UK Repair Shop - Battery issue

Help Fairphone 3
1

Hello,

The battery in my Fairphone 3+ struggles to charge and hold a charge.
I got in touch with Fairphone and ran through the list of diagnosis (using different cables, using safe mode, cleaning the charging port) and none of it solved the issue.

My battery still charges super slow and drains fast.

Anyone knows of a repair shop/person/group that could help me solve the problem?

Would a simple battery change work? I’m not convinced myself as when I run the diagnosis on the battery it comes back as positive.

2

Have you tried running AccuBattery while you charge and see if it can tell you what the capacity of the battery is after a full charge? A few side-notes on this idea:

  • You may need multiple charge-discharge cycles to get a reasonable reading out of that app.
  • Android has a tendency of killing it when running in the backgroud, so make sure to open and start the app just before you plug in the charger.
  • I’m not a huge fan of that app being ad-funded, but otherwise does a good job at diagnostics. IMHO battery health status should be part of core Android, but that won’t help you here.
3

I’ve not tried this. I’d never heard of the app before.
I’ll give it a go.

When you say multiple charge/discharge cycles, do I need to get to 100%? That currently takes me days to get to a full charge so that may be tricky.

4

No any charge cycle will do, it’s fine if you go from 15% to 80% or something like that. The “longer” the cycle the better, you won’t get a good reading out of a few 1-2% charge cycles.

5

Thanks for clarifying :slight_smile:

6

I guess Support did suggest to check the battery for bloating? If you’re not sure, you can put the battery flat on an even surface and try to make it spin.

2 Likes
7

No worries at all. One more thing: AccuBattery doesn’t always get the factory capacity of the battery right, which should be either 3000 or 3060mAh. You’ll probably want to set that in the app to make sure that it can give you a sensible health “percentage”. I’ve found that with my use the FP2 battery decays to approx. 80% after just over a year, while my current FP4’s battery got to that point in just over two years. The answer might well be “just get a new battery” if it’s older than that.

8

They did not ask me to check but I’ve now tried and it spins just fine.

9

New update: when turned off and plugged in to charge, the phone keeps going on and off.
So I’m assuming there is a lose connection somewhere.

Should I replace the bottom module and/or the battery? Or something else I’ve not yet tried/considered?

10

Easy and continued spinning indicates a bloated (i.e. damaged) battery that needs to be replaced.

2 Likes
11

The opposite of what I was thinking then >.<
Well, I’ll get onto ordering a new battery then.

Is it worth replacing the bottom component too or just the battery?

12

I cannot really judge this … you don’t know any other FP3 owner nearby, do you? If you do, that could allow you to check back and forth your own and her/his FP3 components to find out which is defect.

1 Like
13

Sadly I don’t know anyone with a Fairphone.
I might just order a spare bottom compartment just in case. It’ll save on postage cost.

Thanks again for your help :slight_smile:

1 Like