Hi all,
As a Fairphone community member and a Fairphone Angel in my city, I’ve seen a lot of talk about sudden death, particularly in the FP3(+).
I won’t be asking why
There are a lot of reasons for it to be particularly salient from our point of view, I am not saying there is a perceived design flaw, intended or otherwise:
At the end of the day, the thing is here. The real question is, what can we do about it?
Jump right in:
- Why this thread
- What does Fairphone say
- What is “sudden death”?
- Solder, hot air, oven reflow
- Walkthrough for a repair scenario
- Discussion and questions
- What to do now?
- Previous repair stories
Why this thread
The talk about sudden death is pretty scattered and disjointed. I have identified a list of repair stories and discussions below, branching out to not only Help , but also Discuss > The Products , and all the way to the Participate > Trusted Members . It’s also mixed with displays of frustration, anger, and helplessness, accusation of obsolescence, and even of fraud. The titles of threads are not always transparent. All in all, it’s pretty confusing.
More about that
The most important threads about sudden death are:
- Fairphone 3+, Dead in 3 years, from Sept 2023 to Nov 2024, and contains most of the accounts and knowledge. Most of the repair stories are there, as well as some for whom it did not work.
- FP3+ bricked or sudden death?
, May to August 2024, a little bit less fleshed out. - FP3 Sudden Death from Sept 2023 may have coined the term but the content is less helpful than expected.
- Fairphone 3+ is dead, will not turn on, June 2023 – April 2024, is not long but important since it has sarofel’s July 2023 breakthrough ^^
And many others.
This thread, while it may be a duplicate of a duplicate (sorry @yvmuell), is my attempt to rationalize and build a synthesis of our collective answers to this, and how to move forward as users and as a community. This is not a contactsupport or a Help issue anymore, hence the Participate > Do It Yourself section. Take back control!
It would help immensely to document, in one place, as thoroughly as possible, with temperatures, durations, pictures, specs, and any other piece of info that could be useful to would-be repairers. I noticed that some details, warnings, and how-tos were lost from one attempt to another, like in a game of telephone (get it? 
).
Now, I think almost all FP3(+)s may be completely out of warranty, as it’s been more than two years since end of sales, and these models had only two years warranty (as compared to five years with the more recent FP4/5).
Indeed, an easier answer to sudden death is just sending it to support within the warranty period. Outside of this period, the cost of repair stings AND you lose all your data…
It’s time to try to keep our current FP3(+) alive for as long as we can by any means necessary:
- Because the FP3+ is still a good phone, and may be preferred to the FP4/5, owing to the presence of an audio jack, smaller form factor, and other reasons,
- Because the phone we already have is free and any other phone we might have to buy might be expensive and wasteful,
- Because we want to keep alive the possibility of using a phone for five years even if the warranty stops short of that,
- Because the module paradigm for repairs is good, but limited in a lot of ways,
- Because we might want to do a back-up real quick after all
- Because we can
What does Fairphone say
Not a whole lot…
A Dec 2023 message from the Community Manager says:
And reminded us to tell the support about any sudden death to let them know so they have a clear picture.
But she’s not with Fairphone anymore and I didn’t find anything else from anyone there.
@Ioiana_Luncheon is our new CM. Any news, Ioiana?
what is “sudden death”?
UPDATE: there’s a video posted below in the thread that’s about sudden death, it’s origins, diagnostics, and reparation. It corroborates a lot of what’s been said here, but differences exist. To learn more, here’s the link to the Youtube video from SMARTRONIK. The video is in German (I don’t speak it, but the auto-translate feature works well) and has a duration of ~30 mins. The section I linked to is from minutes 11 to 14 and discusses how sudden death can happen.
If we were to describe sudden death, we would begin by drawing a composite inspired by the testimonies (links above):
- the phone turned off unexpectedly, not because of a fall or sudden shock or water infiltration, and could not be turned on again even with a non-depleted working battery,
- the phone does not react to being plugged in (no LED indicator, no vibration, blank screen), and this does not change after changing the bottom module, or checking the flexible connector,
- no obviously damaged component when taking out the modules (bottom flex cable included).
As “differential diagnosis”, to borrow the concept from medicine, we could have dead battery, faulty bottom module, dirty or broken connectors…
I recognize that those symptoms could be from something else – phones can brick for a lot of reasons – but let us assume here that the cause of this is a faulty contact with the power management chips in the motherboard (whether it be in the PMI632* or another). This could be due to the phone getting too hot sometimes and creating a “cold solder joint” (citation below). In the video linked supra, it says that the problem actually lies with the memory chip, which is just on the underside of the PCB, opposite those PMI chips.
The solution would be to resolder the IC to the motherboard, by means of a hot air gun, soldering equipement, or putting in an oven.
*Check out this teardown guide from iFixit to have a look.
Solder, hot air, oven reflow
There are a number of ways this repair was done. The basic idea is getting the solder joint going again with the application of heat that melts (reflows) the solder.
I’m not going to talk about the “proper” soldering of a new component, with a soldering iron an everything. I think the most proper way to do that is to melt and pump out the old solder, clean everything with flux, and solder anew, whether it be the same chip (provided we’re sure its working) or a new one.
As I understand, there are a fair number of experiences documenting a success, even short lived – there are instances where it worked, but the phone broke down again and it did not work a second time. However, I have also found several (but fewer) accounts in which it did not work at all.
We do not really have the specific solder used by the manufacturer, as that would tell us the right temperature. But there seem to be a agreement around at least 200°C for the oven-based solution, and 350°C for the air gun.
I am not a specialist in this field, it would really help to call for someone with an electronics backgrounds, as my cursory search led me to gather some aspects that might be important:
- the whole motherboard should be stripped, taken out of the phone (including so called “heat shields”, see the teardown guide,
- the whole motherboard should be heated to have a more uniform temperature. When using a heat gun, have the motherboard on a heatplate at 160°C for instance (see below).
- A specific “temperature profile” should be respected. As this website explains:
Solder paste is not designed to be just heated up fast and immediately cooled down again. You should bake it using what is known in the trade as a “reflow oven profile”, which is a temperature curve designed to minimise bad effects such as sputter. Sputter is when the solder paste heats unevenly and little pockets of flux and liquid carrier boil out of it with a “pop”, splashing microscopic dots of solder around the joint.
The article is rather extensive and goes on to describe “ramp, soak, spike” profile, with diagrams and explanations. The gist of it is : get the board to a sub-melting temperature (ramp/soak), then increase briefly the temperature (spike) before getting it to cool rather quickly.
As you can see, it needs some materiel and technique, but it doesn’t seem beyond the reach of our repair-minded spirits 
Walkthrough
This is not a tutorial yet! This is an (educated) guess of what I would do if I were to try that! Subject to modifications and corrections! This is a last resort attempt for a device out of warranty! Please see this Youtube video from SMARTRONIK for more info and pictures.
Materiel:
- A suddenly dead FP2 or FP3(+)
- Phillips#00 and Torx#5 and pliers to dissassemble,
- A heatplate + hot gun OR an temperature-controlled (toaster?) oven (that would be afterwards unsuitable for food!)
- some flux paste (optional?)
Steps:
- Dissassemble the phone and separate the motherboard from everything including thin metal cover plates and little cable antenna (see teardown)
- Ramp and “soak” the motherboard (screen pins up!) in the oven / on a heatplate at 180°C (?) to have uniform heating
- Spike the temperature : oven at 220°C (?) / application of a 350°C heat gun on the area of the IC (see teardown)
- Cooling pt1 : open the door to the oven / turn off the heatplate. Do not move or otherwise disturb the board with molten solder!
- Cooling pt2 : when the solder is solid (i saw a figure of 130°C), remove motherboard from oven / heatplate, let it cool some more.
- Reassemble taking care not to bend the motherboard when putting it back*
- Pray
*It may not be needed to reassemble completely before testing:
After the oven reflow you can test your board by inserting it in the frame, only connecting the bottom module, insert battery and try to power it on or plug it in the charger. The bottom module will vibrate if the mainboard works again, even without a screen.
(The video linked shows how that works)
Discussion
We have yet to harmonize some points, owing to our (my) ignorance of this field:
-
What should the temperatures be exactly? As mentioned, the melting temperature depends on the specific solder used. We say 200°C for the oven but it could be more. For the heat gun operation, it’s much more. Also, for the soak period, it should be high but sub-melting (I saw 20°C below melting). Can Fairphone tell us?
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How long should the procedure take? Some people baked it for minutes, or tens of minutes. The website freetronics (see supra) is more temperature oriented and also says of the “spike” period
[…] now the magic event will happen and joints will suddenly flash from dull grey to bright silver. As soon as that happens I turn the oven off […]
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What is the role of flux and solder wire? Should it be used or is it superfluous? Should we remove the old solder and put new one? To what extent can quick-and-dirty be enough?
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Will this be durable? We’ve had hints from previous experience that revivals could be short-lived: a resuscitated phone fell from a height of 10 cm and could not be revived again. Another user said the phone was re-dead after three days. It could be worth it just to backup the phone. I wager it depends on the quick-and-dirtyness of the procedure…
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What side should be up? There are component on both sides! I’ve seen “screen pins up” for the FP2, it seem to apply to FP3 too. I’d like to be sure.
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Is it safe? Obviously I would NOT do this on my home oven, and there might be a lot of places more suitable to this (your nearest repair café for instance). Also, there is risk to the environment and a risk of electrostatic discharge…
What now?
I think the least we can do is consider this method and try to apply it as best we could with safety and efficacy in mind. It would be another tool for Fairphone users, Angels, community event organizers, Repair Café volunteers, and everyone in the community that is interested in repairing broken, otherwise dead, FP3(+)s. With exhaustive testing and sharing of experiences, we can save more phones from the jaws of the landfill and we can help with data retrieval, and more.
Of course this message is open to moderators and everyone else to amend, add, and correct any info here. I intend this to be a living document. Thanks for every member that contributed to the discussions I cited and read. I hope I didn’t overreach with this initiative.
Previous repair stories
It began with this experience from ElKrasso. It was about a FP2 having trouble back in 2018 and introduced oven reflow to our repair toolkit. For another FP2, robbert.f did the same in April 2020.
Fast forwards a bit, and sarofel isolated the specific chip and replaced it in July 2023, while also noting (emphasis mine):
HolosericaCaligo unearthed the oven reflow method in September 2023, followed with a structural analysis comparing the rigidity of the different generations of Fairphone and its effect on the respective motherboards, concluding:
And others in the threads cited above, plus this one from Oct 2024.
