Tips to make your Fairphone last longer

I wanted to collect some tips on how to increase the Lifetime of your Fairphone and its parts, to take further steps avoiding e-waste and a hole in your wallet.

General Tips

Battery Lifetime

Power/Lock Button

The Power/Lock Button is used to power the Phone on and off and to lock and unlock the screen. The more often you use it the sooner it could cause Problems.
As far as I know you can’t turn the Fairphone on without the Power Button, but all other Functions can easily be done with other tools:

Volume Keys

The Volume Keys, like the Power Button, can break when used extensively. For changing any Volumes I also use Power Toggles

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I can’t get the app “auto screen on” to work on my Fairphone. Shame; nice idea. Do you know of any alternative apps?

did you choose to use the proximity sensor and not the g sensor in the settings?
on f-droid there are apps that let you check the functionality of your phones sensors (like this one); maybe your proximity sensor doesn’t work properly?
on the play store you can search for unlock screen and there are other apps to unlock your phone with proximity sensor, or by shaking. I dodn’t try any of them but I’m sure you’ll find something that works :smile:

I tried both the G-sensor andf the proximity sensor (it helped once I found out where this was and how it worked; it is not mentioned in the manual.) Both modes work erratically, unreliably. Plus the G-sensor activates in my pocket when I climb stairs etc, and the proximity sensor goes off seemingly at random when the phone is lying idle, and when I close my flip-case. So in either mode the app would be a battery drain, as well as frustrating to use, so I uninstalled it.
May try another…

Well then it sounds to me like your phones sensors don’t work properly.
I now use Auto Screen On in combination with F2L. Both work with the proximity sensor, one to lock and one to unlock the screen. I admit, locking works better, perfectly actually; unlocking sometimes reqires a little effort.
To unlock I hover my finger close over the proximity sensor for one or two seconds and then move it away. Sometimes it takes a few seconds to react.
With a flip case this combination should work really well and F2L should eliminate the unwanted unlocks when the cover is closed.

WaveUp on F-Droid : https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=waveup&fdid=com.jarsilio.android.waveup
Allows to lock and unlock the phone using the proximity sensor.
It allows to automatically lock the phone when put in the pocket, and unlock it when got out.

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Did you succeed in installing WaveUp on your Fairphone? I am on FP Open Os and can’t get it installed.
It’s starting to download the app and then I get the message Not installed. (Yes, I allowed unknown sources.)

It works for me (version 0.98-1)

If I try to install WaveUp through the F-Droid app, then the app shows me WaveUp with a colourless icon. Installing is impossible.
Now I have download the APK from the F-Droid website, and now installing is no problem anymore.
Glad to have WaveUp.

Just fyi: Wave up does not properly work on FP1. It produces a wakelock, draining the battery.

Yes @Stefan WaveUp does produces a wakelock on my phone, thus draining the battery.

To uninstall the app you need to do the followingadvise by WaveUp:

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The app provide a link directly in its menu to uninstall it, itself.
Not enough ?

After my trialperiod I couldn’t start the app, so I used this method.