FP2 is basicly completely unusable after the back gets hot and the screen does all sorts of things

Dear Fairphone community,

I’ve got a Fairphone 2. In the beginning it worked great, sometimes a little laggy. That laggyness got worse and now the phone is close to useless…
The screen does all sorts of strange things. (See the pictures) I’ve read some threads here but after cleaning the screen contacts, it doesn’t get any better.

After the ‘Fairphone, powered by Android’ the screen goes black. It takes a little while, then there pops up a window, with ‘optimising apps’ or something like that, I can’t remember exactly what it said. The back, near the camera is getting pretty warm, close to hot, so I pulled the battery out to let it cool down a bit.
I thought maybe it gets better when I update it to the latest firmware, so I downloaded it to a sd card, put that card in the Fairphone and managed to get in the boot menu after try number 5. I tried to enter the boot menu by pressing the volume up and down and the power button at the same time, but well let’s say 70% of the time the screen won’t come on and the vibration motor turns a second, stops for a little time, turns for a second, stops for a little time etc, and the ‘fairphone powered by android’ screen only comes on if I release the buttons, but than it doesn’t get into the boot menu…
Then I installed the newer firmware, or I hope at least, because the screen went back to black again and it didn’t turn itself back on, and I thought, well I’ll give it some time and then after 30 minutes or so I’ll press the power button for 10 secondes…

So where I’m now? I can boot it, but after the ‘Fairphone powered by android’ screen, which isn’t always showing up correctly, the screen goes black and the back gets hot. What to do next?

Cheers,
Subie

If disassembling/reassembling and cleaning contacts, as well as installation of the latest OS didn’t help, I would contact support and ask to get it fixed under warranty.

1 Like

Yes, I was thinking about that too… But then this happens: it works! Well, the screen works, the touch is lagging behind, and it’s really slow, but at least the screen works now…

Now I just need to find out why it’s so incredibly slow.

Cheers,
Subie

[quote=“Subie, post:1, topic:19332”]
I tried to enter the boot menu by pressing the volume up and down and the power button at the same time
[/quote]Who told you to hold 3 buttons? I don’t know the 3-buttons-function, can you tell more?

Spielmops

That is the button combination to enter the boot menu, as I wasn’t able to use the phone in android… So I updated it manually with a sd card :).

https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207914363-Manually-install-Fairphone-OS-for-the-Fairphone-2

Subie

You mean the screen with some lines where you can go up and down by volume and chose with power?

Yes that one! :slight_smile:

Ok, a reboot mabye? Well, why not? Here we go.
First you’ll see this.

And unfortunately I can’t post more photos at once, so I’ll just post some more replies…

Subie

That’s the recovery-mode and the right key-combination to get there ist:
volume up and power for > 10seconds even if your phone is on. Try it.

Oh, didn’t know that. Worked!

Then we get this:

Next photo will be in the next reply…

Subie

Last but not least.

This is the last one.

Sorry for that high amount of replies, but I just wanted to show what the screen’s doing…

It’s really slow and sometimes the screen is going all sorts of things… That’s my problem. And I don’t know how to fix it.

Subie

Looks like you will send your phone back and get a new one …

I think so too, I’ll call them somewhere next week I think…

Subie

Hey Subie! I have a very similar experience with my screen, crazy things, flickering, off, colorful artefacts etc. I also experienced the boot problems and the occasional “optimizing apps” with back getting really hot. What is really funny: Even when the screen didn’t show up, i think the phone often booted correctly, because I could use WhattsApp Web which is only possible as long as you phone is connected to the internet and turned on. So I figured it i something related to the screen only. At any rate, my phone works quite well at the moment. A reboot per day or so. I think it is related to the positioning of the screen and the rest of the phone, e.g. the contacts between screen and rest. I usually just try to push and pull the screen and it reboots now without problems…

This looks rather simular to the problems i Bad with my fp2. For me these issues came again and worse so Form some point there was no Mord Chance to geht the phone working. I lost some of my whats APP conversations AS i die not save Them. Luckily i stored most oft my files on SD card.
I sent it in and got it back about 10 days later. Now everything works fine again. Repair report says mainboard was exchanged.
Good luck!

4 posts were merged into an existing topic: Noisy coloured pixels on my Fairphone 2

Thanks everyone! DHL picked it up today, now Fairphone will repair it :)!

Dear Fairphone community,

I am experiencing exactly the same problems as Subie with my phone since yesterday. The screen is just crazy - flickering, inverting colors, cutting pictures, not or barely responding to the touchscreen.
Sometimes the screen works fine (maybe 2% of the time) but the rest is just horrible, I can barely use my phone. I could not even type in my SIM card pin, so right now I am using a card without a pin (local number) which is very annoying as the other card is my international number.

I installed the latest iOs update yesterday but alas no improvement for the screen problem so far. But I do have a different colored LED light now compared to just the red one before.

Is there any way I can fix this problem on my own? I am on a mission in South-East Asia I don’t think that the DHL pick-up will work here. Or does it?

Your help is much appreciated!
impermissus

Hi impermissus,

I think you’ve got the exact same problem as me… I tried lots of things, but no one fixed the problem. I called Fairphone support, as they are not replying the mail very fast, and as I said above, DHL picked it up. Well DHL is big, at least you can call the support team and ask it, according to this article DHL does it… http://www.dhl.com/en/press/releases/releases_2015/express/dhl_express_invests_eur_85_million_in_south_asia_hub.html

I would say buy a simple and cheap Nokia locally, if that’s possible, and put your international sim card in it. When you’re back at home call Fairphone support and ask them how to fix this problem, because you won’t be able to fix it yourselves. And all the things around the return process will take some time, I think it’s more usefull to spend your time on your mission rather then a phone…

I hope that helped a bit… Anyway, good luck!

Cheers,
Subie

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