I bought a Fairphone2 as a gift for a very dear friend of mine about 10 months ago. We were both extremely excited to be part of this wonderful movement and somehow overlooked the increasing amount of restarts that the phone started to have.
Around 2 months ago she mentioned that the restarts were becoming more and more often, even a few per day. Even so, what bothered her even more was the ever decreasing battery life. It resulted in the battery being drained completely 3 weeks ago and not able to be charged anymore, therefore a completely unusable phone.
I checked and read the topics surrounding battery issues and then contacted support. After a few emails with guides on what to do, they concluded the battery is faulty and sent me a new one for free as it’s still in warranty. I picked up the battery two days ago, inserted it in the phone and was delighted to see 32%. I proceeded to charge it so I can upgrade the firmware to the latest version.
An hour later the phone was completely dead, even though the charger had been plugged in all that time. I noticed the exact same trend as with the previous battery: the red led blinks for a few minutes, the Fairphone animation kicks in, then a battery animation, the phone turns on and remains at 0% battery. Even though on the main screen it shows Charging, when I go to the battery details it shows Not Charging.
I immediately contacted support but haven’t heard back from them yet. I feel it’s either another faulty battery or something else inside it is faulty. I carefully cleaned the charging port, I disabled as many apps as I could, still it doesn’t charge at all. I am at this point completely lost and heartbroken.
I have the exact same problem. The phone started to reboot randomly and the battery completely lost its charge. When trying to charge it it followed the same pattern as you experienced. I purchased a new battery thinking that this might solve the issue but it has continued with the new battery. I have with a lot of trial and error (difficult when the battery is discharged) managed to restore factory settings but this has not resolved the issue - it is still rebooting every few minutes and the battery not charging. Will contact fairphone support.
I have had similar problems with battery life and restarts and have found that switching to the LineageOS has improved things greatly. There are instructions on how to install it here https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/FP2/install The only bit I found confusing was on part 6 of the section “Installing a custom recovery using fastboot”, you need to press and hold power and volume up before the phone restarts to complete the install of TWRP on your phone. I admittedly botched my way through this, but there are experts on hand elsewhere in the forum https://forum.fairphone.com/c/software/alt-lineageos
In the case I mentioned above I contacted support and they sent me a new bottom module which fixes the issues. It’s now working properly.
I also told my friend to take better care of the battery by not letting it discharge completely and not charging it fully all the time, but keeping it between 20% and 80% of battery charge.
Generally this is a good way to do. Anyway a completely drained or full battery should not lead to any damage.
I have a device of the first batch which could handle any battery state since
2 years now. Maybe I am wrong, but if I am not completely mistaking I recall reading in this forum somewhere that FP has reworked the bottom module.
Would you mind to give away the old module to the community for testing/tinkering purpose? (fairphoneangels)
I also have the same problem. Every few days the battery drains down to zero within seconds and I then struggle to get it to charge again - repeated switching on and off, plug in and out, battery in and out. At some stage it then shows 30% or thereabout charge level (after seonds of charging) or will still be very low the next morning. Makes little sense to me…