Wifi turns off immediately

Since two days suddenly my Wifi turns off immediately once I try to turn it on. I used adb to change access rights and to remove wpa_supplicant.conf and p2p_supplicant.conf from /data/misc/wifi (as recommended and described elsewhere), however, after rebooting the system the problem remains, the newly set *.conf files look the same than before (without wifi details). Inbetween, it worked again for a few minutes, but then failed again. I already spent more than a day trying to solve the issue, none of the advices found so far really worked. Anybody else with a similar issue?

I’ve heard of this issue and I think that, unfortunately, this indicates a hardware failure, since you couldn’t solve it by deleting WPA_supplicant… :frowning: (Read more here)

Anyway, you might try a hard reset to rule out software errors and if this doesn’t help, then you should contact Fairphone support and follow their instructions (you can link to this thread).

PS: Support may take over a month to answer, so if it’s urgent you could buy a WiFi daugtherboard from the shop and try to repair the phone yourself. In any case tell us what you did to solve the problem! :slight_smile:

Edit: Read the post below please. Replacing the daugtherboard might not resolve the issue.

Hey Stefan, thanks for your reply. I found another post somewhere, where somebody recommended to replace the Wifi daughterboard, as you did. Another person answered:

“No! That is not what you need to do. This is the GSM antenna, nothing to do with WiFi. If your WiFi is greyed out (Can’t switch it on) or switches off itself after switching it on, you have a problem with the WiFi chip. If it switches on but you have no WiFi reception, it is the antenna circuit which is broken. (Also often the WiFi chip). The good news is, it can be repaired. The bad news is, you will need to find someone who can do it for you if you dont have the skills.
The upper right ground shield needs to be removed for the repair.
Here you see the WiFi / Bluetooth / GPS chip on the upper right side.
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/qqgKRTUPEeD3dRhG.medium9
To repair your board, all pins need to be reflowed. Fortunally this is not a BGA (contacts underneath) so it can be resoldered on all sides. Once this is done, there’s a very big change that your FP1 is fully operational again. I have done some of these boards and they all had their Wifi / Bluetooth / GPS back. If you consider repair, make absolutely sure that the person performing the repair is skilled enough! I have seen enough horror results from people that 'knew what they were doing”

the link: FP1 Wi-Fi connection doesn’t turn on
what do you think about this?

Hmmm. Is your phone still in warranty? Then you should send your phone in and let Fairphone handle this. If not, you can try a repair shop you trust, or indeed buy a new motherboard.

no, it is not…just to keep you updated: suddenly this evening Wifi turned on by itself and worked perfect, let’s see for how long (I already opened the case and cleaned the inside from dust, I also newly adjusted the antenna cable, but this all was done already yesterday, with no effect)…I am really confused…

after 10 minutes it turned off again…

Update: Today I removed the cover of the Wifi-Chip on the motherboard. The solderings of the pins looked ok but there was some sort of tiny metal dust between two pins, which I removed. I cleaned all the pins and closed the case again. Now it seems to work stable! However, I couldn’t put the metal cover on the Wifi-chip again, since it had been glued originally, will that have any implications? What is the function of that metal cover, shall it protect from radiaton?

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No the metal covers just protect the chips. According to Fairphone’s Urban Mining Manual they “often contain a mixture of tin, iron, nickel, silver, zinc and aluminium”. (Page 7)

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