FP4 stuck in Recovery Mode + broken power button = can't proceed

[Elena_Motta]

Hello everyone,
I’m reaching out to see if anyone has faced a similar situation or has suggestions.

My Fairphone 4 is currently stuck in Android Recovery Mode with the message:

“Android Recovery
Fairphone/FP4eea/FP4
12/SKQ1.220201.001/TP2P
Impossible to load the Android system…”
(Use volume up/down and power to select an option)

The only available choices are “Try again” and “Factory data reset”, but here’s the problem:
My power button is broken, so I can’t confirm any selection.

This hasn’t been a major issue in daily use — I normally unlock the phone using the fingerprint sensor, and when the device shuts down, I’ve been able to force a restart by removing the battery, waiting, and then connecting it to a charger. That always brought it back to life… until now.

Unfortunately, the phone is now stuck on this screen, and I can’t select any option without a working power button.

A bit of context:

• The phone is 3 years old.
• I already contacted Fairphone support over a month ago but haven’t received any reply yet.
• I don’t mind doing a factory reset, but I do mind not being able to use the device at all.

Has anyone been in a similar situation?
Any advice on how to proceed — either with hardware repair or forcing a selection via PC — would be truly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[yvmuell]

Unfortunately I think there are no real options other than waiting for support. Did you ever dismantle the phone to see if any cleaning might help with the power button issue?

@Juan.Bianchi @Sarah27 @Alon_Brandt @Lorena_Medina anyone willing to help a real patient customer?

Fairphone Support no longer available

Knowing that I am not the only one waiting makes me feel less alone. However, I wrote to support 1.5 months ago because my fairphone cannot start. I stayed for 2 weeks WITHOUT any phone, then I activated another old one. After 3 weeks for my birthday my family gave me an iphone. I am sad: I love my fairphone and its philosophy, it has been with me for 3 years and in these 3 years I have advertised for it. I am also convinced that our society must learn to wait again and tolerate long times. I wa…

[Elena_Motta]

Thanks @yvmuell
Yes, I did everything I could think of, but nothing worked. Unfortunately the button is integrated into the central body of the phone and it is possible to act up to a point. I tried to clean the area of ​​the power button as best as possible. Also to solve the problem of the android recovery mode I tried to follow several ways, such as connecting the phone to a PC and trying to control it from there, connecting a mouse adapter directly to the FP…

Unfortunately these two problems occurred simultaneously and in a short period of time.

[Elena_Motta]

As I said in another post, before I got to this situation I broke the screen, I didn’t fix it right away and the power button became problematic. Then I fixed the screen, but the power button problem didn’t go away.
I don’t know if things can be related or if it’s just bad luck.

[flix]

I’ve the same issue and solved it by using fastboot.
you can download fastboot for windows here https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools-latest-windows.zip

Then you “just” have to unzip it and go via command line into the unzipped folder and execute .\fastboot.exe reboot and then plugin your phone via usb.
Here some magic works and I’m not yet completely sure which order helps me to recover it.
Maybe it works for you by just connecting it. If not, then plug it in while pressing the volume down button next to the power button and hold it forever until the fairphone boot screen appears.
If I do this, the phone boots for me after a few attempts.

I would be super interested by the response of fairphone regarding replacing/fixing the power button, because this s ucks. Having a super repairable phone, where the power button is the weak link is super annoying.

[Elena_Motta]

Thank you so much for your reply!

I had already tried fastboot, but I didn’t realize that the “recovery mode” screen is different from the “fastboot mode” screen. Thanks to your suggestion to hold down the “volume down” button while connecting the phone, I figured out how to enter fastboot mode.

This made me take a huge step forward.
I then realized that my computer was not detecting the phone (pressing win+X, device manager, I could see the yellow error icon next to “Android device”). So I installed a driver following this procedure:

1. download from Get the Google USB Driver  |  Android Studio  |  Android Developers

2. manually select the driver, looking for android_winusb.inf in the downloaded folder.

At this point I can run “fastboote devices” and check that my phone is recognized by the pc and I can run “fastboot reboot”. Unfortunately “fastboot reboot” reboots the phone and brings me back to the recovery mode screen. So it means that rebooting is not enough and that I should factory reset.

Any other command, like fastboot -w does not work, because the phone is locked.

I tried the ways suggested in these posts:

Connecting FP4 to a Win10 PC via USB

I’ve the same problem as described in a former (and now closed) post (Connecting Fairphone 4 to a Windows 10 PC via USB): I used to connect my phone easily by setting the option file transfer, but unfortunately it isn’t working any longer now. I checked the ADB- and added the MTP-USB-driver, but nothing changes. After connecting the FP4 the Explorer shows a quick reaction, but the device is still not visible. What can I do? Thanks in advance for advice.

Trapped in fastboot mode with locked bootloader and corrupted custom ROM

If you look in the first post you can see the relevant difference to your situation: So I think getting into recovery is not possible because fastboot mode is starting everytime. Most likely due to bootloader/device is in locked state (and can’t be unlocked in the normal way) or other security issues or recovery partition is not bootable.

but so far I have not had success.

[Elena_Motta]

'Following:

Manually install Android OS on your Fairphone

I also tried to install Android on my FP4. But this is the output of the procedure:

INFO: One Fairphone 4 in fastboot mode found (serial number: df6ebe84).
ERROR: The device is not unlocked.
Please refer to our support articles for help.
ERROR: Aborting now (press Enter to terminate).

So the only think I can suggest to anyone with an active FP is to enable the USB debugging… I’ve also tried this: fastboot oem unlock … no result.

I give up.

[Elena_Motta]

I just want to open a thought. Why does the Android system enter recovery mode? I don’t think I’ve done anything strange with my phone, I just think I’ve used it for over 3 years straight… maybe Android needs a little cleaning every now and then?

[koumilak]

sorry to hear about your troubles elena.
I’m surprised to hear that you couldn’t wipe or reinstall via fastboot. is it because your bootloader is still locked?
As far as i understood, when the bootloader is locked you can only install stock rom, but you should still be able to install it

[yvmuell]

@koumilak

As far as i understood, when the bootloader is locked you can only install stock rom, but you should still be able to install it

with a locked bootloader you cant install anything

Edit: cases like this one here are the reason why I have USB Debugging and OEM unlocking enabled. So I could unlock the bootloader.