Weird WLAN/reboot/SIM problems with iodeOS on FP5 (fairphone 5)

Apps & Core Settings
1

Hi,

reason I am opening a new thread is that besides me, some of you @rlees85 (Aurora Store stuck on Fairphone 5 - #25 by rlees85), or @big_b_2k (Turning on Bluetooth causes a restart on Fairphone 5 - #2 by big_b_2k) also seem to have a couple of problems.

And I am trying to figure out if this is all software based or if there is some hardware malfunction involved (in my case):

My symptoms:

  • slow WLAN up to “no address found”
  • SIM-card vanishes just like that, reboot fixes that
  • a manual reboot very often results in a second, unintended reboot after start
  • sometimes the phone reboots “just like that”
  • the phone reboots on an occation, like turning on bluetooth

these are so many (or only a single one) near-hardware problems that I am doubting that the phone is ok. Unfortunately I did not test the phone with the preinstalled FairphoneOS before installing iod´eOS.

Regarding the individual problems:

  • the WLAN is slow,
    • e.g. in aurora shows 32 kB/s max, running librespeed.org in iode-browser: 1,3Mb/s, in fennec: 2,1 Mb/s, in cromite 3.5Mb/s, can’t help the feeling that there is some VPN involved (at least there is not one that I know of) or some DNS resolution problem sometimes.
    • f-droid is much faster (at the same time) (no way to measure kb/s), the max LAN-connection of my laptop is [9,2Mb/s-0,2Mb/s](https://librespeed.org/results/?id=15pohts. Nevertheless, slow WLAN is in every WLAN I have been in so far.
  • the SIM-card problem: Aurora store says I have the SIM-Manager 0.2.1.656331786-gms (221995) installed and I should upgrade to …-google (225361) which I did not do yet.
  • I also tried to kill “iode” (as I understand is kind of a firewall) for the time being to see if it slows the WLAN or has something to do with the SIM disappearing
  • the reboots seemed to increase since the one update from 6.4 to 6.5 but I haven’t counted or made statistics.
  • I have a work"profile" and shelter installed using it for non-free apps, so aurora store is mostly used in the workprofile. Thus there are two “iode” apps, one for work and one for normal"profile", except when I kill them both.

Do you have any thoughts how to debug things further?

2

I’d say you need to RMA that.

Try first:

  • Clean install of Iode (or OS of your choice)
  • Reset to factory settings

Give it a while and if you still have problems send it back,

Honestly I moan alot about the Fairphone and it has been a bit of a battle but mine on Iode (since 6) is stable - compared to before. The only remaining issues are no visible notifications (AOD eats battery) which is a hardware issue that effects all FP5 and the 90hz thing that affects all LineageOS variants on FP5. Other than that, its rock solid on Iode.

A lot of Android users tolerate random reboots. I don’t. Slow WLAN sounds really really weird if you are doing funny things with your router or DNS etc then obviously check its playing nicely.

3

HI @rlees85 ,

thanks for the honest feedback.
I’ll take the time to install /e/-OS and see, which problems remain.
If they do, I’ll RMA the piece and test with a different hardware. But this’ll take time!

If they don’t, I’ll keep this instance and give iode one more try.

Maybe until then more of the community will show up and report on errors or find a way to debug things.
In both cases, I’ll come back here and report.

Cheers!

4

I had the SIM-card-problem too (no data traffic but wifi has worked) and could solve it with an eSIM instead of a card.

5

I experience soft reboots (OS crashes?) occasionally.
Sometimes related to turning bluetooth off or disconnecting a bluetooth device, sometimes during a Seedvault backup, sometimes on other occasions.

6

Thanks for your statements @MimLot and @ForFair

I figured now, that I want to check out /e/-OS or FairphoneOS (googled stock ROM) to see, if there is a hardware issue or this is all a bad combination of beta-stage issues.

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IMG_20250702_0751441224×1564 83.2 KB

After a bit reading, I fear that I am stuck for a while, since my android security patch level is on 1.June (with Android 15) while /e/-OS newest is on 1.may (and with Android 14)

The newest FPOS seems to be on 5.June (for now, and with Android 14)

But that makes it only worse to get it working with e-OS or later again with iodeOS, right?

Am I right with being careful not to under step the ASPL (patch level) ?

Do you know if downgrading from A15 to A14 would be a problem?

Thanks for any thoughts!

7

I am afraid installing /e/OS won’t give you more insights. I don’t have an FP5 but FP3 and Shiftphone 6mq. Both /e/OS and iodeOS are based on LineageOS and I noticed many issues in both OS. So I assume that they come from LineageOS. Currently I switch from /e/OS to iodeOS because the Murena team adds many more changes to the OS than iodé, thus adding more bugs.
I guess installing the stock ROM will be the better choice for testing. All I found about downgrading on the web is that the security patch is relevant, not the Android version. But I have no experience with downgrading.

1 Like
8

I am pretty sure that it will simply not allow install and give you a message to that effect, so it can’t hurt to try. You should be ready to clean wipe the device, however, as a “dirty downgrade” from A15 base to A14 base will not work well I think.

On a test device (Pixel 3a XL) I had iodéOS 6.5 but wanted to test something on 5.9. Even attempting to wipe in recovery and install gave me the “downgrade not allowed” error. But then I re-flashed the boot image with the 5.9 version, after which I was able to install 5.9 from recovery using adb sideload. I am not certain if it was the same block as before, so this may not be relevant.