Fairphone

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Phone keeps rebooting on its own

Help FP1
#1

Hi,
so a few months back, i upgraded my Phone with the Storage Upgrade because i needed more space for my apps.
Since then the phone occasionally (like once every 1-2 weeks) reboots on its own, which is a bit annoying but i can deal with it.
But it happend twice now that in the time span of one or two days it reboots often with increasingly smaller timegaps between the reboots until the Phone reboots before the OS has completely loaded.This keeps going for a few hours until i can use it normally again.
Also after the reboot i can enter the PIN for the SIM-Card but when i want to enter the PIN to unlock my screen it says, that i have to wait 20 seconds like i have tried a wrong PIN too many times.

Also the search-function of the forum dosen’t seem to work. ( I’m on PC and using Mozilla Firefox)

#2

Two things that are probably a good idea to check:

  • Are there any problems with the battery - weird charge/discharge rates, any physical deformities (such as bloating, see the forum’s battery guide on how to test)?

  • Does the reboot loop also occur when there are no SIM cards in the phone?

1 Like
#3

Only thing with the Battery is the lower percentages are loading/draining slow and the higher percentages faster thats kinda wierd and new but much newer than this problem. Also i bought a new battery in September/October because the old one bulged and got very weak(left the phone too long in a very hot tent). And this Problem started in late March/early May i think so the battery was like half a year old at that time.
I just did the spintest with the battery and one side spinned slightly while the other didn’t . But i think its because of the area where the plastic with the writing on it is glued together and therefore thicker but i can be wrong.

I dont know if it keeps rebooting without SIM-Card and i can’t really test it because the second chain-rebooting startet yesterday night and stopped some time when i was out today. And its not a problem that is directly reproduceable (as far as i know). What i just witnessed though is that the Handy tells me the battery is 9% full without SIM and 17% full with SIM.

EDIT:Just rememberd: If i take the SIM and battery out while the phone is chain-rebooting, wait a bit (tried between 30 seconds and 30 Minutes) and put them back it still keeps rebooting after that.

#4

There have been cases where the battery voltage became quite variable before there were clearly visible symptoms. If you see weird patterns in your battery stats (here’s one example from a topic with many), then there may be an issue with the battery. I’m not sure what the warranty is on the replacement batteries, but it could be a warranty issue if there is a problem with the battery.

The reason for asking about the SIM is that a defective SIM can sometimes wreak havoc on the phone as well. If you get stuck in another loop, try removing the battery and the SIM, and then replacing only the battery. Normally I’d expect other symptoms as well, but misbehaving SIM issues are generally weird.

It’s difficult to troubleshoot not-very-reproducible issues like these, not sure what else to try at this stage…

#5

Update:
The phone reboots its self now all the time with few intervalls in between where i can use it for a short time.
Its practically unusuable now. Taking out the SIM dosent change anything.

#6

This behaviour can also occur due to a defect power switch. Does the phone switch on immediatly when you insert the battery?

Alfi

#7

Yes it does.
I also had that tought but nothing to back it up with.

Update2: I finially met a friend of mine who has a Fairphone too and i get the same behaviour with his battery.

EDIT: Do i have a fair chance to order this, exchange the standby-button and the problem is gone?

#8

If your power button is really defect, I don’t think that ths spare part will fix the problem, as it is only the exterior part of the button.
But have a look here:

#9

Thanks i will try that then

#10

Hey so I bought that button and a friend of mine replaced it (my tools werent small enough for that and i dont know if i would have managed it consindering that that button is super-small and i havent smolderd anything for at least 3 years and never was good at it)

Now i have another small problem:
I lost 1 of the4 screws that hold the mainboard in the process. I think it dosent really matter because there is a big scre that holds the frame right next to it.
But i want to be sure. Can i just ignore that screw?

#11

One of the screws was never there (not with any phone I think). I think that I have also one missing screw since the beginning… :wink:

But most importantly: Does your phone work again? Then please mark the most helpful answer as “This reply solves the problem” (little checkbox below the post).

#12

Hi folks,

I face the same problem with my FP1, if I don’t remove the battery it reboots endless.
The funny thing was that it had been in a hot tent as well.
It kept on working the main but pressing the power button had about 10 seconds delay
when I wanted to use the phone after a longer break. Strange but using the power button to lock the screen again worked right on the spot.
I did all the things like removing SIM + battery, pressing power and volume up to enter the little boot menu and try recovery mode. VOL-Up to select the items, VOL-Down to start the boot modes. I get this little menu but selecting recovery mode or normal mode ends with the blue display and reboots. Fastboot simply hangs.
No “Loading”, no robots nothing is displayed after all 3 boot variants.
The phone once made it to boot for a day (including the power button delay) and after the next nightly reboot it was caught in the boot loop again. Prior to the single successful boot I moved the SIM from bay 1 to bay 2 but I’m not sure if this was the trick.
When I plug it in for charging it starts rebooting as well. The top right LED shows red for only a short time then it’s off again.

Please help! :sob:

#13

what I forgot to write:
the power plugin at the top of the phone does not fit in as tight anymore.

#14

Please read the posts above yours. Especially this one.

#15

Ok. Opened the phone and trying to remove the old switch.
There are no screws for that.
Is it braized ?

#16

If you don’t have experience with soldering you shouldn’t do this yourself. Better take your phone to a local repair shop and have them repair it.

#17

Hi, just the rest of my story:

I opend the Phone and realised after some time that i cant solder the Button on my own. Its way too tiny. So i let a fried of mine who solders micro-electronics as part of his parttimejob. And looking at it, he done a good Job. But the transport or me did break some other part of the phone since it didnt start after i reconstructed it.
At that time the fairphone support, which i contacted after creating this Thread finally replied (they hat much to do and not enough time for everyone because of the FP2). So i told them the story above aswell. So they asked me if i want to participate at their fairphone buy-back program, which i then did.
So i send my phone to Amsterdam and after 2 weeks or so i got some cash for it on my bank account.

P.S. after reading and watching some videos about the replacement of the button i can say with a high probability that the button was the problem since other phones with the same button have the same never ending rebooting problem, which can be solved by replacing the button.

2 Likes
A never-ending repair story (USB connector FP1)
#18

FP1 alive and kicking again !!!

After I had opened the phone I noticed that I will never be able to solder this properly.
I ran around in Munich and asked in many so mobile phone clinics who declined to fix it.
They wanted me to buy a new phone.

So I followed a hint of Stefan and set the phone plus the tiny button to https://www.smartphoneklinik.com/
who did a brilliant job, for 48€ plus 1.65€ the phone was fixed.

Awesome!

2 Likes
#19

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