Both my fp4 and my brother’s fp5 become almost unusably slow under approximately 10% charge. Why is this, and (how) can it be remediated?
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battery is low and the phones try to last as long as can till full discharge
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@Furdiburd, but I don’t want it to do that — I always have a battery pack on me, so it losing its charge isn’t a problem. At the very least, I use my smartphone for some rather critical things, so I need it to respond in a timely manner, and my Pixel doesn’t do this.
does the same thing happen when you disable the battery saver?
@noodlejetski, I don’t have battery saver enabled. Battery saver does make it act like I’ve described, which makes the fact that it slows with it disabled even more perplexing.
Not able to really help. Probably also you considered this; anyway, what i would do as a workaround in your situation (as far as i get it you strive mostly for consistency);
enable battery saver and set it to the percentage where the phone gets slow (you mentioned 10%). Why? because you get a very prominent indicator (red battery icon)
As soon as you see that icon, switch in the good battery.
This way you loose 10% battery, but the workflow is the same as for having the battery run out of power. A solution would be of course better.
If you rely on certain apps to work you might also be able to add exclusions for those. Just enable the battery saver all the time and if you can make the apps work in that scenario, it might be that you get consistent performance and as bonus longer battery life.
The Power management restrictions android applies might also give a hint if what you need is possible: Power management restrictions | App quality | Android Developers power
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I do need a new battery — having it constantly charging obviously rather quickly destroys it. I’ll consult the threads linked at External universal chargers for Fairphone batteries to see whether charging some batteries alongside the primary one is viable. It’s a very good idea that I’ve been procrastinating researching.
Many thanks., @AxelFFF.
I’m also experiencing the slowness below 10% battery. And I can attest, it’s not the battery saver mode. Disabling it despite the low charge, does help a little. But something is very wrong with this behaviour.
Having battery saver enabled above 10% battery doesnt impact the performance basically at all.
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Submitted to https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/requests/1205057.
@Nabalazs, is the undermentioned about this topic?
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I hope they won’t close this ticket, claiming it’s intended behaviour. It’s way too drasric.
Thanks for submitting a ticket!
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…They tried hard to get me to consider it an expected feature of Battery Saver. I acquiesced last night, since I shan’t have any time to deal with tickets. They did have a point that disabling battery saver makes a difference (until about 5%) but I don’t experience any slowness on my Pixel 3, so it’s not ideal.
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I to have this problem. I game on my phone. Pokemon sleep, Mario Kart tour, etc. These games require a constant internet connection and can’t simply turn it off to save battery. I have since disabled mobile data when it isn’t in use. I’m mostly connected via WiFi. I have to re-enable the data and disable WiFi when out and about. It saves a lot of battery, but having to constantly manually disable and enable this in settings is a chore. I think most modern games don’t really need to be constantly connected if its a single player game. Going into offline mode on PC proves that most games don’t require it. It just has to phone home after a day for DRM reasons. Why can’t most games on the phone have the same functionality. My guess is that it still expects you to be connected via mobile data is the reason. Having it go below 15% reminded me how gaming laptops just chug after being disconnected from the power grid. Some games would just crash. Lowering the settings to like 720p or if available 480p would fix this, but with some games having the settings in game just means you can’t play that game now till reconnected to the grid. Funny how its the same issue with the Fairphone with a low battery. Just some information about my experience with both devices through the years.
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Same issue here. Below roughly 15 percent the phone gets slow as hell.
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“The page you were looking for doesn’t exist” Did you get a worthy solution?
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@Spleenomatik, that’s because the URI points to an (unfortunately, mandatorily) private ZenDesk ticket.
I must have forgotten to share it. Thanks.
They provided me with a plausible explanation, but not one which I believe, due to the immediately noticeable degradation in performance immediately after hitting 10% charge (it should be a gradual performance degradation):
Our Product Team confirmed that this is a known behavior in many smartphones, including Android and iOS devices.
When battery levels drop to around 10% (sometimes 20%), smartphones often throttle performance to conserve power and prevent shutdowns, even if Battery Saver is off. This is due to:
- Built-in power conservation: Even when Battery Saver is disabled, most devices have automatic power-saving measures that reduce performance to prevent rapid battery drain. This isn’t typically controlled by user settings.
- CPU Throttling: When the battery level is very low, the CPU is usually throttled to reduce power usage, which impacts performance by limiting power-intensive operations.
- Battery wear and power delivery limits: Lithium-ion batteries struggle to deliver high power at low charge. Under 10%, the battery might not be able to sustain high-performance demands, and this power delivery constraint leads to an automatic performance reduction. This varies by device, which may explain differences the customer notices.
This behavior is normal and aims to extend device usability at low battery levels.
Additionally, Bedtime mode on will influence device’s performance as well. Bedtime mode is more resource intensive, so that could also lead to more performance degradation, in low battery levels.
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BTW: i think from Android 14, don’t see anymore this problem on my FP5, one time i miss low battery, and with 1% still system/apps speed as normal 
As a FP4 Android 14 beta tester it’s still happening for me. Oh well.
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Not for me. The behaviour still persists. FP5 A14 latest update as of this post.
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