Spare battery has stopped working

I have a spare battery for my F3+ which has worked fine. But now when I put it in (it ran out of charge) the phone will not turn on. When I plug it into a charger it continually flashes the Fairphone logo and vibrates, then goes quiet, then flashes and vibrates again, but it’s impossible to get the phone started. Phone works fine with the other battery

Welcome to the Fairphone community.

What kind of charger are you using? It probably has not enough power to charge the battery and supply the phone while starting.

How long did you try? Maybe it takes a while to break the circle.

Another possibility is that the spare has deeply discharged during storage. That should take quite a while for a reasonably charged (Li-Ion) battery. If you stored it more or less totally empty already - which is my interpretation of

then it is a real possibility. Maybe you can elaborate on the condition of the spare battery at the time you took it out of the phone and how long it was stored.
If it is really deeply discharged, then it must be considered broken and the phone and any reasonable external charger will refuse to charge it. Forcibly trying to charge a deeply discharged battery is a really bad idea and might result in a battery fire. In any case, the storage capacity of the battery will have been irreversibly diminished and it should be put into recycling.

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Hi and welcome to the forum

As mentioned a completely discharged battery is difficult to revive and if it is cold, even more so.

You can check the voltage maybe, anything under 3.6V is going to be a problem.
Warm the battery by keeping it you pocket etc. and check the voltage again…

If you do consider it maybe revived use a really old cable and an old USB A port on a computer for example. The idea is to try and charge it very slowly. It could take 24 hours to become usable. But if it revives it will begin to charge quicker once it warms etc.

Charging or discharging at low temperatures has an irreversible effect on the lithium-ion battery, resulting in a dive in capacity and a serious safety hazard. Prolonged storage at ultra-low temperatures (-20℃) also has an irreversible effect on the battery, Why do lithium ion batteries fear the cold temperature?

Thanks everybody.
Circumstances are that I bought a second battery to extend phone life as I found it was running out at inconvenient times, particularly when I was out on my bike. So I try to keep both batteries well charged by swapping them in and out of my phone. It ran out on a bike ride a few days ago and I didn’t have an opportunity to swap it into my phone until today.
I often use a fast charger (my PC power supply) during the day and an old one from my previous Oneplus phone overnight. It has been quite cold here but I doubt the temerature in my flat goes below +20 degrees c never mind -20!
It’s in my pocket now as suggested.
I have no means to check voltage.
I’ll try plugging the phone into my old computer’s USB a port as suggested and see how that goes.
Thanks again for the feedback.

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In a flat at pos 20 it should be fine, but if voltage is very low that is a problem.

Can you find a repair shop that can check the voltage?

Though there are a lot of opinions that the battery should not be fully discharged, it should usually not be a problem.

Fairphone decide at what level the battery is deemed unfit and will shut down. Given the batteries are guarsnteed for 2 years I doubt they would allow the battery to fully charge or discharge. i.e. the 0 and 100% are Fairphone’s ‘fair usage’ design.

Maybe you can exploit the warranty if all else fails.

I’ve completely lost confidence in Fairphone. First I had a problem with fitting an SD card, losing half my apps and having to do a factory reset. The the spare battery I bought to compensate for the pathetic battery life failed. I have tried to get an answer out of fairphone without any acknowledgement and now when I try to log in I get ‘account disabled’
So now I have a slow ,buggy phone that barely lasts half a day and to cap it all I’'m encouraged to throw it away and buy a Fairphone 4.
I thought the whole point of Fairphone was that it’s upgradeable.

I would argue the whole point of Fairphone is to push the idea of Fairtrade. Repairabilty is attractive to some.

The SD card was probably down to your choice of formatting and nothing to do with the phone.

Likewise the battery usage, mine can last for days, depending how much time I’m on WhatsApp etc.

A test to see how the battery is being used is put it in aeroplane mode over night and see if there are any backgrounds apps running, be sure to close all apps. Hopefully you will find it only use 2 to 3 %. If that’s the case it will be your use rather than the battery that’s faulty.

As regards the second battery, if you keep swapping them the inbuilt algorithms will loose track of how much to charge each battery. The phone doesn’t record a battery ID and then when you swap batteries select the relevant algorithm.

You can try a kickstart on each battery to reset the monitoring.

The FP4 had a 25% larger capacity battery but a larger screen so it should not be much if any of an improvement.

Using WiFi ~ sit closer to the router so the transmitter uses less power. How good it the network signal. Do you have Wifi automatic setting and auto select which id better of WiFi or network.

Still unless you have lots of apps running then it’s likely usage is down to screen time, which may well only be 6 hours of continuos use.

You can read the battery usage to see what apps are actually draining it.

Hope you find something to help reduce the usage.

The account disabled is a concern and as each battery is guaranteed for two years.

Finally, can you find a fairphoneangel near you to confirm your discoveries and help analyse.

Here’s related topic about battery

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Spare battery has now swollen up and will not fit in the phone. I get zero response to the contact form I put in a couple of weeks ago and the phone number they provide doesn’t work.
Awful service, and my phone has a battery life of about 6 hours if I’m lucky.
And by the way, the SD card was down to my choice of formatting - because Fairphone, it seems uniquely, can’t cope with making an SD card part of the phone memory rather than an external device. Nevertheless it caused half my apps to stop working until I delved into this forum and eventually found an ‘answer’ that involved all the trauma of a factory reset.
Anybody got any tips about how to get a response out of Fairphone? I don’t want to have to resort to Dutch lawyers!

That the battery is swollen up now is a clear indication of it being defective. You should handle it with care until your support case is resolved. Try to store it in a safe, non-flammable place like a metal box or such to be sure.
Regarding the difficulties reaching the support there is not much a community forum can do, unfortunately. But I do certainly understand your frustration with this. :frowning:

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Do you mean this option
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

I.e. you contacted via the website or did you email directly support|at|fairphone|dot|com ~ I would use the latter.

Do you have a ticket number from fairphone? If so @formerFP.Com.Manager may be able to help.

Given the short hours telephone support maybe available and with no knowledge of how staffing may be effected by ‘omicron’ you may just have to call a number of times.

Our opening hours are 10:00-17:00 (CEST) Monday-Friday
+31 20 788 4400

It sounds a really frustrating situation, hope you get some official feedback ~ today

All the best

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Thanks for your response
Yes I used that option for the form/written request.
I’ll try the address you suggest.
The phone line said it was unavailable (and it was within the hours stated)
I have repurposed my biscuit tin (in the spirit of Fairphone :slight_smile: ) to be a battery bunker
Guy

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