Well i have found an offer with an operator which sells the Fairphone 6 with a very lower price, because i cannot afford to spend 600 euros again.
I will give a try.
But this would be the last one…
I really hope i can keep this phone at least for a decade.
I have returned to a hackerspace that has access to a Vapour Phase reflow oven, as a last try, I shoved the dead main board, without any of the shields on emmc, cpu and pmics and protective Kapton tape around other areas into the Galden reflow oven, at 227 degrees Celsius for 35 seconds at peak temperature and:
The phone lives yet again!!!
Long live the FP3(+)
nice to read that mimas! Congrats on this fix
that’s very interesting. What’s your read? Do you think the first solder didn’t hold, or that the issue was in another chip that needed to be reflowed?
The duration (35 seconds) really seems not a lot. Was that all the time it was in the oven?
Total oven time was about 15 Minutes. Vapor phase reflow ovens are impressively efficient by transferring heat to components from all sides, but so far they rely on PFAS.
I think my Fairphone 3 has become so old that it is hard to read the actual reason for the failure. However, I suspect the part with broken solder joints was indeed the eMMC flash chip, since I tried numerous times to reflow it with a hot air gun, but never succeeded in getting the solder to melt so the IC could be moved. I believe the vapour phase reflow cycle finally melted the balls under the flash chip.
I am not actually sure the eMMC was reballed in the repair shop, because it looked untouched and had flux residue from flux I applied in my earlier DIY attempts.
FWIW; my phone (FP3) had experienced sudden death overnight (annoyingly causing me to oversleep as the alarm didn’t go off). After reading this thread and watching the Youtube video @Paule posted above, I decided to try to reflow the chip.
I didn’t have a spare oven, but I have a heat gun and one of those laser thermometers. I slather the chip in soldering flux and then used the heatgun to heat it up, using the themometer to make sure it went over 200°C and the flux was boiling.
Reassembled and I felt a vibration when I plugged in the usb-c cable (hurrah!), but it died again about ten seconds into booting up. Tried reflowing again, but to no avail. Clearly the issue was indeed that chip as identified in the video, but I suspect I overheated it and damaged some other chips.
Shame, but glad I gave it a shot.
Please get in contact with support.
If you can by chat and say you don’t have a ticketnumber.
That was really really helpful. I just resurrected my FP3 from death using an oven and a potato (oh, and a cooking thermometer). Thank you so much for this detailed post!
hi all, this morning my Fp3+ - 5+yo - died suddenly. My goal of keeping it for >8years has been lost and I’m disappointed. But I accept 5 years as an above average lifetime of a mobile. After reading this posts I decided I’m not capable of repairing it, as I lack technical skills and necessary tools. So I decided to buy a new 5 or 6, supposing technology has improved on the new releases.
Hello, please contact the customer support, possibly prior to the purchase, as they might have some discounted offer for such cases.
Tagging @Fairphone_CM
Edited to say you may pass your dead FP3 to some angels as they might be able to re-vive it from ashes #oventechnique
brilliant idea but sorry, I missed this answer as I left for the shop. I bought the Fp6 at Coolblue Utrecht and left the broken Fp3+ there to be recycled. I can try to retrieve it but expect not much of it.
Hello thread
My fairphone is still workin, so pretty Cool stuff.
It even survived a SUV rolling on it Monday !
But i lost a lot of signal and i am quit often without signal even if other phones around are getting a nice one…
I tied to play with thé black antenna wire, but it did nothing.
I fear i changed the RF electronic tuning or something like that. I ll look into reception module
There is something else to try before baking your phone!
I just revived my FP3 from sudden death (most likely) with the folded paper method. I was about to try the oven reflow when I remembered a trick from the forum that had already helped me with a different issue on the FP2: putting a few layers of paper in between to re-establish contact of the pins.
Most likely its just a temporary fix, but my phone has been back to life for a few hours now - enough to retrieve all data. I will edit this post with updates on the longevity of the solution.
What I did was putting 4 layers of paper between the metal shield of memory/cpu and the plastic frame. On the other side, I put 3 layers between the metal shield of the power management chips and the metal thingy that is screwed over the mainboard. There is definitely room for experimentation here, thats just what worked first try for me.
Thank you for being this extremely helpful community and good luck to all the ones with broken phones!
Thank you for this!!! I was waiting for the flux to arrive so I could try the reflow, when I saw your post.
I tried the “paper method”, and it worked!
I could boot the phone, connect it to my computer, and extract all the data. IMPORTANT: there are some caveats and a few additional details:
In an excess of caution, I re-assembled the phone without the camera or top module being connected to the motherboard. Then, when I wanted to transfer my WhatsApp and Signal accounts to a new phone, I couldn’t use the camera to read the QR code.
After I copied all the data, I turned off the phone, disassembled to connect the camera, and then tried to boot the phone again after re-assembly…. no good, the phone doesn’t boot any more. Maybe I just need to move things around a bit and try again, but I don’t need it since I already got the data.
I used post-it notes, four on top of the memory/cpu chips, and three on the other side. The post-it notes worked well because they stay neatly in place. I tried it a first time with the rectangles being the same size as the metal shield, and it didn’t work. Then I trimmed them so that they were about 1-2 mm smaller than the metal shields and tried again, then it worked. I guess if they are smaller they push down on the chips more effectively, since the pressure is not transferred to the “walls” of the shield around its perimeter.
Since I now have my data safe, I might try the reflow anyway to see if I can restore the hardware.
Fascinating development! I’ll be sure to include it in the first post if it’s not done shortly.
I have used the paper method myself on the FP2. It stands to reason that forcing a contact could help those lone electrons to find their way across the chip.
I have some photos up in the write-up of the core module exposed. Would you mind noting in those photos where you put the papers?
How durable is this, @DerSchneck , @dirkvs ? Any news?
Nice to see that I could help 
For me it lasted 5 days, even though I also had to open it again to reinstall the camera like dirk. After it suddenly died again on saturday, I was able to revive it again today by adding few more layers of paper, but this state is now quite fragile and does random reboots etc. This supports my suspicion that the paper hack bends the phone even more (the screen will even visibly bulge a bit over the frame where the paper is under it) and so you would have to add more and more paper over time.
I also noticed that every time I revived the phone, it only reacted to plugging it in the power, claiming that the battery was at 0% and it had to charge first. Which is a little interesting considering that it only died 1,5 days ago and I dont recall the battery being very low before it died. Idk what to make of that information though^^
This is where I put the paper exactly: Between metal cover and the power chips metal shield
And under the mainboard between frame and cpu/memorys metal shield (in black)
I can confirm what dirk said about cutting the paper stripes not too wide so they dont clash with the wall of the frame.
Also I havent mentioned yet that you can only really try if the method worked after putting the screen back on, because those screws press everything together.
Hey there,
i just used the route you were proposing. It worked out and i was able to retrieve my data, so a big thank you to you and to everyone who contributed by posting in this thread!
Sadly it only lasted until i reassembled all missing parts. It’s been dead since.
Actually i’m not that surprised by that result, because my USB multimeter reported initially only 22-25mA and 205Ω on top….
After the reflow-in-oven method my USB multimeter reported 324mA and 15Ω.
Another with suspected sudden-death in their FP3
It’s been on the blink for a few months now - suddenly turning off when battery was half full. Dead for a few days now. Not down a full tear down and spray with contact cleaner yet, and reading this thread, possibly won’t bother. Even a reflow repair seems too short lived to bother.
There’s no data I need to recover, and I can cut it off from most accounts from the computer. Anyone want it to experiment with repair methods on?
Hello to my 1st post here everyone! Beware of my sarcasm, there is a healthy dose of it here. I mean to offend no one!
Just wanted to report that my 5 year old FP3+ died suddenly.
I then read what @koumilak wrote - thanks a lot 
!
I think the thing apart - stuck MB in a ziplock and 20min. in the freezer. Quick test –> Phone boots up
Bad solder joint somewhere –> Plausible
Rant alert - Rant Starts here
So I remove all shields and took the FP3 to a local Phone shop, told them to please re-flow both memory chips and both power chips (that would have taken them what 20 minutes?) I was willing to give 50 Euros for that job - no warranty - no need to test! But the guy turned it down - he had TWO hot air stations right there! That was really a bummer - what kind of a system is this (rhetorical question) where people turn down a no-warranty-no-commitment attempt to “repair”???
Rant Over
With all shields apart I stuck the thing in a cold oven and set it to 230°C (That is about 23423543.6°F - I think )
Waited ~15 minutes
Set temp down to 160 °C (Still a 7-digit °F number 
)
Took phone out of the oven
Burned my fingers just a bit
Held Battery + bottom Mod. and the display on top of the contacts - Voilá Recovery mode!
Now this is where it gets strange –> Something happened with the /e/ OS when the phone died, because at restart it was unable to boot.
Luckily here:
https://ota.ecloud.global/api/v1/FP3/official/
you can find OTA Update files so you can Fastboot them into your Fairphone.
Done that and it worked!
So, Kinda Makes sense for the Cold Solder (“Sodder”) to be under the SEC Memory chip, right? That would then explain why the system memory got corrupted?
Let me know what you guys think.
I love you all and let’s keep our Fairphones alive for as long as we can!
PS: I made a backup now. But phone still works!
My FP3+ was broken (sudden death) about one year ago and I sent it to Smartronic to fix it.
It worked and it is still running
What did they do at Smartronic?
