having read so much here and gotten indirect a lot of help, I want to share a solution that works for me.
I have repeating blue screens and my phone is due to be repaired (memory chip they say):
Situation: Every time I shut my phone down or rebootet, it was stuck in a blue screen.
Actions: removing all cards does not work, backup doesn notwork (write error) and finally it was solved by a hard reset , losing all my data, which was quite frustrating.
If this happens once; bad luckK, happens twice: damn them, happens more than that: tempted to smash it ;-/
But then the solution by coincidence: remove battery for one night, boot fairphone - tadaaa
works as long, as you do not reboot. Then same procedure. (tested)
At least, I did not lose all my stuff all over again.
Now, I have my first serious problem with my Fairphone:
I usually use it as an alarmclock. Today morning, it wakes me up normally, and I confirmed the alarm. It should boot, but it doesnāt. Just only the LED was blinking red and I couldnāt do anything. So I removed the battery and tried to start again. But now, the boot process stops at the āFairphoneā splash screen.
Looking around in the forum, I found a thread and this information: https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201453487-Fairphone-does-not-reboot-Frozen-State- that me leads to the recovery mode - luckily.
But this didnāt solve the problem.
In recovery mode I also found the possibility to backup user data to the external SD card. I hope that worked for me.
My Questions are:
About 2 Gigs of user data lead to a 890 MB backup file, is it possible? Iāve got a success message in recovery mode after backup. I think, the data was zipped or something like that. But will it be complete?
Which type of file is the backup? Can I open it with my linux box and what might be the password? I cannot remember to enter a password for that in the past.
What will be the next step I can do before I have to try to return to factory defaults, which would delete all data on my phone and Iām not sure, that backup worked.
This is the same problem Iāve had for two years now. It occurs every two months, when the phone boots after (or sometimes even before) the alarm goes off.
The backup in the recovery menu (in my case, anyway) just puts the phone back to the previous state: it cannot boot anymore.
Iām afraid you will have to do the factory reset and lose a lot of dataā¦ I would recommend to install the paid version of Titanium Backup as soon as possible afterwards.
Luckily, I do not use my phone as the leading device for contacts, calender or mail. But there is some other data, I would like to save. Mh.
Does anybody know, how I can access the backup file I created. That would help a lot. On the other hand, it would be nice, if someone could tell me, witch data was saved in the backup file.
Sounds, that there is a serious risk to use Fairphone as an alarm clock - bad.
thank you for your reply. I tried to install manually, as it is described in that link you added. Alternatively I tried with adb connection. But it failed for me all the time. It did not boot again.
I tried to backup out of the recovery mode, but I cannot read the file. I was asked for a password I do not know. And I donāt know, what kind of file this backup is.
So, my last chance was to reset to factory defaults in weekend.
@danielsjohan told my, that in my case the backup restore would let the phone fail again. So I didnāt try.
OK, I lost some data of my timetracking tool, because of my loosy backup concept, some photos and some messanger chats - bad. But I think, I can restore important data with brain.exe
hi @myfpuserā¦ Section 9.2 in this thread should work for you if you use it with SP flash tools 3.0, . Because i have also had the same situation. First of all You will have to download SP flash tools v.3. then the binary file in the above thread from FP website. remove battery from FP1. Unzip the binary files you downloaded from the FP website. Run SP flash tools, load scatter file. then click download. afterthis, plug your phone without battery. the SP flash tools should recognize your phone otherwise install driver for your phone. Follow the instruction on the screen. I hope it should resolve your problem. sorry if i could not explain the procedure completely because i have not much time for posting threads.
Please Note: All the data will be destroyed. Use it at your risk. How to backup or how to restore your previous backup, you may read other threads about this because i have no idea how to do this. I hope you undestand
I am also having the same problems here. I have to hard-reset my phone every 1-2 months, basically since at least one year now. It is very annoying and frustrating that there are no proper fixes for this problem!
Since a couple of days my FP1 second batch freezes when turned on: it halts indefinetely on the blue āFairphoneā screen.
I managed to boot in recovery mode as described here https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201134418.
I wiped the cache, but the problem remains.
I reinstalled the OS with the procedure suggested above but still nothing.
Before resetting all the data I wanted to make a backup but I had this problem: in recovery mode I start the backup procedure and it tells me itās copying about 12 GB on a empty 16 GB SD card but after a long time it raises a generic write error. I suspect this has to deal with the file system of the SD being FAT32, so the maximum allowed file size is 4GB.
I tryed to format the SD in Ext4 but the recovery mode doesnāt seem to be able to write on such file system.
I also tryed to connect to the phone with adb but the only mode I can obtain is the sideload mode.
What else can I try to make a backup of my data (actually I already have a copy of everything except the pictures) before resetting the phone?
Anybody knows if I can install a different recovery sw using the sideload mode?
@Stefan I ran across that page when googling for a solution but I have two issues on that:
when I do āadb devicesā I canāt seem to establish a connection with my phone. The only mode I obtain a positive answer is the sideload mode, but I didnāt find what exactly can I do in sideload mode. So I canāt do the step b) of the procedure (adb shell)
the post is targeting FP1 first edition-repartioned: can I assume that itās ok to use for a FP1U scond batch?
As for the latter: Yes, a second batch FP1U is basically a repartitioned FP1. U stands for Unified Storage. It should work for a FP1U the same as it does for a FP1 (mine for example).
Regarding the first point: You are right, no other adb commands work in sideload mode [Source]. What bugs me the most though is that you could not install Fairphone OS manually. Have you checked again that you used the correct file (Fairphone OS 1.8.7 for FP1U)?
@Stefan I actually succeeded installing Fairphone OS 1.8.7 for FP1U, then I rebooted and the phone said something like āoptimizing appsā, a phase that lasted a couple of minutes and gave me great hopes, but then again the phone freezed at the blue screen.
I also tried to install the CWM for the fairphone FP1 usig the sideload mode. It loaded the image but then the phone said āInstallation abortedā.
It was just a try, Iām not even sure that this mode is the correct way to install something in the recovery partitionā¦ or maybe the image I used was not the right one?
How long did you wait when the blue screen came about? It sometimes takes a very long time (I for once took out the battery because I thought the phone was soft bricked, but I should have waited just some more timeā¦).
For the records: wiping all user data made the magic! Now my FP1U is like a brand new one.
The only explaination I can find is that an app was blocking the phone in or suddenly after the boot sequenceā¦ is it possible?
Of course I lost all the data that were not backed up somehow.
@Stefan thanks a lot for the kind support provided.
As a side note, Iām quite disappointed by the official fairphone support: I still didnāt get any answer to my request of support dated May 14, 2016, except for a generic reply stating they were experiencing a ātemporary spike in requestsā.
BUT WHY DOES IT NOT BOOT??? 
I donāt understand itā¦