Hi. Since yesterday my homescreen is completely blocked and I can’t unblock it.
I have a Fairphone for about 5 years now and I was really happy with it, but this is really embarassing. Myphone is completely blocked. I have to draw a schema to unlock my screen. Then the screen gets black and from time to time a message came: “interface keeps stopping” and the phone goes back to the blocked homescreen. I can’t do anything. Please help me.
Probably an other information on the issue: since one month I have a message who tells me, that my storage is nearly full. I asked me the question if it could be link with?
I try to look if I can go in the recovery mode and wipe some cache data, but this fonction isn’t avalaible…
and the last thing I did on the phone before my homesccreen stayed block and impossible to unlock:
I activated the “Signal” back-up on my phone.
Can it be related to that?
And is it possible to uninstall Signal with the recovery mode? Thanks for your help!
Can you swipe down the notifications to tap the gear-icon (settings)? After 5 years it’s probably not a bad idea to backup data and start fresh (factory reset). I would go for this, rather than trying to fix what is. I guess you probably can’t backup data atm?
I can swipe down the gear-icon and I can switch on /off the internet, I can switch on the light (if it gets dark I’m not lost ^^
But thats it. No I can’t back-up data atm, that is the reason, why I would like to get it fixed, because I didn’t save all the data before, 70% yes, but if possible, I would get the rest as well 
factory reset mean delet all data… And that isn’t my goal.
Ah yes and I can’t see the notifications.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that these issues are linked. Of course it gets difficult to free space if you can’t unlock/access anything any more. The only thing I can think of would be safemode. If you’re lucky that still lets you get to the UI to clean up a bit.
4 Likes
Unfortenately, it didn’t work 
I can’t unlook the homescreen with the safe mode neither… any other ideas?
I am not sure what you mean exactly… Let make clear what I mean: After you boot up the phone, do not unlock it and swipe down the quicksettings, usually there is a gear-icon on the bottom that brings you to the settings-app. Can you do that? If not, why not? From there you could free up space by removing apps or enable USB-Debugging and do it using a computer.
1 Like
Is your bootloader unlocked, by any chance?
(If you don’t know about the bootloader and/or whether it’s locked or not, it’s most probably locked, and should be, because that’s the more safe default … but blocks a possible way out in case of full storage.)
Else … Which OS are you using? Fairphone OS? LineageOS? /e/OS? iodéOS? Something else?
(Knowing this, we could have a look at whether there’s something helpful in the respective recovery mode apart from a factory reset.)
This works for you? Anybody holding your phone can get into the settings this way without the OS prompting for your unlock?
It’s not this way with /e/OS for me, and otherwise I would be mildly shocked.
Yes I can clic on it, but then, I can only change the notifications of my apps. I can’t see the option to uninstall apps.
You would still have to unlock the phone but it should bypass the launcher, which is (I hope) the culprit here.
1 Like
I have the “normal” android OS. I never changed the OS since 2019. Probably for the next phone, why not, but for now I have the basic android 13.
I am not really an IT gig, but I reached to enter in the recovery mode…
I tried to look for delete the cache, but I didn’t found it there.
I don’t know if the bootloader in unlocked or not, where do I see that?
Judging by your description it’s most probably locked, but anyway …
While you start or reboot the phone, just keep Vol - pressed until fastboot mode (aka bootloader) appears. It should display some lines of text including a line saying “Device State: locked” (or unlocked).
To exit this mode, either use the Volume keys to cycle through the reboot options displayed in the top line and choose the desired one by pressing the power button, or simply keep the power button pressed for approx. 15 seconds to force a reboot (in any situation).
My phone is: “locked”
Too bad in this case, otherwise a more safe setting as said.
Don’t bother researching unlocking it now. If even successful, locking as well as unlocking the bootloader will force a factory reset for security reasons, wiping user data.
(For others finding this topic with the issue of full storage …
With an unlocked bootloader you could boot the alternative TWRP recovery without installing it, and even if TWRP perhaps wouldn’t support decryption of the encrypted Internal Storage, you could still use its file manager and terminal to possibly access Internal Storage in encrypted form. Because halfway recent Android uses file-based encryption, you would see garbled folder names and file names in there, but file size should be visible for making guesses to blindly delete large videos or downloads and such to get the storage operational again.)
2 Likes
If you’re in the settings-app, go to Apps > All apps > [your app]. There you can clear the cache or uninstall the app.
It didn’t work for instance… I will buy the fairphone 5, but all my photos, applications,…
Does a developper have an idea what I could do?