FP4 battery drain since security update 5 september 2025

Help Fairphone 4
1

I installed a new battery in juli 2025 and since then I could work with the phone till late in the evening. But since finally there was een security update on 5th of september 2025, the battery of mij Fairphone 4 is empty at the beginning of the evening. That is 4 hours earlier then before! This problem started exactly after the update.

Does anyone else experience this problem? Is there a fix for this? Or do I have to wait a few years again till Fairphone finally will offer an upgrade to Android 15? Which was working wel in Lineageos 22.2.

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2

Did you check with a battery stats tool like for example Better Battery Stats what is the root cause of the battery drain?

I have this problem since the upgrade to Android 13 already (see FP4 battery life got worse after Android 13 update - #60 by Dakkaron )

3

I did not. Better Battery stats needs root. I just reinstalled stock in June and lost root, to have better support for some banking apps.

Android 13 before the 5th of september update was working well. Good ā€˜battery daysā€™. Problems came up after this update.

4

It also works wth permissions granted via ADB AFAIK

5

I feel like I have the same issue. Iā€™ve suddenly noticed that during the night itā€™s going from something like 60 to 30%.

My phone is at 90% now (at 9 in the morning) and itā€™s reporting that it has about 13 hours left. That means itā€™ll be dead at 22 oā€™clock (10 in the evening). The only thing Androidā€™s own battery tracking is showing is 1% for cellular network. Last time I checked it after a night when it also used a lot of battery it also showed cellular network as the top battery user. Iā€™ll try to get some measurements with GSam. (EDIT: Looks like GSam is no more. :disappointed_face:)

Iā€™ve also recently switched to eSIM from a regular SIM, could it be related?

6

I do see a possibly related picture, probably also since the last update to FP4.TP31.C.0143:

  • spontaneous reboots
  • phases with excessive battery drain, coming along with 100 % load on all cores (checked with the app ā€œtelephone informationā€)
  • in such conditions some apps get stuck while loading
  • in such condition, the only way to get the device working again is to shut it down, un- and replug the battery and restart only then - ā€œconventionalā€ restart does not work as the device wonā€™t wake up again
  • virus-checked the device, looks good

Anybody who is observing similar probs beyond ā€œjustā€ battery drain?

7

@sweisgerber I have observed a similar situation twice. Didnā€™t check the CPU load, but I felt the device warming up. This might be an indicator of high CPU load, as far as I know. I also noticed the battery percentage in the status bar was decreasing by more than one percentage point per minute.

8

Heya,

Iā€™m experiencing the same issue. The strange thing is also that the battery usage, which is displayed in the settings, doesnā€™t match with the drain of my battery.

So the drain is much more then the information I have in the settings.

9

No the eSim shouldnā€™t be the problem.

Iā€™m using the eSim for a long time now and I had never the probem with the battery drain.

10

I have had this problem for several months like many others. I ordered a new battery earlier this year because my FP4 is now 3 years old, and I thought it was wearing out. However, when I read of others having similar issues, I looked around on Google and found several other phone brands affected in the same way on Android 14.

I tried some of their ā€˜solutionsā€™ but they didnā€™t work. Then I found one article saying it might be because the Apps are trying to use background network data, keeping the phone active and conflicting with the security updates.

The solution - itā€™s a workaround, more than a fix - is to go into the App settings, or Network settings, and disable background data connectivity for the apps.

Since I noticed I was getting the same Outlook notifications every 15 minutes for unread mail I had already cleared, I thought this might be what was happening on my phone. So I disabled every appā€™s background network access, starting with Outlook.

This worked for me, and I started getting around 2 days out of my battery again. When the battery had drained before, I couldnā€™t get through 1 day without recharging.

After the 5 Sept update I noticed it drain rapidly again. This time, for me, it is Whatsapp causing the problem. Having disabled background data on Whatsapp, Iā€™m getting the battery life I expected. Itā€™s currently at 81% having been charged to 99% 7hrs ago.

A caveat with this: find out how your apps use background data access before you start disabling everything! You might disable something you actually need!!

For example, with Outlook, I no longer receive email notifications when the app is not open. I can live with this for the battery life I now have again, and itā€™s not a bad thing, as Iā€™m not getting lots of notifications about spam in my inbox!

Make sure you check what background network access is used for, if you decide to try what I did. So far, Iā€™ve had no issues - I was worried about Whatsapp as I use it a lot for family and friends, but so far it still receives texts, and is working as normal. I have kept my banking appsā€™ background access on just in case they need access for some reason (eg alerts on possible attempts to use my cards).

If anyone tries this, it takes a while to work through the apps, but when you do, restart the phone, charge it and then let us know how you get on with it.

Hope this helps!

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11

hmmm, Iā€™m quite sceptical. Iā€™ve checked the data usage over the past month and most of my apps use much more data in the foreground than in the background, and Iā€™m experiencing the drain. the exception is Whatsapp, which indeed uses a bit more data in the background, but itā€™s a small amount overall (12.8 MB in the foreground, 13.08 MB in the background), so Iā€™m not really sure if that would really contribute to the battery drain. I guess it wonā€™t hurt trying, though.

12

Hi,

same problem here: last night, the battery dropped from 100% to 23% during 16 hours while hardly using it. The statistics are blaming the mobile network using 33%, while display, phone, browser and calling each used less than 2%.
This occurs since having installed Android 13 on September 5th.

Last time I had a similar issue (after updating to Android 12, if I remember correctly), de-activating 5G solved the problem. 5G is still de-activated , so there seems to be another problem.

Hoping to get this solvedā€¦
Cheers,
Thomas :slight_smile:

13

Good to hear that I am not the only one with this sudden battery drain since 5th septembre update.

I disable 5G just yet. See if this makes a difference.

14

Update:

last night, I de-activated mobile internet with no significant change: the battery went straightly down from 100% to 32% during 13 hrs., hardly using the phone at all. The statistics blame 21% on mobile network, while display (3%), picture gallery (2%) and contacts (1%) do not seem to be much of a consumerā€¦

Cheers from Laatzen,
Thomas

1 Like
15

I have the same. I hardly use my phone. It used to last several days on a battery. Since july 2025 the performance suddenly dropped and now I have to charge my phone every day, even when I donā€™t do anything with it. I also ordered a new battery and that did not change anything except that I paid for a battery that did not change anything. For me, it helps when I put it in airplane mode. However, this kind of defeats the purpose of a phone. Until this thing happened, I was really happy with Fairphone. However, I now think my phone is a piece of sh#t. It seems that the company does not care about older models and that really s#cks. I would not recommend a FP to anyone anymore.

1 Like
16

I totally agree that this battery drain problem since 5th of septembre (in my case) is a disappointment. I liked my Fairphone 4, But I was already becoming increasingly disappointed that a major upgrade to Android 15 was not forthcoming, and now this battery drain is even more disappointing!

This is not what was promised when I bought this phone!

17

Iā€™ve disabled 5G and Iā€™m blown away by the result that Iā€™ve never seen before with this phone: at the end of the day, it still had 50% of battery left!

Usually a that time itā€™s closer to 10% than not.

A few days ago, Iā€™ve also activated the Data Saver function and allowed only the most important apps (banks, etc) to connect to data in background) but I didnā€™t notice much difference in battery usage.

Hence I guess itā€™s a problem with 5G and it depends on the strength of the 5G signal in your zone, but I donā€™t know the first thing about how this technology works so I can definitely be wrong.

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18

I did try to disable 5G but with no noticeable difference in my case.

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19

Good morning,

  1. Like you, Iā€™ve been having battery problems since spring.
  2. Like you, when in doubt, I bought a new battery.
  3. Like you, even after replacing it, the problem persisted, and in fact, it got worse.

Honestly, now I feel like I was being cheated.
I bought my Fairphone 4 because of the companyā€™s offer.
Iā€™m happy with the smartphone.

Butā€¦

  1. The Android 14 update hasnā€™t arrived for over a year, even though they promised it.
  2. I made a pointless purchase DESPITE THE COMPANY KNOWING THE BATTERY PROBLEM.

It doesnā€™t seem serious to me. Not at all.

I was considering upgrading to the Fairphone 6, but I feel cheated and think Iā€™ll have to switch to something else.

Best regards

Luigi Dal Zio

1 Like
20

Android 15 is around the corner

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