My Fairphone is rebooting, seemingly random. It results in the four rotating blue dots appearing, with the Fairphone logo afterwards. It can be just the shell restarting or a full reboot, I’m not sure. It happens seemingly random: it happens my phone is idle on my nightstand and also when I’m interacting with it. It has started a couple of days ago and I have noticed it happening about 5 times a day, but it probably happens more frequently as it also occurs when the phone is idle.
I’m using the Fairphone 4 with stock Android setup. I noticed the most recent OS update to FP4.SP25.B.058.20230318 but that didn’t change the behavior. I also use the Simple Launcher Simple Launcher | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository but I was using that specific version since its release the 18th of February, so that shouldn’t make a difference.
Is anybody else having this issue? Any recommendations to debug this?
I looked for the randomreboots tag but didn’t find a debug approach or similar issue Topics tagged randomreboots
No SD-card in use, removing the SIM-card didn’t help, it just rebooted laying on the table idle. I modified the 4G and Wifi settings, hoping that it will improve things.
I’m not sure if latest Android has options like “clearing the global cache” as a general cache cleanup.
I’m on /e/ OS which only has a storage manager which offers different tasks.
To clear caches it would take manually doing this per app.
But maybe as another approach try this for your (most used) apps. Probably this option is available as well on stock Android.
Settings → Apps → → Storage & cache → clear cache
Maybe reboot once again afterwards.
Does the battery and/or phone feel noticeably warm?
Does the battery sit tight in its compartment?
All contacts of the battery are clean?
What is if you put very gentle torsion on the phone with both hands or slightly tap in onto your other hands palm? Any reboots by doing this?
Thanks for the suggestions @Patrick1 I’ll try them out.
Following the support article I tried booting into safemode, which goes back to stock launcher, a couple of basic apps and airplane mode. It ‘rebooted’ in that mode too.
It seems to be more like a shell restart, because I don’t get to see the black “Fairphone, Powered by Android” screen, or only very briefly. It starts with the blue dots immediately.
It seems the issue is getting worse, the last couple of hour I had 7 of these reboots.
I couldn’t find the option to clear the cache, but I guess it shouldn’t matter as it also occurs in Safe Mode. Battery is normal size, contacts are clean. Also as it is more like a software-reboot it doesn’t seem related to the power supply.
I filed a ticket with Fairphone support. Having relied on Fairphone support in the past and having good experiences with the process I have hopes of a good outcome. Of course a malfunctioning phone is still inconvenient.
As last resort before sending it to any service center you still can factory reset it. At last if you send it to any service center you’ll most probably will receive it again in a factory state.
I haven’t changed a config since the last reboot, but somehow it hasn’t happened since in the last message here. Hopefully it stays that way, although the lack of a clear reason for this behavior is still concerning.
I started having very frequent (almost every day, sometimes several times a day) crashes/reboots (1-2 seconds freeze then full reboot) since two months ago or so (I think it might be starting from FP4.SP21.B.048 but I am not sure). I am not sure how to get error traces or if it is even possible with the stock OS.
In any case, I think I have managed to narrow the issue down to using 5G, as I’ve been running for 2 weeks without encountering any crash by switching the preferred network type to “4G/3G/2G”, and got a crash within 24 hours of enabling 5G again.
Without changing configurations or knowingly updating software the issue disappeared a couple days after my last update and my support request to Fairphone. It hasn’t re-occurred. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to determine the cause of the issue, still I hope my reporting here might be beneficial to others in the future.
Had the same random reboot loop in certain locations and also narrowed it down to when 5g turned on. Switching to 4g solved it. Not what I expected from a 5g ready phone
I recently switched my carrier (and with it from 4G to 5G) and since then my phone quite regularly reboots itself. (Mainly when on the road. Could it be related to change cellphone towers?)
I also had the same problem of random rebootings, after having my FP used for almost a year. It suddenly started and deteriorated quickly. Not knowing about this forum I contacted FP support and we agreed on FP sending me a new phone within guarantee.
Unfortunately, this new phone started random rebooting as well within the first days of use… How could this be?
I don’t think in my case it is 5G as my phone is in 4G (it says 4G at the eSIM mobile data).
I think my problem might be the physical SIMcard I have. (I use both physical as eSIM for different numbers). I removed the physical SIM this morning and I’m curious if it will reboot again.
Have others experiences the SIMcard to be the problem too?
