue and fix it if they bother asking for my /system logs. Hell, they could just provide the next Update as OTA and maybe that fixes it, but not even that is possible. Obviously they do not care at all.

Now I will likely just buy an off the shelf phone again and RMA that Fairphone back in. They might send me a new one then which I will just sell, because I cannot trust them that this will not happen again. I basically burned through 2 new phones then, which is not really ecological either…

Sorry for your data loss!

1 Like
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So you did not choose a repair or wasnt that possible? Thats faster than waiting for support andnin my eyes the only way out.

For the rest: such things can happen, things can go wrong at any time. Seeing that as bug during beta means, it must be very common, which it isnt.

As you never had such with another brand, I never had this in almost 10 years using Fairphones.

10

For future visitors: I wiped the data using the recovery menu, losing everything. Now, two weeks later, everything is still working as expected.

A free advise: export F-Droid installed apps. There is no way to recover them after a fresh start.

Also: check sometimes the config in your used apps, for example my AntennaPod stopped two months ago to sync with Nextcloud and I lost 2 moths of listening. Other things, like Gadgetbridge, were gone forever :cry: