I haven’t dared to try this, but does anyone know if you can safely swap the battery with the phone on, if it’s connected to the charger?
Also useful for swapping the microSD card without power cycling the phone, given you have to remove the battery to get to it.
My interest is for the FP4, but I guess it might be interesting if anyone knows the answer for the other phone products.
I actually tried this with all five Fairphone generations, and I can confirm that the FP4 is the only Fairphone that allows a battery “hot switch”, i.e. changing the battery while in use and while connected to charging. You cannot power it on without the battery in the device though (even when connected to charge).
I would definitely advise not to hotswap a SD card! Chances are removing it without warning will cause loss of data (or even worse).
Think of the procedure of removing an USB stick: You have to announce it, wait till you get the clear signal from the OS, and only then can you safely disconnect it… SD cards are about the same thing, in another form factor.