I don’t have DDG VPN on my phone, I’m using AdAway with host-file based blocking, so we are obviously hitting different issues here.
Well, maybe this isn’t an universal problem after all 
I’ve hard reset the DDG app and thus I lost the local VPN for tracking filtering (it has a waiting list I need to signup for again). Battery life also increased a lot. I would almost say 30-50%. So maybe I’ll leave it like this for now. I also noticed some notifications come in later than on my laptop, which is fine. So I guess battery saver wasn’t working well either. The device was constantly awake and had high CPU usage.
I have several times during the last week experienced that my phone gets burning hot and 25% of my battery is used during one hour.
First time I was listening to an audiobook - nothing exceptional here.
Second time I was using maps & location to find my way.
Is this common for an FP4?
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I have a similar concern. I own the phone for several months already and it’s not been an issue until around a month ago. Now seemingly moderate usage sometimes makes the phone hot and lose a lot of battery. Some examples:
- navigating using a public transit app, listening to music via a streaming app
- reading via Reddit app (just that)
So far I blamed this on background applications, closed all of them down or restarted the phone, but perhaps it’s a technical issue…
It is the same here - I have had the phone for 2-3 months now.
I closed down all background apps as well. But I am not sure it helped anything?
Strange…
I moved the 3 last posts here. It may be due to different causes, but the recent update might have something to do with it.
I would advise you all to #contactsupport.
(For reference, an older topic : FP4 Getting Hot While Streaming + Battery Draining Fast)
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I don’t understand most of the causes or solutions offered.I have had my first Fairphone (4) since May and have had the issue of erratic battery life/ alarming heat from phone since the beginning. I miss my Note 8.
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If your problem is anything like mine, it could very likely be an app that’s misbehaving. Since I’ve disabled a feature in a 3rd party app that may have caused the overheating. Are you willing to do the same troubleshooting that I did? It involves installing some software and configuring your phone.
It involves these steps, if you think you’re up to it, I can guide you through them.
- Install ADB Tools
- Enable developer mode
- Enable " USB debugging" in developer mode
- Connect your phone to your computer with a USB-C cable
- Run the command
adb shell, you probably have to accept the connection on your phone - Then run the command
top, it shows you the running processes of the whole device. You normally cannot see these because Android uses security layers, in this mode you can see more. Take 3 screenshots with 5 seconds in between and post them here - Make sure to disable “USB Debugging” in developer mode again
Thank you UPPERCASE. Sounds daunting, like all my interactions with Fairphone, it has taken me half an hour to navigate my way back here. I will try, but I must go now. Hope to be able to contact you again when I have more time.
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You can find these forum interactions in the notification bar, upper right corner. You also get them via mail if you didn’t change those settings here on the forum.
There is also an easier way to check battery drain, but it’s often incomplete. Go to Settings → Battery, and then tap the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner and tap “Battery usage”. Please share that with a screenshot. After that, tap the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner again and tap “Show full device usage”. Please share that as a screenshot as well.
Below is an example of my current battery statistics.
Which is a huge improvement on what I had before:
I bought my FP4 3 weeks ago. My battery drains extremly quickly, even if I don’t use it.
I have had the case that i have had 80% of battery and left my phone untouched for hours on battery safer mode, had 30% left. Screen-on with notificiation is disabled. Also while on airplane mode during night (not charging) it loses around 10-15%.
Any Idea how to solve it?
Can you share some more info? Like the battery stats, if you use VPN or an adblocker, etc. Any apps you suspect? What about leaving your phone in safe mode for a night and see if that helped. Then it’s likely a 3rd party app that’s misbehaving.
I am new here. So i use addblocker on firefox and i installed ddg, no VPN. I have no clue what it is. But i’ll try that with the safe mode and see what happens. Any other tipps what i could do to narrow it down and find the problem?
I have read somewhere that it might also be due to a SIM card older than 2 years. Is that a possibility? Mine is rather old (>5 years i think). I have never had problems with my old Galaxy s11…
Do you use the app tracking protection? That caused overheating on my phone. Firefox with adblock is fine. These issues often only occur with e.g. a local or remote VPN that filters out ads and trackers. This VPN keeps the device constantly awake and may cause extra CPU cycles and thus heat.
This is indeed mentioned in the official docs from Fairphone, so there may be some truth in it. But maybe first rule out the possibility of a rogue app.
Maybe share your battery stats to give a general idea, they are not always complete, but it’s still better than guessing in the dark.
An example:
Do you use the app tracking protection?
Yes I tried it, but I just deinstalled it and back to add-ons from firefox
Maybe share your battery stats to give a general idea, they are not always complete, but it’s still better than guessing in the dark.
There you go. I am not aware of having used anything from google-play, so it might be that?
The curve looked exactly the same yesterday when I haven’t touched my phone for hours and battery still drained from 80% to 30% (I didn’t take a printscreen though).
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I see you use SIP. Did you configure it for incoming calls as well? In that case it may constantly listen for incoming calls, which drains power.
You mean you don’t install apps from the Play Store? Play apps use Firebase to sent notifications which may be grouped, which is something the battery saver communicates as well. Without it apps may listen infrequently and waking up the device not in a coordinated fashion, which is less efficient. So yes, it may be that as well.
The three vertical dots have another option > Show full device usage which shows system apps also
I can also confirm this behavior, in my case it was the protonmail app that overheated and had massive background battery drain, and like in the shared screenshots it won’t show the real usage. Reading the other replies on this thread I’m inclined to say the issue isn’t an specific app but related to encryption (the apps mentioned all rely heavily in encryption).
The fairphone staff should check on this, I had to roll back to my old mi8 as I can’t use email on my FP4.
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The three vertical dots have another option > Show full device usage which shows system apps also
There you go
They do? DDG uses a local VPN, which isn’t encrypted, it’s just used as a local default gateway so that you have central control over ingress and egress traffic. Which is then used to filter out ads/trackers. SIP sends a lot of status messages so that you get your incoming call when you do without delay, which consumes power. If apps don’t receive their notifications in groups, the device wakes up too often, which negates the positive effects of idle power usage.
Does the Protonmail app store emails encrypted on your phone locally? If it does, then this only affects battery life if you open mails all the time. Not sure what the issue may be, maybe also battery saver issues, but I doubt encryption.