FP3 Slow Charging

Hi,

I have an issue with my FP3. Since a couple of days my phone can be only charged very slowly. At first I tried to charge it via my laptop, but the issue was the same. I also performed twice a battery reset, which didn’t help either. So I thought maybe I’ve had the wrong equipment since I only bought myself at the beginning a usb c cable, but used some old chargers. I ordered now the original FP3 equipment, including charger and cable. The issue is still the same.

Funny though - if I plug in and out a couple of times and play with the cable as well, it sometimes work with regular or fast charging. It seems like there must be a loose contact. My phone is 8 months old and I didn’t drop it or anything like that, why this seems surprising to me.

Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Daniel

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Hi there and welcome to the community forum!
Please follow the #batteryguide first. You’ll find troubleshooting here.

If you happen to have fairphoneangels (<- see link for info) with Fairphone 3 expertise and parts in your vicinity, perhaps swapping modules could identify a hardware culprit.

Else … contact support … https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us.

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So I checked the battery guide and it didnt help. I even made this battery kickstart but didnt worked either.

Today I opened my phone to check the hardware - specifically the bottom module. It seems to be all fine with no broken material or connections inside.

But my issue remains. Mostly the battery is charging in slow mode (regardless of the percentage level) and it only switches to fast mode after disconnecting and connecting several times.

So what to do if the hardware seems to be fine, the cable and charger as well?!

Could this be related to the system (Update necessary) or software related??

Hi there,

Same here, I am recently experiencing some slow charging issues with my FP3.
Before that, it has been fast charging for months with the same charger and cable.
I have checked the charger and cable on another device, charging fine.
I have also cleaned the connector on the phone, same issue.

Any clues, what causes it ?

Thanks
Julien

Fairphone has a proprietary “smart charging” feature that always switches off fast charging via Qualcomm Quick Charge for the last 10 percent of the battery capacity. In other words: Once you reach 90 percent, the charging speed will go down to normal/slow.

Maybe you have just come across this feature? AFAIK it is enabled by default and cannot be configured by the user.

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Hi Teezeh,
thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, this is happening below 90% charging.

Thats exactly the same issue with my FP3. This happens also in the range of 20-90%. It seems like the phone sometimes switches wrongly in slow charging mode, even though the battery is not that low. Maybe something ist wrong with this smart charging feature. But how to fix it?

Hi, I’m also experiencing problems with charging my FP3… I had a problem with constant crash whatever I was doing but that seems to have solved itself?! Hasn’t happened for a week now and it was happening 6-10/day.
Now it’s the charging. I thought it was the lead and have ordered 2 new ones, different types. I plug it in when it’s around 30% and check it after half hour or less and it’s gone DOWN to 15 or below.
I put it on charge about an hour ago and it’s dropped by 5%, I’ve tried unplugging several times it did show 84% at one point but as soon as I put it down it went back to 24%!
Yesterday I tried cleaning the socket (blowing in it) and it seemed to behave but now I’m back to square 1. I thought maybe the socket was loose as there seems to be a bit of give to it. I received it back in Nov/Dec
I had a similar problem with my FP2 and was advised that the socket couldn’t be changed so I would have to have new drive etc as it was inclusive. So I waited for FP3 …now I seem to be in the same boat… any suggestions if the Battery troubleshoot doesn’t work would be gratefully received.

Hello, I had a couple of months ago a sudden problem with my fairphone 3 charging. When I was plugging the phone to charge, nothing happen or only a slow charge after disconnecting and reconnecting the cable 2 or 3 times. I contact fairphone and they were not really helpful and told me to see with the retailer, but we were lockdown and the repair service was unavailable. One time that it was charging, i let it plug for a long time and even after the battery was 100% and after that fast charging worked again and is still working.
I’m using the official charger and cable and before that I have always try to keep the battery between 40 and 80%. I can’t explain why but this has worked for me.

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Hello ! I have exactly the same issue with my FP3… Slow charging almost every time and have to disconnect and reconnect to have recharge normally… Sometimes, for no specific reason i have the fast charge bu after 5 minutes the phone stop charging. If we all have the same issue with battery what can we do ?

Welcome to the community forum.

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Hello,
I have managed to get the phone charging reasonably fast again with the same charger.
Here are the scenarii where I get the phone both slow and fast charging:
If I plug the charger into the power socket first and then plug the power lead to the phone, I get the led lighting up and battery flash symbol showing up too. In that case, the phone will slow charge.
However, from the above setup, if I plug the power lead out and back in from the charger end, the led will light up again but with no flash symbol. In this scenario, the phone will charge fast again.
Does anyone have any explanation to that ?

Cheers
Julien

2 Likes

I’m still having this problem , tried Battery guide (reboot x3) which made no difference.
It makes no difference in which order I connect charger/phone. It’s constantly on “slow charge” only difference now is instead of it saying full charge in 22! hours at least it’s a time below 10hrs. I had an episode like this once before but that was due to faulty charge lead & plug which I replaced. This episode started approximately 4-6 weeks ago.
Still waiting for new leads which might help but as others are experiencing same problem I’m not so sure.

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I have this exact way of charging! Plug in then take out the charger from the socket and put back in again immediately. I noticed if it tells me ‘slow charging’ for anything more than about 3 seconds then it reverts to slow charge on its own at some point during charging and usually just a minute from the start. it only rapid charges if this changes on screen within 1-2 seconds. If it takes longer I pull the charger out and repeat.

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good to hearing that this weird situation is reproductible on other phones. I would interested to get some feedback from the product team on that :slight_smile:

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Fairphone don’t read officially here, if you want to contact Fairphone you have to contactsupport.

Are you all running android 10 or still android 9?

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thanks alex, did not know that. on Android 9 or 10, same behavior for me

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Android 9 to last monday. 10 to today and 10 update installed

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My battery was charging well, but suddenly, after 6 months of use, it only charges very slowly. About 1 or 2 % an hour. On the display it also says: “Charging slowly” (wird langsam geladen) I did the test as recommended, it says, my battery is fine.
Does anyone have this experience?