Last Wednesday at 9pm my Fairphone 5 was sitting happily on my desk.
At 10pm it was black screen and unresponsive.
Nothing had touched it in the intervening time, not even the cat.
I have removed and replaced the battery and charging port. I have tried charging it, tried turning it on, tried entering recovery mode: no response to any of these.
I have tried contacting support and received no response in over a week.
All I want to know is whether it’s worth trying to e.g. buy a replacement battery and/or charging port and see if the rest of the phone still works? Or is the whole thing likely to be a dead loss based on this behaviour?
Just in case you have not noticed, Fairphone Support has finally resumed offering their Live Chat again. See the “Ask for further help” section at https://support.fairphone.com You should have received an automatic reply to a Support request with a ticket number, ideally have that at hand if you try the Live Chat.
I tried that earlier today, got a bot which when I tried to escalate to a human took my name and email address and said I would hear from them soon.
Just the same as it did last week.
You might have been unlucky as BST has one hour difference I think. And now there’s weekend break. I don’t have any other solutions at the moment, am afraid.
It is most certainly not under warranty, this is why I’m trying to work out whether it’s viable to repair.
(Long story. Short version, I bought the handset on eBay in good faith, but it turns out the seller wasn’t a legit reseller and their stock was stolen, FairPhone were happy to leave the handset with me but told me it was not under warranty because it was never properly sold).
The most likely faults are the battery and then the main board. If you know someone good with electronics, they may be able to measure the voltage of the battery for you. If it’s dead it will be pretty low. The battery may have also gone into “deep discharge” somehow, meaning the voltage has dropped too far to be charged (a common lithium-ion issue).
If the battery is okay. (3.7 volts and higher) then you might try stripping down the phone, cleaning the pogo contacts, seeing if there’s any connectors come loose. If that doesn’t help then it’s most likely a faulty mainboard.
No it isnt or it is (through FPs repair center) however it costs almost the same as a new one… They used to have price lists on their support pages somewhere
New battery arrived, the handset is still dead. Still no response from Fairphone support except an email saying “don’t contact us multiple times”, which is suuuper helpful.
So, I’m returning the battery to iFixit, selling the working parts of the handset and starting again. Not decided yet whether I’m sticking with Fairphone or not.