FP5 won't charge unless in recovery mode

Help Fairphone 5
1

Hello,

2 weeks ago, out of the blue my FP5 battery died while connected to the charger.

I have an Anker charger that shows output amount.

The charger was showing 0W, that mades me suspecious and started trying other chargers and cables. Not a single couple of chargers/cables worked.

While testing, I noticed that the charger changed output value when the is on the FP boot screen, then it goes back to zero if the phone finishes the boot process or powered off

This behaviour made me think that it might charge while on recovery mode, so I test that and it works.

After few hours I reboot the phone and it keeps showing 1% everywhere, which was weird because it drained my powerbanck when on recovery mode.

I turned it off for the night, this morning I wake up to it’s alarm. It was getting weirder because the 1% it’s reporting should not let it ring for as long as it did.

I removed the battery than put it again, turned it on, and the system was reporting 82%.

Now, as soon as I connect a cable, the OS reports that there is liquid or debris and it’s turning off the USB, as soon as I disconnect it, a notification shows up telling that there is no more liquid or debris.

Because I managed to charge the battery while on recovery mode, I thought that we can say that the USB port and battery are not faulty.

I’ve been using this FP5 for almson 1.5y, and I got that liquid/debris message fow times, and was auto-resolved by disconnecting and connecting the cable.

I don’t think if this matters, I am on LineageOS 22.2 with microG, and I didn’t install an update for several months (just to say that it can’t be a bad OS update).

I tried cleaning my USB port with no luck, so I bought a new one and replaced it. Same issue..

And for two weeks I’ve been able to charge my phone only when on recovery mode, and needed to romeve the battery everytime after that so the OS can denect the real battery percentage, otherwise it’ll keep showing last percent before rebooting to recovery mode.

Do you have any idea what can cause this or how to really debug it?

Thanks in advance

2

Welcome to the community forum :slight_smile:

It would be useful to test another battery. Do you know any other FP5 user?

You might look at the Angels Map to see if there’s one near you who might be able to help by lending a battery for testing, or give advice.

Apart from that, I advise you to make use of the “Diagnose and Repair” function on the official Fairphone Support website.

3

Thank you @OldRoutard for your answer.

Do you think this can be a battery issue? :thinking:

The battery charges fine on recovery mode, checking it’s status from adb looks good too :confused:

$ sudo adb shell dumpsys battery
Current Battery Service state:
  AC powered: true
  USB powered: false
  Wireless powered: false
  Dock powered: false
  Max charging current: 3000000
 Time when the latest updated value of the Max charging current was sent via battery changed broadcast: +2m15s569ms
  Max charging voltage: 5000000
  Charge counter: 4138164
  status: 3
  health: 2
  present: true
  level: 97
  scale: 100
  voltage: 4342
 Time when the latest updated value of the voltage was sent via battery changed broadcast: +2m28s222ms
 The last voltage value sent via the battery changed broadcast: 4311
  temperature: 300
  technology: Li-ion
  Charging state: 0
  Charging policy: 0
  Capacity level: -1
  Maximum capacity: 4260000
  Design capacity: 4260000

I can’t get anything useful from the support page, the diag code don’t work because I am not on the official FP android.. And I think, even creating a ticket will result in a dead end because of that :confused:

BTW, I upgraded to Lineage OS 23.2, and still getting the same prompt.

USB is only disabled for charging, data transfer is good..

4

Battery looks ± OK.
After further thought, it looks to me as though maybe the phone isn’t requesting correctly / negotiating with the charger.

Could you try with a really dumb basic 1A 5V charger with a non-data cable?

A lot of talk here. Most cases resolved by | reboot | unplug-plug | send in for repair (under warranty if applicable).

Unfortunately it looks to me as though you may have to send the phone in for repair, so make sure all your data are backed up.

5

Have you tried getting in touch with a nearby FP Angel?

You’ve tried everything, now I’d really try with a different battery.

6

I’m not sure about all mechanisms, however I guess in recovery the mechanism to detect dirt or liquid is not active. This however is located on the bottom PCB which is not user replacable. Why should a ticket result in a dead end? Can you use the repair portal and just initiate a repair?