Since three days something is not working with charging my FP5

Help Fairphone 5
1

Some more information:

  1. during the last three nights the phone has been connected to the charger since around 23:30 to 8:00, the charge level didn’t change since the evening;
  2. I’m using both Fairphone charger and Fairphone UBS cable;
  3. I use the “Battery protect” mode to preserve battery life but I’ve also tried removing this option without any result;
  4. I tried with another pair recharger/cable but nothing changed;
  5. I tried by connecting the phone to the car through three different USB cables (among them the FP one) but nothing changed. Up to three days ago the car was perfectly able to recharge the phone;
  6. I tried plugging and unplugging several time, I also tried a reboot but nothing changed;
  7. I tried cleaning the USB C port with a soft brush but nothing changed.

However, with another charger I have at the office I had this strange result. Yesterday it didn’t worked for a couple of hours (as with all the other chargers) but suddenly started charging the phone and reached a complete charge very quickly. This night again the phone didn’t charge using the usual FP charger/cable pair and it didn’t work with the car on the home to office trip. At the office I connected the phone again to that office charger and now it’s charging the phone at the usual high speed.

Two-three weeks ago I started having problems in connecting the phone to the car through Android Auto (I connect the phone but nothing happens on the car screen). At the beginning it was enough to unplug and plug again the phone to establish the Android Auto connection but it got worse over time and since yesterday it stopped working at all so at the moment I can’t connect the phone to my car with Android Auto. Here again I used three different USB cables, among them the Fairphone one. I don’t know if it’s related or not to the charging problem above but I can see a slight point of contact in the fact that in both cases there is the USB C port involved.

Yesterday I entered the maintenance menu using the Android “secret code” *#*#2886#*#* and I got the following result (it was charging at the office at that time):

Screenshot_20250610-133210
Screenshot_20250610-1332101224×2700 80.9 KB

I’m opening a ticket to the support but according to my previous experience they are extremely slow to reply so, as a B plan, I’m thinking of buying a new USB C port and see what happens.

Any suggestion?

Ciao,
Max

2

Obvious, but asking nevertheless: The existing charging port sits firm in the device (not loose)? You might want to try to disassemble it and reassemble it at least once to see if the screws and the butterfly connector holding it are firm enough.

3

I didn’t open the phone, apparently there is not such problem, it looks OK, but I’ll open it and make a check to be sure.

While I’m at it I’ll also have a better chance to clean the port.

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4

Just to let you know how it finished.

After cleaning the USB port with a small brush (the ones used to clean orthodontic appliances), some contacts cleaning spray and some compressed air spray the smartphone started recharging reliably but Android Auto kept not working.

After replacing the USB port, also Android Auto started working again so the problem is now solved.

Ciao,
Max

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