FP2 random reboots - see #rebootsguide for help

@geraldinemoreau have you checked out the #rebootsguide (click the blue text) yet?
Please continue the discussion here and don’t spread it over multiple topics.

My Fairphone 2 constantly reboots. This is really annoying and I can’t trust my phone during the night. What can I do? Hoping not to have to send it away. Beeing without a phone for some time is not an option…

I moved your post here, to avoid duplicate topics.
As the fist post says please start with the #rebootsguide.
If it doesn’t fix it tell us exactly what you tried, what helped a little, what made things worse and anything that might help us in trying to determine what the cause could be.

1 Like

Not having a Plan B ready in case the phone breaks (or must be sent in for repair) is not an option :wink: .

Same thing here. Our 2 FP2s are rebooting on their own, sitting on the desk, charging cable attached or on battery. Initially every one or two days, with increasing frequency. Now they reboot every couple of minutes, being some times unusable - can’t hold conversations, nor write emails…

To me this seems most likely to be a case of a “loose” battery.
Here’s the troubleshooting “tool” from Fairphone:
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001041206-Troubleshoot-your-Fairphone-2-issue
Select “Phone reboots
Then select “There’s something else wrong
Next you will see a video with a test for the battery frame.
If your phone reboots when you try this at home, select “Yes
!Attention! take a video of this test, as you will have to send this video in.
Then contact support and you will find help (eventually :wink: ).

You might have to be a bit stubborn.
My phone became virtually useless, as it rebooted or turned off all the time.
When I contacted support, they concluded, that my battery-frame is a bit large. That’s right and the troubleshooting tool already said so.
Strange enough they said, that the module would have to be replaced and that I should buy the module online and do so myself. If I would not feel up to it, I of course could send the phone in.
This left me wondering which of the modules in the shop I should get to solve my issue:
https://shop.fairphone.com/en/spare-parts/filter/choose-your-fairphone/fairphone-2
The (really expensive) core module - that might include the battery frame - is even not available in the FP shop (only with the German reseller vireo).
Therefore I answered, that they can’t be serious, as I see no module that might do the trick. Furthermore I said, that this problem is widely discussed and quite regular on this forum and that even the troubleshooting tool states, that the “battery frame of your device is slightly bigger than it should”, marking it explicitly as a production issue. Btw. what could I have done to make this frame bigger or to widen it by regular use of the phone?
I added, that I would’nt have coped with random reboots but would have contacted them before the end of warranty, should I have realized it could become so bad, I can not use my phone any longer.

In the end, they offered to send me a tiny self-adhesive plastic part, that is easy to assemble for free.
That did the trick! My phone works just perfectly fine and without any further reboot since then.

It’s just that they should have offered that solution right away. I even would have paid for it.
The initial reply was a complete fail, especially, when you did everything according to their instructions and supplying a video required by them, that illustrates the issue quite well.

All in all, I am happy again and still satisfied with Fairphone - the company. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Upgrading to 18.04.1 fixed the issue for me. It has been working fine for several months now.

1 Like

For some reason Meteogram Weather Widget stopped working with my setup. So I tried the most recent version of Aix Weather, and it seems to be working fine after 48 hours of testing. It’s a good thing that at least one of the two seems to work when the other doesn’t… :wink:

As a consequence I deleted the mention to Aix Weather from the random reboots wiki.

Sorry, it was too early to declare success. My FP2 rebooted during the night exactly as it used to do before, it has been almost a year since the last random reboot, and the culprit is Aix Weather naturally:

--------- beginning of crash
12-12 03:18:12.642 E/AndroidRuntime(11111): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
12-12 03:18:12.642 E/AndroidRuntime(11111): Process: fr.archriss.aixmobile.app, PID: 11111
12-12 03:18:12.642 E/AndroidRuntime(11111): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start service com.connecthings.adtag.asyncTask.sdk.alarm.AdtagSdkSynchronizerService@962e58e with Intent { cmp=fr.archriss.aixmobile.app/com.connecthings.adtag.asyncTask.sdk.alarm.AdtagSdkSynchronizerService }: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: You must initialize this object using @initInstance when your application starts

Interestingly, it seems to be caused by something called Adtag Sdk inside Aix Weather, I’m sure it’s one of those insidious Google tricks which conflicts with my highly deGoogled setup.

Will put back the alert line on the random reboot wiki. :roll_eyes:

2 Likes

My phone randomly reboots too, but one thing it is connected to is the Wifi, it does it more often when it tries to reconnect, but since that topic is closed, I don’t know where to find help about it. Does anybody have the same issue?

You may read through this topic and maybe find hints.

Also (temporarily - over night) disable all network connections and see if there are any reboots.

Yes, I tend to believe so too.

1 Like

Installed Forecastie (available on F-Droid) instead of Aix Weather, and as expected no more unexpected reboots since then.

3 Likes

Recently i was playing a game while charging at the same time from an anker bank (not pokemon go, but still something power hungry).

The screen suddenly stopped responding to touches and froze, pressing the power button to go into sleep mode played the sleep/locking screen sound, but until several seconds later the screen wouldnt turn off like if the hardware lags.
turning it back on again, the game was lagging hard (not enough CPU time like), and ultimately i was looking at lineage loading animation, again.

The weirdest part: The battery was completely shot to pieces, i had like 4% left and they dropped fast, no chance to salvage.

Hi, it’s possible that high temperature typical in this kind of use may have damaged your battery.

Hi there,
just wanted to share my point of view after using FP2 quite a long time:
My wife an I have been running FairphonOpen since ever, both experiencing random reboots with varying frequency (five times day to once a week).

  • I don’t think that the reboots are linked to any specific app.
    Although AixWeather throws exceptions, there are much more exceptions than reboots.
    Uninstalling AixWeather from my wifes phone did not change the behavior.
    I’m experiencing much less reboots - probably because my phone is not connected to mobile networks (only wifi). With my phone, most “first contacts” to mobile networks (leaving flight mode) results in a reboot.
    I guess, that the change in network mode triggers a lot of app-activity at the same time (connecting to the network, “phoning home”, …) which causes the reboots.

  • After changing my OS to LineageOS (15.1 = Android 8.1.0) I never had a single reboot for about two months.

For me it looks like it’s a OS-problem, caused by too much app-activity related to changes in mobile networks (also changing network cell, etc).

Let’s hope that a future OS-version might solve the problem.

Cheers, one of the first 17.418

Btw.: I recommend LineageOS - no reboots, no crashes, smooth experience, less battery usage and (if you like) daily updates.

1 Like

Yes I partially agree with your statements.

Not necessarily, we also had issues like this and there is a rebootsguide available too.

Hi,
I always had issue with my phone since the day I got it. random reboots sometimes several times a day. I doubt it would be because of the battery. sometimes it will happen 4 or 5 times on the same day, but mostly at least one time a day… I don’t know what to do, I was considering getting another phone it’s so annoying.

You are entitled a cool-off right; that is, the right to cancel your purchase within fourteen (14) days from the day the product(s) was delivered to you, without explanation and without penalty.

If it’s not that new … the rebootsguide is in the topic title … and you can contactsupport.

I did contact the support and they told me back then that the new update might fix the issue, so I’ve waited

It would be great to get an update soon. I hope my 2 new problems solve then

For at least 2 weeks now, my FP2 has been crashing/reboots (screen shows a red battery with an exclamation mark followed by %1$d%% ) and I don’t know if the following is also related to it, but if I recall it well, it has started parallel.
I’ve not been able to reproduce the “reset to the factory home and lock screen” -my home and home screen are one of the other factory delivered ones- which happens when the phone is idle or at least locked (I find the screens changed after not having use it)