I bought a used Fairphone 4 that shipped with a factory-reset Iodé 3. I did some basic setup and installed a few apps which worked flawlessly. At some point the updater asked me to install a new Iodé version, which I did.
After reboot the phone started Iodé 6.12. I guess the big gap in versions has caused a couple of issues unfortunately.
- The screen no longer reacts
- Bluetooth does not activate (not sure if it was working before, did not try that)
- While I can connect a mouse with an OTG adapter, the phone does not connect to my PC. In Windows the device manager shows a non-working FP4 mobile device, Linux reports that ‘the USB device can not be activated’. That also affects wired
adb connections
- ADB wireless can be set to active, but connections with
adb connect <fp4ip> are actively rejected
I then tried to flash a different OS just to see if the touchscreen can be recovered. Guess what, the USB ports are inactive in both fastboot and recovery (v6.12). Consequently the FP stock OS installer won’t run as it can not find a device.
I then downloaded a v3 iode.zip through the phone’s browser and moved it to /. But recovery only offers to sideload, there’s no option to install a zip from internal memory. Same is true for the zip on a Fat32 USB key attached to the OTG adapter.
Other things I tried:
- removing the battery
- various cables (all of them working with other phones)
- two different PCs, both of them running Linux and Windows
- factory resets
So my situation is
- the only interaction options that work all of the time are the volume keys and power button
- when the OS is running, I can use a wired mouse, but not in parallel with a PC connection
- because of that I can not authorize USB-port adb debugging
- I can not access any installation file in recovery or fastboot, neither through storage nor sideloading
I appreciate any ideas at this point, I no longer have any
Have you tried to reset to the original FairPhone OS to find out if the problems are on the hardware side?
(Please be very cautious with changing OS, since there are current problems with Fairphones and the rollback protection - leading to final brick of the devices. See the many, many discussions about FairPhones here in the forum - you can find them by using the forum key word “Fairphone4”, showing you all the threads about FP4. One example: FP4 - Unable to relock bootloader - #35 by rik ).
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I did, but the stock OS installer does not find the device. Which is not surprising as fastboot devices / adb devices come up empty in bootloader / recovery mode. Tried that with Linux and Windows on two different machines with different USB cables
Update: After going back and forth A LOT I finally got abd working after plugging the phone into a USB2 port(!). I am not 100% sure if that was all it took as in my desperation I changed many things. I was able to sideload Iodé 6.12 (same version as installed) and the touchscreen and bluetooth are back.
Not sure how I feel about the phone now but at least it seems usable
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This is very strange with the Touchscreen non-responsiveness, and I am sure it makes it very difficult to troubleshoot. I don’t know if I have any ideas about that, but there are some Touch / Display debugging entries in “Developer Options”
For USB, can you confirm “System Settings > Security & privacy > More security & privacy > Trust > Restrict USB” is set to “Always allow USB connections”?
Otherwise, are you on Windows? If so possibly you need an updated Android USB driver as security permissions updates in the newer Android version may require it to be updated? I’m not fully confident with this link but is the best I found with a quick search for Fairphone Android USB Windows Drivers: Download Fairphone 3 (Qualcomm) USB Driver for Windows (Latest) (full disclosure: I am not that well versed in Windows drivers anymore 
)
For Bluetooth, can you try to reset “System Settings > System > Reset options > Reset Bluetooth & Wi-Fi”?
Regarding attempting to “downgrade” to iodé 3 again via sideload, that will likely not work, it would need a full / clean install (and working USB).
Good news! Glad my above post wasn’t needed
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In any case, thank you for being interest in my issue. I am new to this community but I already noticed that you are very active and help a lot of users. That is quite something.
Also thanks to Ms Piggy
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