Sudden Death of a FP3

Help Fairphone 3
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Hello everyone,

I’m Eddie, a long time Fairphone user having had a Fairphone1, 2 and now 3. My Fairphone 3 has been really good, I decided to replace the bottom module and speaker module after a small amount of water entry last year after being caught in a massive down pour, but this has been the only issue and the phone has work well since…until today.

I was walking through town listening to music through wired headphones, phone reasonably charged, and it just turned off and since it’s completely unresponsive, there is no LED light, no vibration, no screen response to pushing the on button or plugging into the charger / laptop USB port.

The phone is out of warranty. I think I have read all the “sudden death” forum post, sadly this isn’t very encouraging, but I was wondering if there are logical steps I can take to help restore the device and / or data?

My wife also has a FP3 so the first thing I will try tomorrow when she’s back home is to swap out the bottom module and test whether it’s just lack of power getting to the phone. Although I doubt this is the case, when the battery has run dry before, pressing the on button gives you indication that the battery is fully discharged and in this case I get nothing. To me it seems more a central problems of the main module, but I’m really not sure.

If there is no luck with swapping out my battery and bottom module for my wife’s, then I will attempt the alcohol cleaning of contacts in / to the main module. Are there’s any in particular that I should concentrate on?

I was also reading that some people have tried to restore data from the phone but I have absolutely no idea how to do this, and can’t see a clear support article about this, so I was wondering if you could help direct me on this issue as well please?

I’ve contacted my local angel in Tipperary, but I wanted to post here as well, so I can update people with progress, hopefully highlight this problem, and maybe find a solution.

I think the issue of moisture causing oxidisation of contacts seems a plausible hypothesis in my case.

Many thanks for your time,

Eddie Venison.

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Pinging @ElKrasso @Lidwien Does this sound like a case for the copper brush you recommended earlier this week in case of water damage? Or was that just when it was only about disturbed display-core contact with LED still showing signs of life?

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Hard luck Eddie. I admit this doesn’t look good, especially the sudden decease but yes I guess there are still things to check and try.

Salvaging data can sometimes be done by specialists - usually at quite a cost, I have no idea of the going rates.
As to moisture causing oxidation yes, given your story of last year, quite possible. For the contacts to clean I suppose all those of the main board, bottom module and screen - and of the battery itself and its socket terminals of course.
Let’s see what the “copper brush” experts think!

Good wishes to the Emerald Isle. :shamrock:

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With water damage there is always a chance for little debris on the contacts and contra-contacts.
So definitely a case for the copper brush.

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You might want to follow this thread and see what happens

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it’s probably a good idea to swap modules with the FP3 of your partner to see where the problem is!
I have 2 FP3 and one stopped working after a drop of ~80 cm w/o any visible damage. charging was still possible, but after starting, the phone behaved at random over several month until it didn’t at all. I finally found by swapping all modules with my second FP3 that it was the display/screen that wasn’t working anymore. ordered a new one, mounted it, and voilá, everything is fine again.
hope you have luck with this :+1:

btw: the how-to desctiption here is fine: https://shop.fairphone.com/en/fairphone-3-display

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