Fairphone kept turning off after a few seconds, now doesnt turn on at all

Hello everyone,

I bought a brand new Fairphone 3 around 2 weeks ago. It sometimes randomly restarted but that wasn’t a big issue until now. A few hours ago, however, I encountered a bunch of problems. I was using the headphone jack to connect it to a big speaker, first it only used the phone speakers, then it crashed, after which it worked fine. We then had a very shaky ride where it was shook a bunch too, after which it crashed and kept showing the same behavior: it would show the first “fairphone - powered by android” screen, fail and reboot again, that time successfully. A few seconds after booting successfully though, it would crash again and the cycle would continue like this. I managed to turn it off completely within the few seconds it stayed on the android log-in screen and decided to try again later. The issue persisted, so I plugged it in to charge, which prevented it from booting successfully completely. I took out the SIM card (and, as necessary, the battery for like a minute) and tried recovery mode to no avail. I plugged it in again, it booted up successfully once (and crashed again) and since then won’t show any lifesigns at all. I currently have it plugged in and waiting.

The internals looked fine on quick inspection, and the battery is not bloated at all. I’m kind of at a loss and would like to know if I have any options apart from a factory reset (which is kind of difficult right now because, well, it won’t turn on at all).

I appreciate any help you could give me, as I haven’t found any information dealing with this kinda issue.

Welcome to our community forum :slight_smile:

You mentioned “big speakers” you connected the FP3 to. Were those passive speakers (i.e. without an own power source)?

Have you tried letting the phone charge for a while without powering it on?

Hey, thanks for the quick reply. I connected it to a mixing console via an aux to xlr cable, which was connected to a pre-amp connected to a passive speaker. I am currently charging and not touching it, I might let it charge overnight if thats not a horrible idea?

Sounds like the speaker gets its power elsewhere then. :+1:

I’d just keep it charging until the LED turns green.

Hi yamimiriam,
This is a new phone behaving very abnormally, so my advice would be to get in touch with Support. There’s absolutely no way a new device should behave like that, unless you’ve already given it a hard time :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
Even occasional random reboots really shouldn’t happen in normal use. However you speak of a “shaky ride” which may have made an incipient problem much worse. Modular build does potentially come with some risk of faulty connections developing.
You can also see if you have a Fairphone Angel nearby (see under Community) who might be able to help you take it to bits and put it together again, or put you in touch with someone locally.
Here’s some reading material for you! Post back to tell us how you get on.

[Edit] Do you have a SD (memory extension) card? These have been known to provoke random reboots. If you have one, see @anon9989719 's post below, check how it’s formatted.try taking it out.

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Hi @yamimiriam On this issue please ensure you have the SD card as Portable before removing or reformat it as such, but see the link appended. To confirm it is portable check Settings > Storage and ensure you see an eject symbol to the right of the the SD card. Do not remove it if you do not then see the link appended on how to remove after transferring apps etc.

You may have to do a Factory Reset, but as @OldRoutard said please contact support[at]fairphone[dot]com soon.

You may like to try dissembling and reassembling also.

Good luck

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Hello everyone,

sorry for the radio silence - there’s been a bunch on my plate. I ended up taking the phone to the local store I bought it from, and they were able to confirm the problem was the battery current abruptly dropping, causing the phone to restart. Because this may well be a problem with the connective pins, I decided to send it in for repair (for free, as I bought it so recently) rather than buy a new battery only to find out the pins are busted. I will update this once I get it back.

Thank you all for your kind help, if there’s any more problems in the future it’s nice to know there’s a helpful community to rely on.

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Hi @yamimiriam and thanks for the update :slightly_smiling_face:
It’s sensible to send it back for repair under warranty.

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