So I share those frustrations. I still can’t figure out what the reason is for the random reboots. I first did the upgrade in place and that was HORRIBLE! I had contemplated going back to iOS honestly. So I went through the royal PITA of rooting and was going to downgrade back to 13 and never upgrade again. But I decided to try to install 15 fresh and that seemed to make the update more stable. I can tolerate the OS now because the bugs are more or less consistent.
I wanted to get the benefits of updated audio handling and better Android Auto support.
I still have random reboots and I don’t know why. Nova is sluggish at times. I wish a clean install could work like Linux installs. You can set it up so your data doesn’t get wiped. This way the applications and user data you have built up don’t get nuked on a fresh install. (The solution could be as simple as pull the SD card out until the install completes and then reinsert and perhaps manually point all your apps to the sd card. Or perhaps a settings toggle that tells all apps in settings to look for data on the storage card.
I like the idea of Android 15 but the implementation is awful. I would have left my device rooted but I discovered some of my banking apps won’t work on rooted devices. I even thought about e/OS or Graphene since I was already rooted.
I will say you probably need a good consistent app or apps to backup your contacts and text messages.
I manually backup all the 3rd party apk’s I install from the Play store or F-Droid. I try to point every app at the card and every app that has a setting to store configurations gets placed in a backup folder on the card.
If I had to install from scratch again, I’d be annoyed and it would take some time but I could do it in a few hours. (I wish you could run an install script)
Also, lastly, Syncthing is a PITA to learn but once you figure out how to set things up, it’s great and will save your data, especially pictures and other things that can’t be replaced.
The only other thing that would make recovery better is if Meta would program in the ability to backup your whatsapp messages and data to the SD card as well and not force you to back it up to google drive. Sometimes, those restore processes don’t go as planned and might not even work. Meta tech support is worse I’m told. I prefer to manage my own data for this type of stuff instead of trusting it to cloud companies.
I hope my long comment helps you some. I don’t mean to write so much I just hope this helps somebody else stay on the fairphone longer. I’m into my 3rd screen change and have used multiple batteries for long trips. I’m about to retire my first battery in a few months and other than the above, it’s still going. I have an extra sreen replacement for my next cracked screen and even a usb port replacement. Camera is ok not great but good enough for me. iPhones would be cost prohibitive to do screen repairs and they just cost too much money for what the software and design limits you to.
Did you follow AnotherEik advice to install from scratch? If an upgrade asks for a factory reset, you should not insist and do the opposite since it means something went wrong.
If no installation from scratch, did you do the factory reset the software wanted you to do ?
With the in-place upgrading process out of the way as a source of random and unforeseeable issues, this is now a state from where to pick up. A clean install from scratch certainly shouldn’t reboot randomly.
Can’t hurt to also start a support ticket with Fairphone support to get to know what they’ve got in their knowledge base for your case so far or to possibly collect a log for them to figure this out … https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us … their response time can be slow, though (sadly), if not via live chat.
I think you mean unlocking the bootloader.
Rooting either is installing means to let you act as root as a user, most commonly done with Magisk nowadays, or enabling Rooted debugging in the Developer options to let ADB act as root (in case the OS provides this option, not every Android OS does).
Banking Apps tend to not like both of these things, of course, for security reasons.
Are you asking whether or not I have continued to not perform a factory reset and update the phone, or are you asking if I have done some other form of Android update?
I already stated that after my initial decline of a factory reset, I felt forced into performing the factory reset, losing all of my phone data not backed up.
From the wording of FairPhone’s public issue tracker, we’re experiencing a “lower-priority issue”. It seems like forum posts on these issues are the most popular (by far) - I can only conclude that as FP4 users, we’re “lower-priority customers”.
Fairphone is guilty for many things but it is known you should create a backup before doing an upgrade. So it is a bit easy to complain you lost everything because of them without accepting you also are guilty the loss.
Refusing a factory reset when the system requires one is a huge mistake that can only create troubles. The only solution after that is reinstalling from scratch as it was suggested to you.
I only lost 3 years of gym records, on the one app that wasn’t backed up - that’s hardly “everything”. I don’t appreciate you making it seem that I’m complaining over losing data when the problem is a functionally bricked phone.
Given the factory reset fixed nothing, this “huge mistake” hasn’t created any more problems than the initial “upgrade”. Having reinstalled everything “from scratch”, that hasn’t worked, either. So I really don’t understand how refusing one factory reset is such a huge issue if it’s because caused by the OS thinking it is corrupt and the only solution is to entirely scrub the phone of all data and reinstall the data.
Sorry you’re having these issues, but also glad to hear I’m not the only one having an awful time since the A15 update. The biggest issues I’m having is ghost touches, massive lag for the keyboard coming up (very frustrating), background apps closing/restarting all the time (very annoying as a multitasker) and, related to the background app issue, audio playback stopping abruptly. That’s one of the worst ones for me - I use Spotify a lot and it’s got to the point where I can’t open another app without playback stopping/Spotify closing. I thought this might be a Spotify issue at one point but have now had the same issue with other audio playback apps e.g. BBC Sounds.
So, just wondering if anyone has found anything which fixes any of these issues yet? I’ve had my Fairphone 4 for coming up to 3 and a half years and while there have been ongoing performance issues I’ve put up with these because I support the company & it’s ethics. But it’s got to the point where using my phone is a genuinely stressful experience. In battery saver mode it is completely unusable. Absolutely fed up and sadly planning to ditch Fairphone all together if these issues don’t get fixed.
