Noisy coloured pixels on my Fairphone 2

A cleaning of the oven after a soldering process should be mandatory as you like to use it for preparing food again.
I described it as a last try before scrapping the PCB. Of course an home oven is not as acurate as a professional soldering equipment, but it can do the job.
The core PCB should not “baked” with any plastic parts mounted on it, like the frame or somthing like that cause it can melt.

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Everything work well again.

I let the coremodul around 13 minutes in the oven, because my mark on some visible solderjoint had not changed after 10 minutes.

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Well, you should be a fairphone angel if you managed to revive it.

Awesome to hear that you made it. :+1:t3:

Greetings.

I seem to be having slightly different pixel problems. I had a look through the forums and couldn’t find anything similar. It happens maybe once a week and only for a few seconds. It’s not a screen hardware issue as this is a screenshot.


I noticed it happen in the magazine app attached, but also WhatsApp and when using the camera. Any help appreciated.

I suppose it could be a bug in Android 7, but wanted to check here first.

It’s this one:

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Excellent. Many thanks :-). Hadn’t made the connection to the Night Light. Interesting that it went away when you got a new screen…

Hi all,

Unfortunately I have the same problem since Monday. My FP2 froze when I added a contact. Rebooting gave first only a black screen, later on the famous noise or snow appeared. The phone is still working however, it can be charged and turned off and on. The upper right led does function.

Because I was travelling I only removed the screen today and cleaned the connectors with a dry whipe. Unfortunately it didn’t help. When bending the screen (as suggested earlier in the thread) some changes in the screen appeared (see picture), but still only noise and snow.

It crashed one week after I entered the Philippines, maybe the humidity or heat played a role? I also added a local sim one week before it crashed.

Do you have any tips for either cleaning the connectors again (or with alcohol?) or for how to best bend the screen to make it work again?
I really hope it’s not the motherboard. It’s very inconvenient.

Any tips how to back-up data from the phone without a functioning screen are also welcome.

Many thanks in advance!

I am having the same Problem.

I just tried another Screen-module but it showed the exact samt pixel-Screen as before.
So this can definitely be ruled out.

Same problem here. Replacing the display with another (working, of ym wife) did not help. Cleaning contacts neither.
What helped a bit was pressing the Phone, back cover off, between my fingers on it’s right side, approx 5cm from the upper edge, from back to front. There is a point where after a few presses the display sprang back to normal function again. Sometimes the display worked,but no touch screen. after a few presses more, the touchscreen worked too. Su I suppose it’s a connection problem too. A 380,- repair isn’t an option here, as I am out of warranty already…

I did the “paper trick” - and for now it works.

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I don’t know if this has been mentioned, but using a non-slim, “fat” cover reduces the chance of the screen going wild, in my experience. Probably because it’s less rigid due to the rubber bumper. But you need to find one that didn’t get screwed…

Hi, I’ve same problem (coloured noise pixels);
Troubleshooting guide suggests to replace display (https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001041206-Troubleshoot-your-Fairphone-2-issue)
but reading this topic it seems maybe the problem can be in core module…
So what to do? I’m sure that replacing display solves the problem?

If you happen to have fairphoneangels (or anybody with another Fairphone 2 display) in your vicinity, they could perhaps help checking whether the display module is at fault by swapping it.

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Well, 9 months after having my display replaced due to a non-reactive stripe I’m joining you people for this weird error now. Best part is, my warranty was until end of April - planned obsolescence? :smile:

For me also the trick by @letrollpoilu helped (Noisy coloured pixels on my Fairphone 2). Hope it will last for a while, I’ll report back…

Such a shame that it seems the core module, the most expensive part, is damaged and can’t be repaired. Learning errors of Fairphone I guess :slightly_frowning_face:

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Over the last few days, my Fairphone 2 developed serious problems similar to what is described in this thread: First the screen occasionally became non-responsive and over a few seconds the screen content got replaced by coloured stripes until nothing of the original content was visible anymore. This could temporarily be fixed by applying pressure or torsion to the phone. Eventually, however, my screen showed nothing but colourful random pixels.
Support told me that the problem is likely with the core module and that a repair would be at least € 223.43. Not a very attractive option, so I tried what @ElKrasso suggested earlier:

I did not use an oven, however. I disassembled my phone completely, took the core module out of the plastic frame and with the heatspreader (black foil) still on I wrapped everything but the display connector into 3-5 layers of standard household aluminum foil. Then I placed this package on a heating plate and preheated it on low power to about 130 °C (measured with a multimeter). At the same time, I set a heat gun to a temperature of 230 °C and let it run for some minutes to reach a stable temperature. Now I placed the outlet of the heat gun a few centimeters above the display connector on the preheated core module and heated it for about 100s. After that, I switched both the heat gun and the hot plate off and gave the core module time to cool down. Now that I reassembled everything my phone is working normally again! Let’s hope it stays like this until the Fairphone 3 is released. :wink:
Thanks ElKrasso for your post!

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention: As @Roboe pointed out earlier, there is a rubber frame around the screen connector that must be removed in order to expose the last two screws fixing the core module to the phone’s white plastic frame. My wife’s Fairphone 2, manufactured one or two years later than mine, does not have this rubber frame! Otherwise, the display connector looks exactly the same, it even has the black screw mounted that is meant to fix the rubber frame. I see two explanations for this:

  1. The factory was out of rubber frames and decided the phone might work just fine without them (less likely :wink:).
  2. The failing screen connector is likely caused by mechanical stress between the printed circuit board and the connector. The rubber must be compressed to fulfill its purpose, namely, to keep dirt away from the electronic contacts. Maybe omission of the rubber frame is an attempt to avoid additional stress to the PCB.

Believing more in explanation 2, I did not put the rubber frame back in place when I reassembled the phone.

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Awesome work, easier as my idea, if you have access to a heating plate. Also I like the idea with the aluminium foil, that function as a heat spreader and prevent damage or shifting or overheating of smt components on the pcb.
I got a core module with the same behavior for cheap. I will give your solution a try.
What kind of heating plate did you use?

I used a heating plate that is designed for cooking:

The preheating can also be done with a standard electric (but not induction) kitchen stove, however I was not keen on doing the phone repair in the kitchen.
I’ll cross fingers for you!

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After three weeks of daily use (and daily transport in my pockets) my phone’s screen refused to work (not even the backlight turned on when I pressed the power button). I repeated the procedure described above and now it’s back to normal again.
It’s possible that my FP2 experienced particularly much strain in my pocket today. I’ll try to transport it more in my backpack. Also, this incident underlines that the heat treatment might not be a very long term solution (however, still better than the cardboard technique).

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Thanks a lot!!
I had the same problem and the pressing trick as you described worked! I hope it will last, I tried with others parts from my mother’s Fairphone and it wasn’t very helpful. I thought I had to buy a new one. Seems I don’t now :slight_smile:

Update from my side: display worked okay-ish with the paper, but got slightly worse…

Today I removed the back cover and the visual display was super stable! Unless I pressed above the rear speaker (on the pogo pins sticking out there), everything was perfect. Putting back the cover made the phone very sensitive to touches again.

Can anyone else confirm that the back case/cover is actually causing stresses on the core module, which cause the error? Is your display also very stable without the back case?