Four days ago, the power button of my Fairphone 5 stopped working.
Maybe for a couple of days before, I noticed the button becoming less sensitive, so I needed to look for the right angle to press it on if I wanted it to work. And for weeks before, sometimes accidentally pressing it also immediately opened my camera app, which it didn’t used to do. It was weird but only a minor inconvenience. So then the power button has suddenly become mushy and the ‘click’ feeling disappeared completely. I didn’t expect that to happen.
I’m roughly aware of how the mechanism of the power button works, but did not manage to fix it. Luckily I can still turn it on with the fingerprint function, but if I want the screen to turn off, I have to wait at least 15 seconds for it to go to sleep. Has anyone else had a similar issue and successfully fixed it themselves, or let it get fixed by Fairphone repair service? My device is still under warranty but I’m afraid of having to go without it for a long time.
Then 1 day ago, all of a sudden, after regular use of my phone (airplane mode was on, I was using the timer during a workout, phone on a table), it suddenly entered a boot loop when I pulled it out of my pocket. No idea why, it just kept restarting, and rarely completed the process to the home screen before it restarted again. Very frustrating. Especially because booting in safe mode and other solutions like that were not available to me since my power button had become unresponsive. Yikes.
I took my phone apart to see if there was anything wrong on the inside, but didn’t notice anything particular off. Luckily, and magically, my phone completed a startup again after I used the trick of pulling the power cable out as soon as the Fairphone logo appears during startup. My FP5 has been stable for almost a day now, but I fear it could enter another boot loop anytime. Without my power button, I feel like it’s become very vulnerable and way less reliable.
Does anybody know what might have caused my phone to enter a bootloop?
**Is there anything I can do to keep it from happening again?
**
I have not consciously updated my phone in a while, but I did notice that the design of the standard timer app has changed the past week. Could automatic updates in the background have anything to do with it?
You’re on stock Android? That’s most likely just the update of the Clock app, not the OS. Last changelog from August 18th says: “• Updated to Material 3 Expressive design”. I saw that change recently, too.
About the actual issues I sadly can’t really help. Just my experience from sending it in last time: It was repaired the same day it arrived and directly sent back. It took about 10 days of travel in total though.
I suffer from the same issue as how yours started for months already: Very often when I click the power button, the camera opens (so the button reads a double click, that I don’t do). So far I was too lazy to care about it, and sending it in is always annoying. But with your experience of how it gets worse, I should consider it, I guess
I will just add my own experience with the power button before reading any other comments.
So. My power button sometimes misbehaves by “tipping” and one half being depressed and the other higher up. Then getting stuck there. This causes bootloop where you loop between start and maybe to the green screen, and repeat. To stop it bootlooping, “fiddle” with until it returns to normal position. To avoid this in the future, I have disabled shutdown from here, and bound it to AI instead. I could always pull the battery in an emergency (or remove back cover and drop it to the floor to remove battery).
I have also periods where the click disappears, but it comes back for me. I have to cycle it a couple of times. Or continue to use the phone as normal and within the day the click is back for me.
I have not sent it for repair, nor changed/amended the button. Your issues sounds to me like the same approximate issues as me.
Yes, I live in Germany. 10 days total, to the repair center and back. Repair center is in France.
Sadly, UPS was not the fastest, but is set as carrier by Fairphone. I think I dropped in on a Friday, they did not process it until Monday; way back took long as well. I guess I was unlucky, and the repair within the same day was impressive!