Misc. issues with FP2 since upgrade (from Android 7, I guess)

Hello, my wife’s FP2 started its life with Fairphone OpenOS.
When upgrading to the official Android9-based OpenOS, the phone started having issues, such as the battery level dropping to a couple percent suddenly.

So I switched it to LineageOS 18.1, which I use on my own FP2 without hiccups (and 17.1 before that). But on her FP2, it was a nightmare:

  • the phone freezing when receiving a phone call (non-responding apps, from Phone to System);
  • the 4G network erratically dropping (no connexion where there should be);
  • graphical artefacts, mostly at the top and bottom of the screen: pixelization, all-black or all-white pixels…

After months of trying whatever I could think of, to no avail, yesterday, I switched her FP2 back to the latest version of OpenOS (fp2-A9-sibon-21.12.0-rel.1-manual-switcher).
All the problems seen in LineageOS are fixed :slight_smile: but new problems arise :frowning: :

  • The USB port won’t work when the phone is turned on. I was able to charge the phone by turning it off first, but as soon as it is on, I can neither charge nor transfer data.
  • The WiFi indicator in the upper status bar is kind-of frozen. From the moment the FP2 is on, it stays the same, regardless of the actual WiFi status; and it won’t react to touching. However, I can still enable/disable WiFi in the settings app.
  • I am unsure about the 4G indicator: I was able to send an SMS even though it had the icon with a little cross on it…
  • It seems that there is a battery drop when the level comes under a certain level (but then, yesterday, I installed all apps and made a lot of downloading/syncing…). Unfortunately, all FP2-related guides seem to have disappeared from the forum :frowning:

Can someone help?

This switcher file is intended to switch from Fairphone OS to Fairphone Open OS, not from LineageOS.
I would wipe the phone completely and begin from scratch … 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 ✏ Installing the Fairphone 2 from scratch in case of failure / Komplette Neuinstallation des Fairphone 2 im Fehlerfall

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I think SMS are sent without data connection. Just MMS needs data.

Did you try to clean the USB port? I cleaned all the dust in there with a pair of fine tweezers, now it works well again! (FP2)

Hope this helps,
Cheers.

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That is correct. SMS is part of GSM.

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Hello, Thank you all for your answers; I wasn’t expecting them so fast :slight_smile:

About fp2-A9-sibon-21.12.0-rel.1-manual-switcher, I chose it over fp2-A9-sibon-21.12.0-rel.1-manual-switcher because the “switcher” variant is more thorough in replacing the old OS:

--- fp2-A9-sibon-21.12.0-rel.1-manual/flash-for-unix.sh 2021-12-20 12:12:43.000000000 +0100
+++ fp2-A9-sibon-21.12.0-rel.1-manual-switcher/flash-for-unix.sh        2021-12-20 12:12:48.000000000 +0100
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 ROOT_DIR=$(dirname "$0")
 IMAGES_DIR="${ROOT_DIR}/images"
-DATA_WIPE_WARNING="false"
+DATA_WIPE_WARNING="true"
 
 # Abort the script (and wait for a key to be pressed).
 abort_now() {
@@ -183,6 +183,8 @@
 flash_image_or_abort ${sn} boot "${IMAGES_DIR}/boot.img"
 flash_image_or_abort ${sn} recovery "${IMAGES_DIR}/recovery.img"
 flash_image_or_abort ${sn} system "${IMAGES_DIR}/system.img"
+flash_image_or_abort ${sn} userdata "${IMAGES_DIR}/userdata.img"
+flash_image_or_abort ${sn} cache "${IMAGES_DIR}/cache.img"
 
 echo
 echo "Flashing successful!"

I’ll try the method from the wiki page you provided. :+1:

I reinstalled as explained in the wiki post, but this led to an identical result, with the same bugs. For some reason, this particular phone seems to be crippled by newer Android releases… or it coincidentally suffered from some physical event (shock, loose soldering…) around the time the upgrade to Android 9 was done :confused:

Anyway, not being able to charge the phone without turning it off completely is a pain. Besides, there is a problem with the battery: just reinstalling based on the wiki, then just installing (not launching) a dozen applications (K9mail, Nextcloud…) drained the battery from ~80% to 9%.

So I’ll follow the full-reset wiki entry again, but this time with the last-known working version: Android 7. Sadly, this will probably be my last attempt at saving this phone.

Now, if someone knows of a resource for re-calibrating the battery, I’d be interested!
The one I knew of is unfortunately gone :frowning:

Perhaps you can try a kickstart for resetting the software of the battery,

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Lidwien already pointed to the relevant info, but let me just add:

Don’t be distracted by the text in the lower part – just click on the Guide’s title in the upper part.

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Wow, that’s a real usability issue on this forum software! Indeed, I did get distracted by the lower black text saying “no more”, and did not take note of the upper light grey link :open_mouth:

Thanks for the tip!

By the way, I did as I told, and this FP2 is now running the latest official Android7-based release of Fairphone OpenOS (fp2-sibon-19.11.2-manual-v2).

So far, it works extremely well: there’s no issue I can see with either the battery or the display. The UI responds correctly to touches, and all indicators reflect the real hardware status (WiFi on/off…). 4G connectivity works well (web page in FF Klar), as do the USB-charging and data transfers.

The only minor hiccup I can see is the apparent inability of DAVx⁵ to sync over 4G, but sync over WiFi is OK.
As it happens, I also have a similar issue on my LineageOS 17.1-based FP2, except the culprit is ICSx⁵ for me…

Well, end of the story :slight_smile: Thanks all for your great and quick help!

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The wording is confusing and should be changed, but the text is correct … at the end of this list of topics there are “no more” topics … no more than the one topic already listed :wink: .

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Perhaps the phrasing “no other topics” would be clearer.

I confess to having, more momentarily, fallen in to the same trap. It seems to me especially a problem when there’s only one topic in the list.

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