This issue is strongly dependent on how you press the button. A colleague of mine with as slim cover is not having any issues, I however manage to jam the button on his phone just as easy as on mine. This is because I don’t push down the button straight to the centre of the phone but more from the back towards the front. I do this especially when I’m on the move and holding the phone in a tight grip.
Here’s a small video demonstrating the issue. As mentioned above I swapped the buttons (camera/power) so the jamming does not cause the phone to reboot. You can see that flat button does not release it’s self and the rough button does.
I hope this helps. If you still need the cover I can send it in but I doubt that will help much.
Same problem here with a new slim case. The reboots were driving me nuts the past days, but didn’t find the time to check the forum until today. Now I hope swapping the two buttons and holding the battery in check with a small sheet of paper will keep my phone from rebooting. But both problems seem to be the case on my phone, as I also had reboots with not interacting with the phone at all and with the new case there seems to be more space for the battery to move. Also I noticed the button problems - but would never have thought to swap buttons. Great idea @Kerhac - no jamming of the new button in my first tests.
After reading the post that fairphone wants my cover both covers got frightened and did not caused a reboot anymore
I installed a boot log app to have hard facts. If I got further problems I will mail you.
Hi Kerhac,
Thanks for your tip. My FP2 went totally unasuable with the slim case. Swapping the power button with the camara button seems to be the soluation for me. Odd thing is that my Original camara button has a course surface, while my Original power button was smooth. It seems much more logic the other way rond. Like they were mouted wrong…
So, is this really an issue with the new cases or are these here just a few exceptions? There is no official statement, is there? Because I need a new cover and I’m not sure wether to get a slim one or not.
We had our Aachen Fairphoners Meeting on friday with four or five FP2s with slim cases present. None had experienced the jammed power button. I myself actually wanted to reproduce this problem and tried it with the CFP2 – and I failed!
I also experience the problems with the power-button. Don’t want to grumble but I find it pretty uncool that the slimcase which I bought because my old one broke after 9 months of use comes with a serious problem. I don’t want to change the buttons because having an inaccurate camera-button not seems to be a real solution in my eyes!
I have also had this issue. As soon as I switched to a slim case I have reboots several times a day. It had never happened before. I think it’s the power button sticking.
I have swapped the buttons in the hope that will fix it.
Update: My phone hasn’t restarted itself since I swapped the buttons (it was happening a couple of times a day before).
Taking a close look at my new cover, I discovered that it seems the case is a little miss aligned to the camera of my phone. On the bottom side there is a little gap while it sits very tight at the top.
Maybe this pushes the bottom part of the case a little bit upwards and by that jams the buttons which are attached to the top part of the case?
I have also been having problems with this, which started after getting the slim cover early this year. The trigger may be mechanical pressure - eg carried an outer pocket of a handbag along with other packages. The reboots generally do stop without removing the battery, but are alarming and take a long time to recover as all the apps are “optimised” once it decides to work.
I have not tried the paper fix. Will bear it in mind but this is really not what I want to do. I chose a Fairphone to support the ethics, not because I want to take it to pieces. It is also not a fix that can be applied while eg on a crowded train.
I have managed to conceal my frustration and embarrassment from non-FP using friends so far, but until this is fixed it is impossible for me to recommend it.
I moved your post here as you say it started happening when you switched to the slim case.
Either way this can be easily fixed by yourself - in this case: switch the power and camera buttons. Neither is a fix that can easily be applied in a crowded train, but what’s the probability of this issue first occurring on a train anyway? You only have to do the fix once.
I tested the slim case for a while, but the power button was totally missing the “pressure point” it normally has with the regular case, I never knew from the button feedback alone whether I pressed enough or at all, I could only check whether something happened on the screen. Apart from that I had no problem with the slim case, but I went back to the regular bumper case for now.
Switching the power and camera buttons is a nice idea, I will try that as soon as I get a protective case to put the slim-cased phone in.
It is not so very easy to find Fairphone-tailored, non-generic ones (will check out a generic one from eBay and a non-generic one from Mobilemagic.ch).
Thanks for moving my post - this is clearly the relevant thread, though it only occurred to me on reading the previous one that the case might be the cause. I innocently thought it was just a cosmetic change!.The photo from Zorugal is interesting. Mine looks similar - tight at top of camera hole and small gap at bottom. Also agree with AnotherElk that an additional protective case would be v useful, eg when travelling.
Ok. I got my new case today. I had the same problem with reboots. I found the tips in the forum. And I swapped the buttons. Let´s see if it will work…
What I don´t understand is how fairphone still sells the cases with the crap buttons without telling us about the problem.
Sometimes it is funny to be part of this community, but sometimes I don´t have the time for it and to be honest I am starting to get a little fed up with this phone and the fact that I have to look for troubleshooting in the forum almost every month.
A huge thumbs up for the button switching trick, it really works!
I have the phone in the slim case in a flip case now with the buttons switched, and the ex-camera-now-power button finally works like it should in the slim case. Great stuff.
