Android 15 is bricking some Fairphone 5 devices, and here’s how you can avoid it

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Credit: Damien Wilde / Android AuthorityThe Android 15 update is causing some Fairphone 5 phones to become bricked, but only if the fingerprint sensor is broken.A Fairphone rep confirmed stricter hardware checks in Android 15 are to blame.A fix is in the works, but for now, users with faulty sensors should avoid the update.For phone geeks like us, an OS update is usually exciting, but it doesn’t always go smoothly. Multiple reports suggest that the Android 15 update is causing some Fairphone 5 handsets to become bricked, but only if they already had an existing biometric fault.According to a user and several respondents on the Fairphone Community Forum, the update is freezing some Fairphone 5 devices on the boot screen and making them unable to start. In each case, the phone gets stuck partway through the Fairphone boot animation, displaying only a green “I” on a blank screen. The only way to recover appears to be rolling back to a previous Android version or wiping the device entirely.