Not charging from laptop, possible help in London?

Not sure. How can I tell?

I hope itā€™s not that again - I had to change the bottom module last May. Unfortunately I was unable to follow the instruction video for disassembling the Fairphone so I ended up travelling to the Phone Co-opā€™s HQ in Chipping Norton to find someone who could do it for me.

Very frustrating that the take-up of the Fairphone has been so low in the UK. Admittedly the Phone Co-op hasnā€™t advertised it much, or indeed at all outside of the pages of Positive News and the Big Issue. Personally Iā€™m surprised that the FP hasnā€™t found a market in places that are associated with support for alternative lifestyles, Green politics and the Transition Towns movement. E.g. Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Hebden Bridge, Machynlleth and Totnes. Or if it has, why are there no angels in these places?

Iā€™m now stuck with the reverse of the original scenario: my Fairphone charges from a laptop but only intermittently from a wall socket. Admittedly even at the best of times Iā€™ve had issues with charging from the mains. I have found (by trial and error) that the phone has to be at a certain distance relative to the socket to charge effectively and often I have to check (and double-check) on its progress.

Iā€™ve come to the conclusion that the charger I was using with the wall socket was faulty (despite being less than two years old). I bought another one (from a petrol station, this being the only place I could get to after work) but this seems to be no better for charging the Fairphone, although it manages to charge my Fitbit OK.

Compare and contrast with my old Nokia: it always charged from the mains without any hassle over positioning, it only needed charging every two days at most and I never had to replace any chargers. Is this progress, I ask myself?

This week colleague lent me a charging cable which worked well with the charger I bought at the petrol station; in fact I was able to charge the Fairphone from every socket I tried, with no issues with positioning it at a certain distance. Other than that this charging cable being white (as opposed to black) and thicker, I couldnā€™t see any obvious difference between it and the previous one I used.

Unfortunately as of this evening Iā€™m back to square one. Although I was able to charge my phone to 100% on a train journey to Bristol this morning, on the return journey the battery icon displayed the lightning flash symbol as if it were charging but the level of the battery dwindled to below 20%. On returning home I connected the phone to my laptop, but the problem continued. At the time of writing my phone has been attached to my laptop for an hour and a half but the battery level is zero - yet still the phone displays all functionality.

Does the phone really need a new charging unit, less than 18 months after it was replaced? Or is it the battery? Or do I need to try yet more chargers and/or cables to find a combination that works for more than a few days? Or is it something else?

Please, please reply!!

I canā€™t find any mention of ā€œbuild numberā€ in the settings menu. By ā€œdeveloper menuā€ do you mean ā€œdeveloper optionsā€? I tried changing ā€œSelect USB Configurationā€ from ā€œPTP (Picture Transfer Protocolā€ to ā€œChargingā€ but the phone then refused to charge at all from the laptop. Although at least this time it wasnā€™t pretending to charge, so give it credit for being honestā€¦

Settings->About phone->build number (both at the end of the options list)

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FP2-gms-18.04.1 release-keys
Tapped this once and got the message ā€œNo need, you are already a developerā€. What does that mean?

It means you can already access the developer options, because you have tapped the build number before.

I took the old charger to my local repair cafe today. Unfortunately the repairer I saw was unable to detect what was wrong with it. He could only suggest that I take my Fairphone ā€œback to the shopā€. If only it were that simple!

The last two nights my Fairphone has been very slow to charge from the wall socket overnight. Whereas previously itā€™s always reached 100% in time for the alarm clock, last night it went from 65% to 75% during eight hours. Later on today it went from 8% to 30% being charged from a socket during a 30-minute train journey. This doesnā€™t make sense at all.

@anthony, are you around in London next weekend (16-18 November)?

Last night the battery level went from 75% to 40%. The graph (at Settings > Battery) displayed a steady decline and yet the battery icon was displaying the charging symbol. I moved the FP to another wall socket and managed to increase the battery level by a few percentage points, then moved it back to the original socket whereupon it got up to over 50% while I was having a shower.

Later on this morning I plugged the FP into a third socket whilst I was watching TV. An hour later, although the battery icon was displaying the charging symbol, the battery level was only 65%. I checked Settings > Battery and saw the message ā€œNot chargingā€ above the graph. I left the FP for another couple of hours, at which point the battery level was 15% but this time Settings > Battery was displaying the message ā€œCharging from ACā€. I moved the FP to my laptop and it started charging straight away, which was confirmed by Settings > Battery displaying ā€œCharging from USBā€.

Iā€™m utterly confused. If the FP is saying itā€™s charging but isnā€™t (or vice versa), surely thatā€™s a software rather than a hardware problem? Is there any reason why the FP should charge from one socket but not another?

I donā€™t know how the FP will fare being charged from a power bank. I have a train to catch later today and Iā€™ve bought a mobile ticket but Iā€™m not taking any chances - Iā€™ve printed out the tickets.

Yes, software problems could lie at the heart of this. If your hardware is constantly working hard it will consume more power than chargers can provide. This happens to me when I charge in my car while playing music, Google Maps navigating me and the screen brightness set to full. Are there any apps running on the background that keep your device busy or waking it up constantly?

Another option is that your battery is simply worn. This could happen within 18 months, although I havenā€™t heard to a battery wearing to such extent that itā€™s as unreliable as you describe. Equally, a broken bottom module could make charging unreliable (interrupt frequently). Or a broken core module could force the device to charge at a much lower current than it should.

Really, you should be getting in touch with Fairphone support about this. These are serious issues that need to be recorded with them even just for warranty purposes.

You might also consider installing ā€œAmpereā€ app (more details youā€™ll find in itā€™s FAQ at http://goo.gl/R8XgXX ). This would give you a rough information about charging current and if the phone is too hot (e.g. by an app using excessive CPU power) to continue charging (although plugged in).

Itā€™s now nearly two months since I started this thread, and still my desired outcome of meeting a more experienced Fairphone user in person has yet to happen. I ended up lamenting about my smartphone woes at work, not that I expected anyone to have heard of the FP2, nor had they. The upshot of this was that one of my colleagues looked it up and advised me that I definitely needed a new battery. So Iā€™ve ordered one. Meanwhile the charging problem has got progressively worse. Iā€™ve missed two alarm calls because the FP2 went flat overnight, refusing to charge from either the mains or a power bank. As recently as yesterday I managed to charge it to 100% from my work laptop, but at midnight I was woken up by the ā€œbattery lowā€ warning and I havenā€™t been able to charge the phone by any means since.

If Iā€™m lucky, the DHL courier will catch me at home on Thursday after Iā€™m back from a dentistā€™s appointment. Otherwise, Iā€™m facing a 64-km round trip to an industrial estate the other side of Birmingham on Saturday morning to get the new battery.

Fortunately I was in when the DHL courier called.
Unfortunately my FP2 refuses to charge even with the new battery, so I guess that means replacing the bottom module again.

@anthony, what is your availability for the remainder of 2018?

I received an email from the Phone Co-op this week inviting me to upgrade to Android 7.

My FP2 has been dispatched to the Netherlands with a possible diagnosis of a faulty core module.

I wonder if I might have more luck (in terms of arranging a face-to-face meeting) with the Fairphone community in Forres? @M_Dammer, are you there?

Very sorry to read that @M_Dammer has sold his FP2. :frowning:
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/sold-fp2-second-generation-camera-modules-for-sale-150/46019/6

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