Fairphone gets very Hot and Battery drains quickly

My heat up problem was caused by a broken SD card. It has disappeared now after I replaced the SD memory card. The phone gets a little bit warm when using data via GSM when the signal is poor. But stayes cool with Wi-Fi :-).
Udo

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My fairphone gets hot in the area of the motherboard and looses voltage very fast. Battery seems to be OK - no temperature no swelling or other things. Any Idea

@flechlh I moved your post here as you describe the same problem. Maybe you’ll find a solution here.
If not also check out our Battery Guide.

Hi,

i had the same problem.
In the end, I had to replace the motherboard - well - service had to.

But try resetting it first.

Greets
jo

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seems like I am encountering the same issue: FP1 prone to humidity?

for me it was not even possible to backup my phone as current consumption was already too high…

Hello,
I did some changes for testing what could be the reason for this heating and fast battery drain:

  1. I removed the 64GB SD-Memory card - no change
  2. I deactivated the SIM2 - no change
  3. I deactivated the SIM1 - fairphone works normal.
    To verfy if it is the SIM-slot or the card I changed the 2 SIM-cards and did step 2. and 3. again - result: it was not the slot, it was the SIM-Card.
    By changing again with cleaning of the contacts - the phone works normally. Maybe it was a “bad” contact in the sim-slot which caused the heating and battery drain.
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Great news :slight_smile: I’m glad it’s working now.

Hello everyone,
My FP1 (second batch) is getting very warm when charging or when I’m listening music with my earplugs.
Anyone having same problems?
Btw - got my FP Sept. 2014 and have already second battery in use.
Thx for any help!

@Melly_Kolundzic you could try taking out your SIM card(s) and SD card to see if the problem persists. Maybe one of the cards is defected and causes the problems you are describing. There were also reports where switching SIM card(s)-slots helped.

I have the same problem now. Which is interesting, because I installed 1.8 (when it really became official) a while ago. Initially: No problem. Today, my phone activated while locked in my pocked (which it regularly does), and this time it seems to have done some operations which triggered this problem. Or it was a coincidence of two separate things occurring within 10 minutes of each other.

The battery history shows a normal curve for the last 1d 8h, then a sharp drop of (I estimate) 10 % battery charge in less than 1 hour. When I tried to turn off the phone, it re-started by itself, and wouldn’t allow me to turn it off, The background was orange by that time, so battery was below 15 %.

I have taken out the battery, cleaned the SIM as suggested here, and hope for the best.

I know this topic is old, but it is still relevant. Since a few days (this coincides with the latest update (1.8.7)) my phone is getting hot while being idle in my pocket. Around the “top” of the phone (where the camera is) it is as hot as if I had made a 30 minute call. And the battery drains super quickly. I have rebooted several times, removed the battery, cleaned the SIM, etc.

This morning, I removed the phone from the charger, and I could witness the percentage dropping …:

4% lost in less than 5 minutes ?? Oh and the screen brightness is set to minimum.

Anyone having similar issue since the very last update? As said above I have a FP1U.

I guess maybe sometimes an update can mess with the batteries firmware a little?
First check whether your battery is bloated and if it isn’t do the battery reset. Both is described here:

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Do you happen to use a big SD card (I mean with a lot of data stored on it)?

When the battery haemorrhages this quickly, which apps are running (even when in the background)?

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I noticed also, that after update to 1.8.7 my phone is taking battery more than 50% a day, before it was between 12…25%. No changes in my behaviour or new apps (except of course Google apps)

Maybe I can link to this old topic, at which similar complains after Updates to Cherry 1.6 popped up:

@Bix: Especially at this post I still recommend the App “BetterBatteryStats” (find in XDA-Forum for free), to check, if any app is running at 100% CPU load while phone should be in idle (so-called “wage locks” in this app).

Cheers, Robert

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Hi, this may sound strange but I had this problem with my phone of getting too hot and draining the battery after a few hours while in holidays in Spain. After coming back to the miserable weather in Ireland, all was back to normal. So fine for me but I am thinking that shouldn’t recommend Fairphone to my Spanish friends!

I don’t know how hot it was in Spain exactly but that might also have to with the usage of the SIM card(s) or something like that. Any ideas from others?

Some news on the heat problem. As I reported in January last year, the problem was gone after I changed the SD card. Still the phone got hot again from time to time, but not so much I was looking deeper into the problem. But since a month or so it started to get hot almost always. I started changing and/or removing SIM and SD cards again, but nothing helped.

Finally today I installed a CPU tool (OS Monitor) to see if there might be an app that drains my battery. And really, “Pocket” took 25-50% CPU load! After I uninstalled it, I found “IKEA App” to take another 25%. Now my phone is “cool” again :slight_smile:

Udo

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That’s good to hear.
And I think most of problems of this kind for FP1 and FP2 can be solved the way you did and I frequently suggested :wink:

Hi! I have had my FP 1U (I think) for approximately 1 year and something really annoying started happening yesterday. I put my phone on charge when it was at about 5% over night so that it would be 100% on the morning. When I woke up it was on 100% and I watched some videos on YouTube, but I got interrupted by the “You have 15% left” warning after using the phone for maybe 1 hour, not more. My FP can usually go all the day with severall hours of usage before reaching low %. After I got warned I put the phone to charge while I ate breakfast and when I got back, maybe 30 minutes later it was on 100% again, so i tried to use it again, but the battery drained almost 1% in 30-40 seconds when I used it. If someone knows the solution for this problem and if it can be fixed or not, please, answer!! I can’t go through a whole school day without the phone running out of battery, even if i’m not using it!