Hi all!
I have tried to find my specific charging issue in the other posts but haven’t found my specific issue seen described, so wanted to ask here:
I bought my FP 3+ approy half a year ago directly from Fairphone website.
Last night my FP 3+ seemed to not charge anymore. This morning, battery was down to less than 20%.
After some fiddling with several charging cables, all showing the same issue, I found and tried the Battery Status Test. This is what happens:
I plug in the charging cable.
Phone vibrates, charging symbol appears, yellow light goes on.
Battery Status Test says: Status charging.
After a minute or so, the yellow light turns off, but the charging symbol stays on.
Battery Status Test says: Plug in charger.
If I take out the cable, and re-insert, it happens all over again.
It charges normally in the moments it charges, I’ve gotten it back up to 50+% by just constantly re-inserting the cable.
What can be done to resolve the issue so it charges normally, please?
Could it be a setting issue? Max temperature of battery?
Things I’ve done without change to result:
lint scraped out of charging port, there was none
Tested several charging cables and charging plugs and through laptop, all showing the same issue
taken battery out and put next to phone for over an hour before re-inserting and trying again. Each time it showed a couple more battery charge % higher than previously
Your problem does seem difficult, ensure your OS is the default and uptodate.
Take screen shots of the battrey status when charging and when disconnected and get in touch with Fairphone support with all the info.
You can also dismantle the modules and replace them as there may be a contact issue between the bottom module with the port and the core module that controls the charging
Hi, thank you for your answer.
First I’m ordering a new charger cable on the Fairphone’s site because the one I used since I’ve bought my FP3 seems to be broken. So I hope this will solve my problem.
I have the same problem as Francisca with a friend’s charger.
I’ve tried to take the battery out and putting it back, I’ve cleaned the USB port of the phone and nothing changed.
Hi there, I’ve been getting the same kind of problem for 15 days now, so I think it’s better to post it than clutter the forum with dupe problems.
Phone is a Fairphone 3
OS is LineageOS+micro-g latest version (18.1), rooted
No significant action could have caused the problem. It’s just that one night, I plugged the phone to charge. In the morning it was not recharged. The only thing is that I used a charger never used before
with the smartphone (it’s a Meizu brand charger)
Before that, the phone would charge with any source of electricity (charger, car outlet, PC USB port, docking station USB port) and any cable.
Luckily, until now my docking station’s USB port + the cable plugged into it are able to charge the FP3 100% of the attempts.
But in other cases, things are very random :
some cables seem to never work
some cables+charger combination (in my car) work on an random basis
I should add that when I plug a cable and the phone won’t charge, the yellow LED does turn on, though.
I did all of @franziskagoetz’s troubleshooting actions, and I also even exchanged the battery with another Fairphone 3. All of this to no avail.
All of this randomness is very weird, and I fear this is a hardware problem. If so, what part would I need to replace?
My wife and me both have a fairphone 3 (1 Android and 1 /e/ version). 6 months ago I replaced my charger unit as I had issues what often the USB-C charger was not detected.
Currently we have to plug/unplug/plug the charger to get 1-2% of battery load. After a few seconds the battery status flips from charging to “plugged in but cannot charge right now”.
Following things are tried:
system status is up to date
cleaned Battery entrance and found no fluff
tried multiple sockets / chargers / cables
rebooted fairphone
shutted down the fairphone, remounted battery,sim1,sim2 and SDcard and then rebooted
no change to the days before in terms of new apps etc.
I get the impression that it concerns a design tolerance issue in the charger unit, causing too much leeway or there is a bug in the Firmware.
You seem to say this is happening on both phones and with multiple options or cables and chargers.
My suspicion goes first to the cables. Do you have any that are IF certified? Some cables, although USBC, are not ‘cross’ wired and may only work in one orientation.
Have you tried using another person’s cable/charger?
What make and model of charging unit did you have a problem with and what was the replacement?
By the way I hope the SD card is mounted as Portable as formatting as internal often relates to differing issues, although I haven’t really noted charging as one of them. Maybe you could try charging the bare phone without any and SIM or SD.
There’s always a hope that a #fairphoneangel may reside near you that can assist in finding the problem
Finally, since I remembered our family had a spare FP3, I tried the following : I switched the bottom module. Now, my main phone connects perfectly like before (chargers, Android auto, etc.), while the spare phone has these random moments of charging. So, definitely a bottom module problem, it seems.
Is it something I can find 2nd hand, and if so, where?
Thank you. I was thinking of something more second-handish, but on ebay, I could find none. Maybe I should find an out of order phone, since one of my kids has a partially broken screen.
At least 2 of them are IF certified (including one from someone else). They all work with other smartphones of bigger brands. I found one charger which does work and noticed the higher supply voltage. This leads me to the suspicion of having too large transition resistances dropping the final voltage slightly below minimum level. The functional one has 5,9,12 and 20V as output with respectively 15/20/20/22W as output. (Xiaomi power adapter model: MDY-11-EP)
not functional are Samsung chargers and cables like ISY IUC-4100-RB-C.
for now I can at least continue using the Fairphones while travelling. At home I will do some more investigating, right now my suspicion lies with too high connection/transition resistances.
That really shouldn’t be an issue as the phone, albeit slowly, should charge from a 5.1V USB Type A socket producing 0.5A on a PC.
If you have an opportunity you could try that, sure it’s very slow but with a decent basic cable should still charge in 6 hours plus.
The problem with the ‘newer’ ‘quick’ chargers is that they have a complex chip design to communicate with the charger, there are a few such protocols around, the Fairphone using Qualcomm’s QC3. Not all adapters can ‘speak’ to that but in essence should drop back to the 5.1V x 0.5A. If they don’t on the FP3 but do on other QC3 devices then there is an issue with the phone.
Sometimes a bottom module is the issue, where the basic interaction is but the power chip is actually on the core modules, so not an easy thing to resolve, nor in the case of a core module cheap.
