Fairphone Skipped Android 14 for Android 15, and Now It’s Bricking Phones

Earlier this summer, Fairphone had a heart-to-heart with its customers about some shortcomings, and it said it would skip ahead to Android 15. However, what was supposed to be a smooth leap past Android 14 has turned into a major headache for some owners.

Fairphone announced in May that it was skipping Android 14 for the Fairphone 4 and heading straight to Android 15. The idea was to deliver a more stable and future-proof experience. The Fairphone 5 was also updated to Android 15, but it hasn’t gone as well as you’d expect. Unfortunately, a significant number of Fairphone 5 owners are now reporting that their devices are failing to boot after installing the new software.

Many users are finding that the Fairphone 5 is getting stuck on a green boot screen, essentially bricking their devices. A thread in the community forum with over 100 replies is full of frustrated owners trying various troubleshooting steps, from multiple reboots to factory resets, often with no success. Some people already had pre-existing issues, like a non-functional fingerprint sensor, and it turns out that this particular hardware fault is the root of the problem.

Fairphone has acknowledged the issue, noting that it primarily affects devices with broken fingerprint sensors. They’ve also provided a temporary workaround to go back to Android 14:

We’ve now identified the root cause of the issue: it only affects Fairphone 5 devices with broken fingerprint sensors. Android 15 introduces stricter hardware checks during boot, and if the fingerprint sensor is faulty, the phone is unable to start.

The good news is that the issue is reversible:

You can safely downgrade back to Android 14 without losing data by following a specific set of steps.

If your device is frozen on the boot animation:

1. To force a reboot, press and hold the power button for around 15 seconds.
2. If the device returns to the boot screen, continue to repeat this process until it fully boots into Android (can be up to 7-8 times)

Fairphone and its partners are actively exploring a software patch that would allow Android 15 to boot even with a faulty fingerprint sensor—though the sensor itself would remain non-functional. If you don’t want to wait for that, Fairphone also says you can send in your phone to replace the fingerprint sensor, which will fully resolve the issue.

Obviously, this is not a great situation. Fairphone has received criticism for poor customer support and slow updates. So, it’s frustrating to finally receive an update that is still one version behind what many other Android phones are running and have it completely bork your phone. These types of situations tend to make people feel sour on brands.

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