i bought my new FP3 a week ago … and the auto-rotation never worked how intended.
sometimes it rotates when i unlock it when holding in horizontal direction … but then is stucked.
normally it is stuck in portrait-mode… same with camera-app.
anyone has an idea what i can do?
until now the only negative effect i found … as this is my first fairphone…
Welcome to our community forum!
Maybe your gravity sensor (accelerometer) is broken. Install a sensor app, go into “Accelerometer” and look if the values change when you tilt the phone.
thanks for the tips,… gonna tell you my win-win-story 
ok, just installed this recommended app … and tried all sub-tools,
accelerometer shows nothing,
gyroscope shows nothing, …
only LIGHT shows smthng, 39,0 lux - but never changes (not in dark room, not by changing screen brightness) … only here the “+”-button in the app works… ;/
not that happy with that outcome… and thought maybe this app is broken, so i downloaded
sensors multitool from wered software
and sensoren werkzeugkasten from exa tools
both showed the same as the first app - nothing.
so i rebooted my fairphone 3, et voila, it ‘suddenly’ works…
android seems more and more like windows …
thanks for your help !
Speaking from my personal Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile experience … that statement is actually an insult to Windows in a smartphone stability and predictability context … Android was and is nowhere near, but customers obviously had other priorities, some of which I share, now being on Android myself .
i know windows from 3.1 … ;D
On desktop, yes, me too … A whole different matter on smartphones, though .
Hi,
I encounterd the same issue with the Fair Phone 3. The screen rotation suddenly stops working and after a reboot it works again. However after a certain period it stops working again and I have to reboot the phone again so the problem goes away.
Did you managed to solve this problem or do you still encounter it on your FP3?
cant answer that now…
last time i had problems with rotating i rotated every app until the fairphone3 rebooted … (by itself)
I’ve had this issue once so far, but usually it works fine. So it was probably not a hardware problem, and an app “messed up” the system. Worked again after rebooting.
The panorama mode of the standard camera app (to combine several pictures into a wide one) only seems to work in vertical / portrait mode. You can also try Open Camera or other apps (which shows the angle in which you hold the phone, which should also indicate the sensor is working).
Also happened with other phones I’ve had before.
I’ve also had this issue and the gyro stays miscalibrated, so when I go back to portrait it switches to landscape. Restarting cures it, but it’s happened a few times already.
My auto-rotation has stopped working. The “Sensors” app shows me, that the accelerator’s z-axis is stuck on -78,47. I tried restarting the phone, recalibrating with several apps, removing the battery for a few minutes and turned the auto-rotate-setting on and off serveral times, of course. Any idea, what else I could do to fix this?
Auto-rotate did not work installed Sensors app
numbers were blank. Factory reset phone and auto rotate worked. Numbers appeared correctly in sensors app.
Hey there. I’ve had water damage to my FP3 and had to replace the display module. Now the phone is basically working again but auto-rotate and auto-adjusted backlighting are no longer working. I’ve installed Phyphox to read out the sensors and it is telling me that the following sensors are not providing any data (greyed out): accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light, magnetic field. After reading through this thread (and a few similar ones) I’ve also installed the recommended Sensors app but this does not even show any fields for the above sensor readings, so it is apparently hiding those as the sensors are physically not detected.
Due to the water damage, I’m expecting the module, that contains these sensors, has given up the ghost. Can anyone tell me whether all of the above sensors reside in the same module and if so, which module this is?
Thanks so much!
support@fairphone.com would know.
There’s the ifixit info
and dialling *#*#66#*#* will take you to Service menu. Selecting Service tests > Test single and > Gyro etc
I did some quick experiments with Phyphox on my FP3 to find the location of the magnetic field sensor. I did this in part because I like pretending I’m smart and using my phone as a stud detector, but that only really works if you know where the sensor is in the first place
I essentially laid the smartphone flat on a table, overhanging upside down so I could read out the measurements and simultaneously move some magnetic objects over the back surface. I got the strongest magnetic signal when the magnetic object was close to the lower left tip of the ?Wi-Fi antenna (not sure if this is what it is, I recall seeing it somewhere in the forum)?. This antenna is the square shaped metal feature to the direct right of the fingerprint sensor in this image-- photocred to ifixit --.
.
So, based on only this, I’d say that the magnetic sensor is in the main module, in close vicinity to the wifi chip you can see in the teardown. However, in the teardown they also mention that the ambient sensor is in the top module. So it’s possible that the magnetic sensor uses the antenna as amplfication and is in a different place?
Isn’t the ambient sensor just the light sensor by the selfie camera - i.e. not related to the gyro which provides some orientation info but fro simple screen autorotation it may use a simple mercury switch.
Yup, this sensor is immediately identifiable, and does not seem to have the other sensors near it. @Troubadix77 , given that these sensors don’t seem to be close to one another, it suggests: if it’s a hardware failure, multiple parts of the phone may be defective. For this reason, I suspect there may be a software issue instead. Kind of looks similar to this from above
I’ve rebooted the phone several times but to no effect. I’ve tested the sensors through the service menu - thanks @amoun for the tip! - and found the following sensors failed (result):
Remember, my phone did have a rather unpleasant rendezvous with water, so I wouldn’t rule out that multiple modules suffered damage. I was just hoping it would be limited to the top module (besides the display, which I’ve already replaced). But thanks to the experiment of @punyidea it does seem like the gyro/magnetic field sensor chips sits on the core module.
With RoHS I doubt they are still using mercury switches…?
One question : does wifi still work? Because I would suspect that it would fail if the magnetic sensor failed. After all,both are under a metal shield I think 
.
Apart from rebooting your phone have you tried further steps i. e. Hard reboot or factory reset? From the above it looks like factory reset helped at least one person
Yes, WiFi and everything else except for the afore mentioned sensors works fine. Occasionally the camera locks up while trying to save the image but that also seems to be a SW issue.
Meanwhile, I also have response from Fairphone Support and they also suggest doing a factory reset (without telling me where the questionable sensors are located… ). Nothing that I’m keen on doing but before spending a bunch of money on more spare parts, it’s definitely worth a try. It’s about time for some back-up and cleanup anyhow…