i’ve found that when those crashes happen it tends to drain a lot more battery
Same here
- Apps (TikTok, Google drive, Google docs, Insta, Timer, Games, etc) start crashing to a black screen.
- App launcher slowly loads in again with apps taking time to fill in
- Keyboard randomly crashes, closes, does not open, or does not work for a few minutes
- Notifications, and the quick settings (brightness, wifi, Bluetooth, etc) all work normally even when screen is black
- Will happen for a few minutes, hours, or days intermittently, and then not happen for days or weeks (I think 3 weeks was the longest without it)
- Battery will drop faster on days it happens
- Even when screen is off audio players can crash and I need to open them again.
Info:
- Fairphone 6
- Has been happening since I bought it (July/August)
- Always on latest android (currently 15 with update on Dec 5th)
- Using default launcher
- No SD card
- Happened today with a phone uptime of 150 hours, but has also happened on same day as a restart
Fix attempts:
- Restarts sometimes work for a bit
- Fully re-installed OS
- Cleared cache
- Charging to 100% and max of 80%
This has been getting really irritating and is something I mention any time someone considers buying the phone, which is a shame as the apart from this I really like the phone and the concept
When you did the first setup of the phone, did you automatically import settings of your former phone or did you setup the phone from scratch?
i’ve set it up from scratch
First time I set it up I think I copied data from a Poco X3 Pro using a cable, and when I reinstalled it I used google to apply the settings from fairphone again.
FYI, I was able to get a screen recording of this happening. I would rather not post it, but when it is repeatedly crashing you can start a screen record from the quick settings and then start opening apps as normal for it to record them crashing.
I have raised a request with customer support, and thought I would put their first questions (summarised) here so if anyone else emails them, they can skip the first few steps.
First email:
Step 1: Information
- permanent or intermittently?
- Before it happened first, did you drop/update/install/change settings etc
Step 2: Screen module connection
Could be that display module is not fully connected to the core module. Try following to test:
- Place your phone on a flat surface.
- Turn the phone on.
- Press all along the border of your phone with your thumb (not too hard). Does the screen work normally after this?
Service test
- Open the Phone app.
- Dial
*#*#2886#*#*in the same way you enter a phone number to make a phone call. Once the last character is introduced, the Service Menu appears (be patient, this can take a few seconds). - Select Manu.
- Tap on Touch Panel. You will have to complete three tests
- One with three yellow vertical lines.
- One with three horizontal lines.
- One with two yellow lines along the diagonals, crossing like the letter X.
- On each test, you need to draw a line on each of the yellow lines from one end of the screen to another. If you draw/tap on the black part of the screen, you’ll receive a warning. You can select RETEST if you want to try again.
If all the tests pass, it’ll close automatically, otherwise, you’ll need to press FAIL when prompted.
Additional information
- Does it happen only in specific areas?
- Does it only happen when doing specific activities, such as using specific apps or when charging?
- Does it resolve from locking and unlocking the screen?
Second email - Just got email. Have not tested 2 and 3
- External Storage Check (Critical)
Do you have MicroSD card - Android System WebView Reset
The “System WebView” is the engine that allows apps to display web content (like TikTok or Google Drive). If its latest update is corrupt, it can crash multiple apps simultaneously.
- Go to Settings > Apps > All Apps > Android System WebView.
- Tap the three dots in the top right corner and select “Uninstall updates.”
- Restart your phone and see if the frequency of crashes drops.
3. Safe Mode Persistence
If the crashes continue after the steps above, please run the phone in Safe Mode for a few hours.
- Why: If the phone still crashes in Safe Mode (which disables all 3rd party apps), we can confirm this is a core OS or hardware fault rather than an app conflict.
I also have this issue. Every now and then all apps repeatedly crash for a few minutes.
It seems to be related to memory management. When it occurs logcat shows many lines like this:
ActivityManager: Process com.google.android.apps.messaging (pid 15429) has died: prcp BFGS
[…]
ActivityManager: Rescheduling restart of crashed service com.google.android.apps.messaging/com.google.
android.ims.binding.SystemBindingService in 198833ms for mem-pressure-event
The “crashes” are probably just the low memory killer killing off everything it can for whatever reason.
Edit: It might be helpful if others could also confirm whether they see the same messages as me in logcat. When the crashing starts you have a few minutes to connect to a PC and run adb logcat to see the logs before they are overwritten.
Thanks horizontal, that is a great find!
I haven’t been had time to replicate it with your logs, but I did find Settings>System>Developer options>bug report>interactive report has some good info as well that goes back a couple months and includes info like:
ApplicationExitInfo #15:
timestamp=2026-01-09 14:11:14.488 pid=31575 realUid=1000 packageUid=1000 definingUid=1000 user=0
process=system:ui reason=3 (LOW_MEMORY) subreason=0 (UNKNOWN) status=0
importance=400 pss=0.00 rss=128MB description=null state=empty trace=null
Historical Process Exit for uid=10223
ApplicationExitInfo #0:
timestamp=2026-03-29 10:37:09.220 pid=8028 realUid=10223 packageUid=10223 definingUid=10223 user=0
process=com.brave.browser:privileged_process0 reason=3 (LOW_MEMORY) subreason=0 (UNKNOWN) status=0
importance=400 pss=0.00 rss=155MB description=null state=empty trace=null
ApplicationExitInfo #0:
timestamp=2026-03-22 22:15:52.962 pid=31437 realUid=99021 packageUid=10253 definingUid=10138 user=0
process=com.google.android.webview:sandboxed_process0:org.chromium.content.app.SandboxedProcessService0:0 reason=3 (LOW_MEMORY) subreason=0 (UNKNOWN) status=0
importance=400 pss=0.00 rss=89MB description=null state=empty trace=null
And, some of the timings correspond well with the crashes I had.
Which seems to also confirm your findings.
I also enabled Settings>System>Developer options>Memory so hopefully next time it starts crashing, I can see the memory usage there. I have not been able to find any way to export historical memory info though.
Also, a note on adb logcat in case anyone has issues, you need to first enable Settings>System>Developer options>USB debuging
As for the WebView I mentioned in my last message, I was able to confirm it still crashes even with the updates deleted.
Same issue here. Fairphone 6 android 16.
Same, it keeps happening, sometimes a few times per day. I’m really getting annoyed.
