I just want to give you a feedback on my experience in case it could help someone here.
For several weeks, I had difficulties to plug my USB-C wire into the phone: no charge or slow charge at 1st, 2nd or even 3rd plug, before the charge begins. Another (minor) issue I had was that the torchlight delivered a variable light and not a stable one (as I don’t use it very often, I don’t know when it began but I suspect that it was at the same time).
After trying external cleaning of the USB-C port (with toothpick, alcohol on a cotton bud and an air spray), I had no real result, so I decided to open the phone and clean it from the inside. And that was the good option!
I followed this guide to open and extract the bottom module: Fairphone 3 Bottom Module Replacement - iFixit Repair Guide. Then I carefully cleaned the module and the rest of what I saw dirty inside the phone, using alcohol on cotton buds and air spray, before reinserting the bottom module and closing firmly the phone with the screws.
A thin metal strip broke when I removed the connecting cable of the bottom module and I didn’t succeed in putting it back in place… but apparently that was not absolutely necessary as… everything now works perfectly fine again!
Well, I rename this topic by adding “(thought I)”, as the same issues are back after just a few days .
But I can deduct from the experience that these issues are probably linked to a default in the inside screwing/closing system, maybe due to the age of the phone and/or the heavy heat we had this summer…
I’ll live with this situation, but now I know how to do in case I need to fix it for a few hours . And if it becomes very painful, I’ll try a bottom module replacement (if I can find one)!
As I decided to replace the battery last week, in order to reduce the number of charges necessary (and get more comfort), I noticed that the internal screws were once again not firmly screwed…
After re-screwing them firmly, my charging difficulties were fixed for a few days.
As I can’t reasonably open and re-screw every day, what I do now is to press the bottom of my phone before plugging it, and it seems to help in reducing the number of times I need to plug in before getting a normal charge (instead of a slow one).
Next step: I’ll try a factory reset (that I never had to do since I get my FP3!) and check if it helps either for the charging issue and/or for reducing battery consumption (even if I didn’t found any app consuming too much in the Android settings, but it couldn’t be a bad thing to do anyway).
What leads me to suspect a global issue (hardware or software) is that after discussing all that with 2 relatives who belong a FP3, they encounter quite the same charging issue as me since a few months…
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. And if it becomes very painful, I’ll try a bottom module replacement (if I can find one)!