My fairphone has started freaking out - not a technical term I know, but the best description I can think of. The application I’m in stops responding then the phone goes crazy and starts scanning through pages from any and every app I have ever used! Fast flashes of pages I may have seen in recent days, but so quick I can’t see the content properly… no buttons will respond, holding down the power switch does nothing… eventually I have to remove the battery and wait a while. Today I noticed that the handset was really hot – now after 30 mins off and then rebooting it got hot again quite quick - not just warm, alarmingly hot!
This and all the other little problems mean I will probably have to get rid of my fairphone and go back to some other brand. This is annoying as I wanted to support this project and it will cost me a lot of money to get out of the rubbish contract that I signed up to to get this phone.
The first time it did this I was approaching a job using the satnav - when it went crazy I ended up going round a ring-road 3 times, getting lost, being distracted by the phone whilst driving and being late for my appointment. I can’t use technology like that for work.
Daniel
I’m sorry to hear about your disappointing experience, but I don’t think you have to give up on the Fairphone yet.
The first issue you describe - the applications not responding and what happens after that - can surely be fixed:
- easiest solution would be a hard reset, but it removes everything from the phone storage so you’ll need a thorough backup first.
- alternatively you could try to find the app that is causing this manually and erase/reinstall it.
The second issue - the alarming heat - could either be realted to the first one or a hardware issue:
- take out the battery and see if you can spin it on a smooth surface. If so it started bloating and you should stop using it and contact support to get a new one.
- If it’s not the battery try taking out all your cards (SIM & SD) and see if the phone will heat up when using without them. If not put them back one by one to see which one is causing the heat. It may be defect and need replacement. (sometimes it might be enough to just switch SD card-slots.)
In addition to @paulakreuzer’s tips:
Please contact the fairphone support. You are still in the 2 years guarantee period and they will probably repair your phone.
Do not use the phone when it really gets alarmingly hot.
thanks Paul,
how do I backup the phone?
I use dropbox - is that helpful?
The advice about removing the sd cards is not much use as I can’t tell when the phone is going to freak out. I’m not sure I can risk it letting me down like that on a job again.
Daniel