I’ve had my FP3+ for 3 years and I’m still pretty happy with it. It even survived a toilet drop about a year ago, I took it all apart and dried/cleaned everything I could. I want it to last as many more years of daily use as possible. I’m finding mixed opinions out there on whether replacing the battery will add much to it’s longevity and performance.
I thinked I’ve looked after the battery well, it goes 1-2 days per charge, and I think it could do 3 with restricted usage.
The phone has however slowed down over time, and struggles in some situations, including the odd surprise shut-down if it’s warm and overworked.
I use a SD formatted as portable storage, but the memory is still sitting at 80% full, mostly apps like WhatsApp, Spotify, and Google Photos. I try to keep an eye on that to help performance. It runs Android 13.
Does a replacement battery make much difference in this context for performance and longevity? Or is a replacement only really necessary for a battery that has gone flat?
A related issue is that I’m now living outside of FP parts shipping, in Australia. I have visitors from Europe coming soon so I could send a new battery with them. So, should I order a replacement battery while I still can?
I doubt a battery will do anything for performance issues, what normally helps is a factory reset and setting up from scratch. For sure you need priper back-ups before.
Spotify itself does not need much storage capacities, however you might want to clean the cache of spotify in the app itself.
For Whatsapp it might be worth to delete all thr pics and stuff people send you and you dont need.
When your battery is so empty that your phone switches into the energy saving mode then your phone gets slower. A fresh battery may help to keep the phone longer in the normal power mode.
In case you activate the energy saving mode by default try using the phone without it.
Since his FP3 lasts more than 2 days, i highly doubt the saving power has a huge impact on the performance.
As mentioned by yvmuell, the best thing to do is a factory reset to clean the software a bit.
From what I remember, Android 13 brought some user interface animations that can be deactivated, this might help making performance a bit snappier, too.
A degrading battery will only affect life per-charge, not performance - other than the fact you may run into low-battery power-saving mode more often. As you’re getting 2+ days out of a charge there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with the battery.
The main thing that makes all computing devices seem to slow down as they get older is that the software gets more obese and more complex. Developers always work with the latest, fastest hardware, so only consider whether performance is OK on their own equipment. But when an app or OS on your device is updated, you get the latest features which consume more computing power, so the whole thing runs more slowly.
I’ve stuck with AOS 11 on my FP3+, but I think it’s probably a dead cert that AOS 13 is slightly slower, and also uses more RAM. The same applies to most apps that get regular updates.
Even smart TVs suffer this problem. Most are made with the minimum spec processor they can get away with, then when apps receive OTA updates the whole things slows down, sometimes to the point of being unusable.
I’ve always made my phones last as long as possible, and almost every time it’s been this effect that’s made me have to give up on the old one.
I’m using a FP3+ and it really helps to get rid of all useless files stored by the apps. I use cc cleaner to do that for me.
All very helpful, thanks heaps. Also I don’t use auto battery saver, I only turn it on manually if I know I’ll need the phone to go awhile with no charging.
In a bit of irony however, the phone mysteriously died yesterday and can’t be turned on with the buttons. I’ve contacted support about it.
Do you know the term sudden death?
I think I might have a relevant perspective here.
I recently had a problem with (I think) the bottom module. The phone suddenly wouldn’t charge anymore. And it wasn’t an issue with lint in the socket. Some other forum post convinced me that the bottom module was just burned out.
My FP3 is now 4 years old. I’ve replaced the bottom module once before, because of electric connectivity issues (basically it became too loose to charge reliably, and I was getting some weird symptoms). So I’m naturally inclined to think the bottom module is the weak part of the Fairphone.
I bought a replacement bottom module. Today I installed it, recharged the phone, up to 20% and then interrupted this to add the sim card. Even though the screen said “Charging, please do not disconnect.”
Since it said 20% charged, I assumed I could turn it on and let it continue charging while on.
However this causes a very slow startup (the Fairphone 3 blue animation with a pulsating blob that changes shape was extremely slow). I left it on charger and came back a few minutes later. The device was now booted up, but my screen was only giving me brief flashes of the home screen, interlaced with a black-and-white snow screen like old TVs used to have when you weren’t on any channel.
So the lesson here is that there are circumstances where the system says “Hey, battery is at 20%” and you assume that this means you can use the device. But the device may not be stating the 20% correctly (it was awfully quick to get to this level IMHO).
I would suggest charging the phone while it is off, until completely full. Then letting it run empty until it turns itself off due to no battery. Then charging (while off) again until full. This is a known method to reset the phone’s sense of how full the battery really is, and of how much current it is getting from the battery.
This is an amateur talking, though 