Fairphone not charging after getting wet

[Diethert]

Hi there.
After a rainy bike ride (my phone was in my bag but still got a bit wet) it won’t charge anymore.
When I plug it in the charger the logo appears and also the text ‘charging do not unplug’. It then disappears and then it comes back after a couple of seconds. If I leave it in the charger the percentage doesn’t go up. The light indicating the charging is never on.

I already took out the bottom module and thought I dried it.
It didn’t work. I then found out that it much resembled this problem:

FP3 not charging - ... problem now fixed

If you take away the battery and plug the phone without the battery, do you see the Fairphone logo showing up and the red light on? Or something else? Nothing? Did you try cleaning the usb port of your FP3 (carefully with a needle)? Did you try taking away the bottom module and putting it back in again?

I figured I might not have dried it enough so I wanted to repeat my repair attempt more thoroughly but It now appears that I have tightened the screws too much and so can’t even take off the display cover anymore.

If the issue won’t be solved by drying, how do I figure out if it is the bottom module, battery, or some other module that needs to be replaced?

Thanks in advanced.

[anon9989719]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Hopefully you have

• Removed the battery as soon as you noticed it was wet.
• Allow to dry in warm air for two days if you didn’t dismantle the phone
• if you did dismantle at least one day with all the modules getting a flow of air.
• Check the dampness indicators if they are not white then there is no valid warranty.

Once in parts clean what you can with alcohol, not gin, some 90% usually isopropyl alcohol.

Pay extra attentuion to the cleaning the USB port and bottom module.

See if you can find a fairphoneangel nearby that may be able to help with a charged battery etc.
Don’t pray but get on your hands and knees and do the dirty work of dismantling and reassembling, twice if it didn’t work the first time with more air drying an cleaning.

All the best

Please read other topics
https://forum.fairphone.com/search?q=water%20damage%20fp3

and

How to handle water damage

Since this happens again and again and there is a lot of useful info on the forum, but people usually read it too late I’ll gather it here in hope that you read it before this happens to you. This is a #wiki so feel free to add info by editing the post. First things first: Turn off and take apart If your phone comes in contact with water and there is even the slightest chance that some droplets or moisture entered it then turn off the phone immediately. The fastest, and only in…

Note I’ve added to the title

[anon9989719]

See also a recent similar case

FP3 water damage: charging problem and blinking flashlight

@anon9989719 , @Roms : I still can’t belive it, but it seems you were completely right!! What happened: Since I got frustrated, I ordered the bottom module for replacement. Having this as a backup plan I was not afraid to open up the modules and have a closer look inside. But I coudn’t find anything. Everthing seemed completly ok. But today afternoon I had the chance to use a strong illuminated magnifier and had a look at the inside of the bottom module again. And then I saw it: in the back of…

[Freigeist]

This suggestion might not be a good solution from other people experiences (see next post):

For drying the phone I´d suggest the old trick to put the phone (or better all single parts of it) in a sack of dry rice for a few days. After around 5 days you can be pretty sure it´s dry again.
And only afterwards I would check for corrosions if it still doesn´t work.

[Lidwien]

Never use rice to dry your phone. Rice can leave residue inside the phone - this will only cause more damage.
Please read the waterwiki.

[Freigeist]

@Freigeist

For drying the phone I´d suggest the old trick to put the phone (or better all single parts of it) in a sack of dry rice for a few days. After around 5 days you can be pretty sure it´s dry again.
And only afterwards I would check for corrosions if it still doesn´t work.

@Lidwien

Never use rice to dry your phone. Rice can leave residue inside the phone - this will only cause more damage.
Please read the waterwiki.

Ok. I didn´t know rice (residues) would be a problem for the phone. Personally I think as long as it´s completely try you can easily remove the residues with compressed air or a vacuum cleaner. For protection agains residues you could put the parts of the phone into a cotton bag first and then put the cotton bag into the rice.

[anon9989719]

@Freigeist

Ok. I didn´t know rice (residues) would be a problem for the phone. Personally I think as long as it´s completely try you can easily remove the residues with compressed air or a vacuum cleaner. For protection agains residues you could put the parts of the phone into a cotton bag first and then put the cotton bag into the rice.

a) Once rice dust mixes with the dampness it forms a sort of glue which compressed air will not remove as it will leave a thin milk-like coating.

However if the phone is put in a drying bag which is only permeable to water then the bag with the phone can be placed in the rice with no problem

[ElaineCB]

Replacing the bottom module solves this problem. This happened to me recently - the exact same as what happened to you - I was cycling in the rain and my phone got a bit damp and then wouldn’t charge properly as you describe. I ordered a new bottom module online and received it in one week, replaced the bottom module, and all is now well again. For the past week I was lucky to have a neighbour who has a fairphone 3 like me and she put my battery in her phone to charge it every day. I will now post the old bottom module back to fairphone in case they can repair it and someone else might use it.

[anon9989719]

Those with the notion of cleaning may consider looking at

FP3 Bottom & Top module breakdown

Hi. Images below taken with an FP3+ I have a defunct F3 that I disassembled to see if I could fix it; No luck; but whilst at it I thought I’d take a look at the bottom module as one issue was that it wouldn’t charge. The bottom module can be prised open, it has four small latches, two stainless steel and two plastic, so be careful. I opened the steel one first. Here is the inside of the two halves of the surround. Centre is the slot for the USB C port. The shiny B98CBC is probably the vibrato…