I’ve been having issues with the main camera in my FP3.
At first, there was a black screen when opening the camerq, and it solved by itself with time.
Then the error came back (it said that another app might be using the camera) and again solved by itself.
Now for a while again when opening the camera only had a black screen, but no error message. I tried disasembling and assembling the camera module and that worked for a week, and now i have the same problem
Now i tried switching the camera module for a FP3 camera module, and only the selfie camera works.
I tried installing othee camera apps, but only selfie camera works. Tried looking in FP forum but couldnt find any solution.
You could then open the device, pull the cable from the camera module and plug it in again. But hey, the “cable” is only 5mm long and it can easily be damaged by a mistake. A video about how to do this is here.
If you can’t solve it by this you can buy a new camera module for about 50€. If your current camera module is still original from FP3 you can replace it now by the better one from FP3+.
You might want to check on the other end of the connector cable, i.e. the end that plugs into the mainboard (under the metal shield). This end of the connector sometimes gets unplugged (without this being visible without removing the shield).
Note that the shield and the mainboard are held by two Torx T5 screws, so the screwdriver that the FP3 came with (a Phillips 00) does not fit.
Thank you for your answers. Unfortunately before I took some time to open and check the connection, my FP3 died this morning without any reason (doesnt charge, doesnt switch on, no red LED lights when plugging in…), so sudden death, after almost 5 years. My partner experienced the same sudden death after 3 years of FP3. Luckily i have a second hand backup phone with /e/, i dont want to lose any time trying to revive the FP3. Thanks anyway for your help.
Be sure that it’s really dead. Sometimes it’s a good help to remove the accu, wait a minute and put it in again. This is especially the case when it doesn’t charge. The next option is to by a new accu. Mine is more than three years now, and it’s almost like new.
thanks @irrlicht , I will try that in a desperate attempt, at least to recover some pictures.
Nevertheless, today it had around %70 battery when I put it in my pocket and then it was suddenly off, so I’m afraid maybe something has gone wrong with the motherboard (have checked the Fairphone forum and seems like quite some people had this problem). That same thing happened with my partners FP3 and we tried putting my akku and my bottom module, but nothing worked. Still, the phone has last almost 5 years, which is very fine for me. It’s a pitty I didn’t have backups for everything, but at least the most important photos and videos where safe on the sd card, even if all Whatsapp history was gone.
What’s difficult now is to find a good smallish phone with micro sd card (I already have given up all hopes and “surrendered” to the no sd card trend with a second hand Asus zenfone 8). The cmf phone 1 is sadly quite too big for me…
