Section of touch screen not working

[SarahB]

I've had my droid 2 global for a little over a year and have always had minor screen problems, but they've always fixed themselves over time. A few days ago, the section of screen in a column above the search button started not working at all. It will not let me scroll on that side or anything. I have an upgrade in about a month, but I was wondering if there was anything I could do in the meantime to fix this. If you could explain in a simple way that would be great. Thanks in advance.

 

[psychohamster]

Mine too started dying about a week ago - started with a column losing touch sensitivity, now the entire screen acts as though it's on pcp and just creates input all over the place. The (apparent) sudden large number of people reporting this recently makes me suspicious...

 

[SarahB]

Exactly! Sometimes it just spazzes out and types whatever it pleases. It really is strange to see this happening at the same time to people.

 

[zomnomnombie]

Your digitizer has gone bad. The problem may intermittently go away but it is almost surely to return given enough time. You have three options.

-Replace the digitizer yourself. This is a relatively easy but very involved process. Lots of information online to help.

-Warranty phone replacement. If you're under warranty this is the best. But you will have to back up all the stuff you don't want to lose because they won't replace the digitizer. They will just give you a replacement phone.

-Insurance replacement. You have to pay the deductible and back up all your data.



Edit: The freaking out of the screen could be the digitizer or it could just be something on your fingers preventing accurate touches.

The dead column is definitely the digitizer.

 

[psychohamster]

Oh, most certainly agree that this is a hardware failure. But, as my wife likes to remind me - bad code can break hardware (her last project was control firmware for an 80 ft printing press). You can burn out ICs and sensors with crappy code.

That being said, I just reflashed my phone to stock this morning and did a cache wipe - problem persisted - as bad as ever. Did a data partition wipe, and it's been acting great for a couple of hours or so - including the previously dead column. (which makes no sense to me at all - I was certain that was long gone...)

I'm quite positive that this will start acting craptacular again soon... I'm curious as to how long it will take. If it's a couple of days, then it's enough to get me over the weekend and get a new phone ordered through the company channels. Here's to hoping that the S3 (looks like the only current verizon phone to contain CDMA,LTE, and GSM radios) will be unlocked for local sim cards soon (or one of the fine members here will find out how). That's why I loved my D2G - pop in a local prepaid sim right when you jump off the plane! None of this VoIP over LTE business VZW is claiming is "Global-Ready" on their other offerings...

 

[zomnomnombie]

Oh, most certainly agree that this is a hardware failure. But, as my wife likes to remind me - bad code can break hardware (her last project was control firmware for an 80 ft printing press). You can burn out ICs and sensors with crappy code.

That being said, I just reflashed my phone to stock this morning and did a cache wipe - problem persisted - as bad as ever. Did a data partition wipe, and it's been acting great for a couple of hours or so - including the previously dead column. (which makes no sense to me at all - I was certain that was long gone...)

I'm quite positive that this will start acting craptacular again soon... I'm curious as to how long it will take. If it's a couple of days, then it's enough to get me over the weekend and get a new phone ordered through the company channels. Here's to hoping that the S3 (looks like the only current verizon phone to contain CDMA,LTE, and GSM radios) will be unlocked for local sim cards soon (or one of the fine members here will find out how). That's why I loved my D2G - pop in a local prepaid sim right when you jump off the plane! None of this VoIP over LTE business VZW is claiming is "Global-Ready" on their other offerings...

I had a DROID 2 R2D2 and I had the digitizer go bad. The first couple times it would work for a few days but at the very end before warranty'ing it out it would occasionally work for a second or two then die again for days.

 

[psychohamster]

I had a DROID 2 R2D2 and I had the digitizer go bad. The first couple times it would work for a few days but at the very end before warranty'ing it out it would occasionally work for a second or two then die again for days.

Yeah, I figure it's a goner. Just hoping it will last until a new phone arrives! It's sadly out of warranty and the company account doesn't pay for the vzw warranty coverage. Oh well. I looked at the iFixit writeup on the digitizer replacement and I don't think I have that level of patience in me anymore.

 

[MissionImprobable]

Ended up having to use total replacement coverage on mine. If the screen just freaks out it's often software, but if one entire side of the screen fails then it seems to be hardware every time.