TL;DR

• Some Fairphone 4 owners have reported that their devices were bricked after a newly released update.
• Fairphone has since pulled the update and confirmed that it had “unexpected issues.”

Fairphone offers the longest update policy on the market, although the release cadence has been a point of contention. Now, the company has had to pull a Fairphone 4 update due to reports of bricked devices.

Some Fairphone 4 owners received the software update yesterday (December 23), which has the version number FP4.QREL.15.15.2. However, a few users quickly reported that the new software bricked their phones.

“My phone appears to be bricked now! I’ve downloaded yesterday before going to bed, this morning I’ve rebooted it and it looks completely dead now,” user dcaravana explained on the Fairphone forum.

“I am in the same boat at dcaravana and I’m afraid the phone is just a brick at the minute, it doesn’t react to being plugged in to charge so this reboot option isn’t an option,” added user hamletdothrock.

Fairphone has confirmed that it discovered “unexpected issues” with the update and has paused the rollout:

We wanted to share a quick update regarding the Fairphone 4 software rollout that began yesterday.

After the initial release, we identified some unexpected issues. To ensure the best experience for all our users, we have currently paused the roll-out and our team is looking into it.

We are checking the issues reported and will share the full release notes as usual once the official update is ready to resume.

The smartphone maker also encouraged users affected by this issue to log the problem via its repair portal or to contact customer service. In any event, it seems like this issue doesn’t affect every Fairphone 4 owner who installed the update.

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