An update on my issue. I emailed support and left it a week, with no reply. I phoned support to check on the status of my support request; they emailed back straight away. We exchanged some emails and Fairphone support agreed that it was an issue with the micro-USB port.
The solution was a replacement Bottom Module, the idea was to send it out to me and I would fix the phone myself, however there is no stock at the moment. Here is the reply:
Unfortunately, we can’t replace this specific module at the moment. The reason for this is that we are currently optimizing our production process. We are gradually introducing some changes to improve production quality, based on the teachings of the past half year of Fairphone 2-production. For that purpose, we temporarily stopped the assembly lines. We also engaged with suppliers to adjust their processes and materials.
Currently we are waiting until the new modules are shipped from China and back in stock again in our warehouse.
We will proceed with the replacement as soon as this happens.
I bought my Fairphone 2 through the Phone Coop, so I explained the situation, forwarded the email, and got a replacement Fairphone within the week.
I was one year in Japan and always used the same charger (not always the same cable) and it worked somehow.
Now when I came back to Germany my FP2 suddenly won’t charge.
Today when I woke up, I couldnt turn the phone on. When it was connected to the charger, the red LED started blinking. I did what was written in this topic (Tip: FP2 battery not charging, blinking red led) but my phone still doesn’t turn on.
I’ve got the feeling, that it’s a problem of the phone and not the charger (because I used the same charger for over a year and there wasn’t a problem) but I’m not a pro at these things. Please help, need my phone working…
Hi everybody, I reactivate this topic because apparently I have the same issue since yesterday. How did you manage it ? Anyone finally received an answer? My guess is the microphone/usb module but it is currently out of stock, anyone have changed it ?
I had this sudden charging problem myself. My FP2 is 3 months old and is no longer capable of charging a battery. I know it is a problem with the USB port because I ordered a brand new battery from the online shop and it behaves exactly as the “old” one. Unfortunately, bottom module is still out of stock on the online store.
I’m in contact with the support desk to understand what to do… Meanwhile, I’ll get an external battery charger. With two batteries I should go along well
I experienced a similar problem. My fairphone stopped charging 4 weeks ago. After 3 weeks support send me a new batterie, but it did not help. The phone still does not charge. So right now I am in my 4th week without phone and I am starting to be really annoyed. I told support several times that this is my only phone, business and private, and that I need it working quickly. But they seem to have all the time in the world. The last response was 5 days ago. I was told to sign up at the return portal to have my phone sent in. So I did that and still nothing. In the procedure I was told to make a backup, because they will wipe everything. I was asking how I am supposed to do that if the phone is not working at all? No answer…
This is my first very bad experience with the phone. Of course there are small issues like cracked cases, a bad camera,… but at least the phone was working. I can live with this, it is normal for the small production number. And so far the support was very helpful and rather quick. The problem is, now that I have a SERIOUS issue and can not use the phone at all, I feel left alone. 4 weeks without a phone and responses once per week is not ok in my opinion.
All I want is a new bottom module to test if it is broken, since this seems to be the case for other users.
Now I have bought a cheap external charger to be at least able to make the backup. A useless piece of electronics I buy for a one-time use. I thought that this company wanted to avoid exactly this! But maybe I have to use it for a longer time if I have to continue waiting for a normal guarantee repair…
The FP1 backplate isn’t very securely attached and tends to fall off quite easily so when the bloating occurred it just popped off. Both times. I suppose I should be grateful it didn’t catch fire, leak something toxic or destroy the phone. Maybe next time.
I intend to resurrect my FP1 at some point but I needed a phone urgently and could not wait for yet another replacement to be sent out. So I had to buy a back-up phone for my back-up phone.
I am having more ore less the same problem as the original poster Ridley: as of yesterday morning, my phone’s battery is empty and will not (really) recharge. As a result I am stuck in the first minute or so of the recharging process, no matter what I do.
Description:
When I recharge the phone on a cable, it will go down the following sequence, though it doesn’t always get to the end of it:
Red light starts blinking (maybe 30 seconds)
Red light stops, white-on-black Fairphone logo appears (10-20 seconds)
Shows the screen with the blue battery recharging
Shows dialog “Updating app 15 of 177”
Somewhere along this road, I will then see the red light blink, feel the phone vibrate, and we’ll be back to just having the blinking red light.
What’s odd is that the numbers in the dialog are always different. It may be “Updating app 15 of 177” and the next time it may be “Updating app 13 of 154”. For a while it seemed that the total number of apps was going down, so I thought “Goodie, if I just wait long enough it will get through this stuff eventually.” But then it went back to “Updating app 15 of 181”. That was a disappointment
When I take out the battery and connect the power, the phone will go into a fast cycle of red light, showing the Fairphone logo, and rebooting. If I put the battery back in, that just brings it back to the longer cycle described above.
Elimination:
I’ve used two different USB-to-phone cables that have both worked well for a long time, plus two different socket-to-phone rechargers. The USB cables I connected to power coming from my laptop, my powerbank, the USB port in my car, and a friend’s powerbank.
I’ve tried the hardware reboot suggested in other posts. I haven’t got the impression that it has made any difference, but it could be that I’ve just made things worse and caused the device to want to update all my apps.
I have never ever taken off my device’s screen, or even fiddled with the little blue locks. So I don’t see any reason to starting doing that now as a way of solving the battery recharge problem. I did try once to press the battery extra tight while recharging, but that didn’t help. And it really doesn’t feel like the battery is somehow loose, either.
What happened just before:
The problem appears to have started the night before. I noticed that recharging didn’t work anymore. I remember looking at the battery status graph and seeing a very steep decline on the morning of that day-before. I had the phone off for a while that day. I didn’t drop it.
My own theories:
I noticed that my previous phone (Google Nexus 5) developed “battery awareness” issues after I started using a power bank to recharge it. The device would think that it was fully charged when in fact it wasn’t. Could it be that the FP2 phone is also somehow getting confused by the power bank?
Got the same problem. Blinking red light, then it seems to have enough juice to automatically start up the fairphone animation with slow blinking red light, after that it returns to its fast blinking red light.
You need to perform the battery reset as described in the #batteryguide and then let it charge until the LED turns at least yellow (better wait for green).
It will take a long time from blinking red to solid red and then to yellow, but don’t try to boot until then.
If it continues to go back to blinking red on it’s own then your charger, cable, battery, bottom module or core module is defect or you have a connection issue between the modules.
Take them apart, clean the connectors and put everything back in order. If you can move the battery around in it’s place then fill the gaps with folded paper strips, so it sits tightly.
Then try the batteryreset again.
@wytzeschouten if after you charged the battery you get into a bootloop (the app optimization process restarts again and again) then please read this and continue there.
(not sure whether or not i am expected to make a new topic, my excuses if i am thrasing the OP)
I’ve already done the suggested methods over and over again. Except for disassembling the module, will try that this evening but i dont expect much of it.
As said, i dont have a choice too boot my phone or not. The phone boots up without my consent which causes it to go in to deep discharge modus. If i am lucky it does not, i try to turn it off but during the turn off period (with circling circle) it goes in that case back to deep discharge mode.
Looking at the amount of post regarding charging and views on those topics, it is not a cable or charger issue but a Fairphone hard/software issue.
Hi Paul, thanks for your quick answer. Turns out it was enough to have let the device rest (disconnected and terribly empty) for a night.
When I connected the device to the powerbank, it gently started the sequence of (1) blinking red light, (2) Fairphone logo, (3) blue battery recharging screen and then (4) dark screen with permanent red light, then (5) permanent yellow light. After an hour I powered it on and it went into the app update process. Which it merrily finished in half an hour. Then all was back to normal.
I do wonder how my phone got into this state. Two days ago when this began, it wasn’t just a matter of me letting the battery drain: even when the device was on, the battery refused to recharge. I could see the battery level drop, and no matter what power source I connected it to, it just did not recharge (it didn’t show the lightning symbol in the battery icon either). Powering the device off and on did not help either, I did that two or three times in the hours during which the battery just went down.
Could it be related to another problem my FP2 has been having on and off?
In the last two months, I’ve had moments where the device just suddenly shut down. Often during or after calls, or while taking photos or videos. But also while browsing or merely flicking through the screens of the Android/FP2 launcher itself. This happens about once a week, though sometimes it can be in quick succession.
From support: "According to the repair report, the core module, bottom module and the battery of your phone have been replaced with brand new ones. "
If that’s true then it could be software. -
When I received the phone back from being repaired it immediately did a a software update. Is it it possible that the phone worked in the Fairphone lab on one software version and then broke after I updated it?
Here is the current state of my phone: I removed the battery from the phone for several hours. I put the battery back in and I see the blinking light. According to the #batteryguide the light should turn solid red after “some minutes”. On my phone the light goes dark after 30 seconds and stays dark.
If I press the on button then the light starts blinking again. After a minute the light goes dark, I see the battery charging icon followed by the Fairphone logo. After about 30 seconds the screen goes dark and the red light starts blinking again.
Sometimes it gets to the “Android is starting…” message box. It counts up to a number before turning off again.
"Optimising app 20 of 128"
"Optimising app 28 of 86"
“Optimising app 24 of 128”
That means either your brand new bottom module is having issues too or your charger or cable is not working right.
With the right hardware the LED should stay on while charging and the phone shouldn’t try to start booting on it’s own. So you shouldn’t get to the app optimization bootloop without pressing a button - which by the way is a separate issue described here.
You can try going to #dic:recoverymode.
Just try and stay there for a while and see if the phone charges there (it’s definitely more battery-friendly then the app optimization process).
