Screen can not be activated by pressing the power button

Hello everybody

I have my phone for almost 5 months now and so far I only encountered minor problems.
However, lately it does not allways react when I press the power button to turn on the screen. The phne is switched on, but the screen just remains black. Only after one minute or two the screen becomes activated. When I receive a text message during that time, I can hear the notivication sound, but the screen remains black anyway.
I know that other people have reported problems with the screen after calls or during charging. But I have the problem when the phone is not plugged in and fully charged.

Has anybody encountered a similar problem?

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Please check this guide:

Have you updated to 1.4.2 yet?

Hy Paul
Thanks for the link, however I am not sure whether my problem is already described in this post. Yes I have updated my phone and I have already tried to clean everything (proximity sensors, the inside of my phone, etc).
But let’s give it another try. I cleaned every part of the phone again and I’ll let you know whether the problem reoccures…

Hey Langga,

iI have the same problems, and i dont think thisw problem is already in the wiki.
My screen doesn’t react from time to time and the only thing that helps is to press the powerbutton for around 20-30 sec and reboot the phone…
I also have installed the last update. If i’ll find time i will open the phone and clean the contacts for the display…

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In the beginning after updating to FPOS 16.06 I had this problem too.
Since I wiped the cache in recovery it didn’t show up again.
That was on Monday last week.

Hello
How do you wipe the cache? Because I have the same problem.

Turn off the phone and press Power+Volume up to get to recovery mode.

From there navigate with:

  • Power to open the menu
  • Volume down to move down
  • Power to select

to wipe cache.

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Hello, either when I push at the same time the Power button and the Volume up or the Volume down it doesn’t go to recovery mode… what can I do ?

If your screen stays black follow this guide:

Hey, I have the exact same problem with my Fairphone 1! I can see or hear notifications, and my music would continue playing etc, but it’s impossible to activate the screen. It’s getting a bit annoying; I sometimes take out the battery to restart but it’s not the most healthy way of getting back control.
I contacted fairphone support months ago but they didn’t get back to me :confused:
Cheers,
Hannah

I have this issue too, but I can confirm it is not related to the problems mentioned in the wiki. Rebooting seems to be the only solution when this happens.

I am also having the same very annoying problem, happens most days. I also have to restart phone each time.

I also did have this issue after updating to the beta 1.4.2, but only for 2 days. It didn’t occure anymore since then. I did nothing to fix it, it just disappeared.

I also have this issue. It started appearing not long ago.

I have also had these crashes at night when charging a few times which left the phone with black screen and the alarm clock not going off, which can be quite a big deal if you only use the phone alarm to wake up.

Hello,

I think your problem is the one I posted last February.

I still have the problem, and no other workaround than restarting the phone (pushing for 15 sec on power button)…

@paulakreuzer
If relevant, can it be added to the #blackscreen wiki please?

Thx
Clément

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This is a different issue.

Just to be sure, here we are talking about the screen not turning on by clicking the power button, but you still get notifications. If your phone crashes you don’t get notifications and alarms.

Like you said it’s a wiki, so you could have added it yourself. But I did it now. :slight_smile:

I’ve owned my Fairphone 2 for about a week now, and installed Fairphone Open on it (using the OTA package) around twelve hours ago, having no problems until about an hour ago.

Now, every time I lock the phone (or it locks itself, going to sleep while unplugged etc.) the screen remains black, with no response from the lock/power button. The phone is not frozen - if I touch the areas of the screen where the various icons should appear, I feel the force feedback, messages etc. are still received, the LED in the top left behaves as it should - but the screen is black. The only way to make the phone usable again is to reset by removing the battery or long pressing the lock/power button.

I also noticed that, for a brief period (during the last hour) the top quarter of the phone growing very warm when nothing appeared to be happening, although this is no longer the case.

Also, the phone is no longer recognised by Minimal ADB and Fastboot, although it is recognised normally by Windows 7.

I have tried dismantling the phone, to no change. All connections appeared to be fine before, and appear fine now.

Apologies if this should be posted elsewhere. I found descriptions of similar problems, but none really matching.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Just checking, is there any link to using a 4G network? (just wondering whether this more recent post is describing the same issue)

Hi Johannes,
this is a different issue than this. After a system crash after logging into a 4G network the phone doesn’t ring any more when the mobile number is called. And the caller doesn’t hear the ring indicating tone. The FP2 doesn’t do anything as if the battery had been removed without logging off the GSM network.

Cornelius

Aye, mobile data is completely turned off for the phone. I am connected to a 5GHz WiFi network, but disabling this makes no difference.