Hello,
I have had a Fairphone 2 since they first came out. It randomly rebooted from day 1 which I assumed would heal over time with OS updates. It didn’t. But I left it too long for a warranty replacement. It sits idle in a drawer.
Is there anything I can do to repair it? I assume by various posts that it was a motherboard fault.
Other issues were loose battery and a thin blue line across the display. Any advice or links to posts would be appreciated. Thank you
Thank you for the link. Way back when, I ran through all of combinations; including New SIMS. The closest I could get to a root cause was when it was using 4G/data. Made no difference with one SIM/two SIMs. I notice that a user claims it solved the problem by replacing battery and upgrading. I will revisit the thread and do some more testing. Thank you
A loose battery is one of the more obvious causes for random reboots. Did you fix this somehow (e.g. with a piece of cardboard)?
There even is a special support category on the Fairphone homepage:
→ Fairphone 2 → Phone reboots
The first test is for a stuck power-button and the second test is for the battery frame:
When the battery frame of your device is slightly bigger than it should, it will cause the battery to move and the phone to restart.
Test if that is the case of your Fairphone 2, like shown in the video below:
The video shows how to drop the phone from 3 cm onto a hard surface (dropping it on the usb-connector-side of the phone).
If this does cause a reboot, you can contact support.
They will send you a small adhesive shim to place inside the battery frame and your troubles will be gone. And it is independ of any warranty, since it is a fault known from the beginning.
At least, that’s my experience.
95 % of my random reboots stopped when I changed the SD card from internal to external storage.
Have you installed latest modem/OS? Tried lineage?
Chris
Hi simonp.t,
when I received my FP2 back in 2017, I was experiencing the same kind of problem for months. I tried 4 different OS (FairPhone OS, Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Phone , FairPhone Open) - all showing the same sporadic reboot problems. So finally I concluded that this is not a software or settings issue.
I sent my device to FairPhone support and they replaced the main board (warranty replacement). This finally fixed the issue. If I would guess, I think there have been some charges which suffered from manufacturing errors. In your case, I’m afraid that you waited too long. 
Regards,
fairsuch
I have problems with random reboots, shutdowns and screen issues every few month with increasing intensity. Normally, at some point it gets too annoying and I open the phone and gently pull out those little connectors a bit with a flat screw driver and clean all contacts with canned air and a microfiber cloth. So far, this worked every time.
As @chrmhoffmann suggests and thanks to him, some of us experience less reboots once Lineage OS is installed in the phone. Definitely worth the try.
I also have this problem, and have looked at the guide, but still don’t understand what to do. When I push on the button a second or so to shut OFF the phone, it automatically restarts right away. The only way to shut it off ‘officially’ (until I push the power button again) is taking out the battery during the 2 seconds it didn’t restart yet. Due to the constant battery removing (I prefer to shut off my phone when not using it for a while, like overnight, to safe battery) my case also started rupturing rather quickly, and it started when it was only a few months old. It’s been getting worse, with random freezing (just freezing, and not a single button works except removing the battery) and shutting down and starting up again. I don’t know shit about phones so replacing things myself isn’t actually that easy. I will continue using it (just buy a new case) as my phone is still usable, the freezing and shutting of usually happens when using a heavy app like a game, but I think I will go back to another brand afterwards. My huawei worked PERFECTLY for two years until I had an accident which made the screen break.
I get what fairphone tries to do, but they do can tell making their phones faulty from the starts brings in more money - they just sell new parts instead of new phones, which you have to start buying after weeks…
btw: when I let my phone bounce, it doesn’t restart, I am also pretty sure the battery sits secure.
It sounds as you had an old version of the operating system as this problem had been fixed time ago. So you may consider a system update.
There was always a (bit astonishing) workaround to that problem: turn your flash light on before shutting down the system.
Have you tried pushing your on/off button more than 12 seconds when you phone freezes? This also generates a restart (so taking out the battery is not necessary).
Against the freezing phone a system update or a dic:factorydatareset may help.
thanks!
…
With respect to the rebooting problem, my FP2 also does this from time to time. I have never been able to track down a reason for this. I think many others suffer the same.
I also had the problem with random reboots with my FP2 which I bought in May 2019. I tried it with different OS but nothing helped. There were reboots 7 to10 times per day. I contacted the Support and tested many things without success. Finally I could send it back and the core module was replaced under warrenty. Since then I had never reboots again, The device is in good funktion. I hope for further years.
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