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So my bro's had an Atrix for a little over a year.
Some time back, it started exhibiting this behaviour where the whole screen would just become totally unresponsive.
Searching around, I see issues where people lose responsiveness with a fraction of their touch screen, or the entire screen starts spazzing out with all these presses and swipe actions the user did not enter...
...but his just seems to have these periods. He'll be stuck at the lock screen from anywhere between 1 minute and a whole day... I can usually get it to work with random rapidfire hardware commands... and when it works, it works completely for a certain amount of time.
Thing is, that's only temporary, and the touch-screen ends up going back to an unresponsive state.
Any clue what's going on, or how to resolve it?
What's the software is he currently on? Is the phone bootloader unlocked and/or rooted?
Sent from my ATRIX using the Premium XDA App
You know what's (not so) funny about this? All of the things that you think are causing this sound really complicated. Is my phone corrupt? hardware defective?? etc etc.
You know what I found it caused this behavior after numerous factory resets and weeks of research and tweaks to my phone?
The f-ing goddam screen protector.
Yep, that's right. The over-priced, highly (over)rated $20 iShields brand one. I know for a fact that was the cause, after I figured it out and started talking to other atrix owners (minus the liar fanboys that lurk in every forum saying "works fine for me derp!" whenever someone dares to suggest a product has flaws).
Problem immediately went away, forever. I've gone naked since May /11 without a single scratch. IMO screen protectors on gorilla glass is for people who wear a seat belt in a car wash. I'm not sure, but I suspect the problem happens when the screen protector starts to age, and/or when it gets really warm. I also suspect it's a problem with certain phones and the types of touchscreens on those phones not playing nice with screen protectors. Started happening on mine after just one month.
omnius1 said:
You know what's (not so) funny about this? All of the things that you think are causing this sound really complicated. Is my phone corrupt? hardware defective?? etc etc.
You know what I found it caused this behavior after numerous factory resets and weeks of research and tweaks to my phone?
The f-ing goddam screen protector.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That rant's nice and all, and I'mma let you finish... but there's no screen protector. He's been going bare gorilla all since he got it...
Voelker45 said:
What's the software is he currently on? Is the phone bootloader unlocked and/or rooted?
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Click to collapse
Just to offer some backstory, this started a couple months ago back when he just had the stock AT&T rom (2.3.X or 2.2.X I think? I can't recall clearly) During one of it's "working" periods (last week), I unlocked his bootloader and flashed it with CM9...
Probably won't mean much since the problem existed before I unlocked+CM9'ed it, but while it's not freaking out, I can give you some numbers:
• Model Number: MB860
• Android Version: 4.0.3
• Baseband Version: N_01.77.15P
• Kernel Version: [email protected] #47
• CyanogenMod Version: 9.0.0-RC0-olympus-KANG
omnius1 said:
The f-ing goddam screen protector.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeh, I have had this problem with screen protectors interfering with capacitive screens before, I am now using some really cheap protectors (5 for £3) and have had no such problems since and have a good bit of pocket money left .
TLRtheory said:
That rant's nice and all, and I'mma let you finish... but there's no screen protector. He's been going bare gorilla all since he got it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ah ok in that case, I have nothing else, I'm only good for ranting. GL!
My touchscreen randomly does these freak outs and stops working:
Usually for me it is caused when the phone is really warm (like on the charger in the car) or when my hands are sweaty (also could just be the the phone is warm in this case as well)
Once it's done with its freak out, I turn off the screen (my power button still works) and clean off the screen with my shirt, wipe the sweat off my hands and turn it back on...everything is then fine.
Also, with my old phone (dell streak) if I kept the phone in my pocket with the screen facing towards my leg it would exhibit this behavior (probably again a case of the screen becoming really warm) but if I kept it screen out it was fine.
I have the same exact problem and have gone back to my Captivate because I couldn't figure it out.
Sent from my Touchpad using XDA
News on this? Here's my experience.
Any news on this, guys? I'm going insane. Here's my experience: I used to get these touchscreen-stops now and then but then they started getting more and more often. What I do to make them stop for a while is a clean restore, that is wiping boot, system, preinstall, cache, userdata with fastboot before installing a new ROM or restoring from backup. Whenever I do that, it comes back to life. If I flash a new ROM without all those wipes, it doesn't work. What sucks so bad is that, even though that fixes the problem, it's only temporary. It starts again after a few weeks. There is NO way this is hardware, and there's also NO way we can't find a solution for this!!!! Come on, guys!!! HELP US OUT, PLEASE!!!!!!!
Have you tried the raindrop fix? I was having similar problems and it worked for me.
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
My screen has ghost fingers if my hands are even the slightest damp.
A buddy of mine had really bad touch screen issues and had to send back for warranty.
Sent from my MB860 using xda app-developers app
I'm having the same issue
I'm having the exact same issue. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Anywhere from one minute to a whole day, everything you described exactly. No screen protector. I wiped it once and it worked temporarily, but it's back to the old sporadic unresponsiveness again.
I'm still not convinced that it isn't a hardware issue. I'm going to buy a T5 Torx Screwdriver and open her up and see if one of the connections is loose. Has anyone else done this?
I'll post tomorrow night with my results.
Here is a handy trick to determine if your digitizer it going out.
1. Find an appliance like a cable set top box, AV receiver or computer for example
2. Lay your phone face down in the warm air that emits from devices like this.
3. Leave it alone for about 10 to 15 minutes.
4.Pick your phone up and perform some finger swipe heavy tasks.
If you notice its a lot more sensitive like you remember when you first got it then you have a digitizer that is going bad. If nothing changes then its most likely software related.
Okay so I took it apart (removed the motherboard, disconnected the radio and 3 cables, then put everything back together. It's not fixed 100% but it's a lot more consistent than it was. youtube dot com/watch?v=kxuF_73YIIY
cjmillisock said:
Okay so I took it apart (removed the motherboard, disconnected the radio and 3 cables, then put everything back together. It's not fixed 100% but it's a lot more consistent than it was. youtube dot com/watch?v=kxuF_73YIIY
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could be the ribbon behind the digitizer, if its loose or moves it can kill all response to touch. You may have to replace your digitizer to fix this.
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
I'm dying here
I opened it up like the video explained. Everything looked OK. I used a heat gun at 50 C to eliminate any trace of humidity and put back everything in its place. Then, I did a full wipe and a new ROM flash. STILL NOTHING!!! This phone is a little over a year old! This is not possible :crying: Any new ideas???? THANKS!!!!
pichualvarez said:
I opened it up like the video explained. Everything looked OK. I used a heat gun at 50 C to eliminate any trace of humidity and put back everything in its place. Then, I did a full wipe and a new ROM flash. STILL NOTHING!!! This phone is a little over a year old! This is not possible :crying: Any new ideas???? THANKS!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would also suspect the digitizer. I replaced mine for $45 (frame pre attached attached highly recommended).
The connections are very small, so there is much that can go wrong while doing this kind of brain surgery and the ribbons will rip easily.
Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2
Same problem here. It is like some Ghost is operating it without my permission
Sometimes feels like is should hit the phone on the wall.
I know its not gonna help.
Anybody there who has solution for this
I was very happy to get my new phone, tossed on a screen protector, gave it a change, put it in it's nice new case. Then today it started vibrating. Non-stop. It kept vibrating even after I killed the power. Even after I did a factory reset. Still vibrating.
What I discovered is that if you put a little bit of pressure on the back of case about a half inch below the led flash, it makes some kind of mechanical connection causing the vibraion motor to activate. In my case it didn't take much pressure at all, and would often "stick" like that.
I had to take the cover off and massage the plastic a bit to get it to stop vibrating at me. It will still get stuck if I apply a bit of pressure on the back of the case.
Did I get a lemon, or does anyone else have this issue.
-E
Breken said:
I was very happy to get my new phone, tossed on a screen protector, gave it a change, put it in it's nice new case. Then today it started vibrating. Non-stop. It kept vibrating even after I killed the power. Even after I did a factory reset. Still vibrating.
What I discovered is that if you put a little bit of pressure on the back of case about a half inch below the led flash, it makes some kind of mechanical connection causing the vibraion motor to activate. In my case it didn't take much pressure at all, and would often "stick" like that.
I had to take the cover off and massage the plastic a bit to get it to stop vibrating at me. It will still get stuck if I apply a bit of pressure on the back of the case.
Did I get a lemon, or does anyone else have this issue.
-E
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Must... restrain... joke...
I think you have a lemon that wont make lemonade. You're still under warranty, so why not just send it to a sprint repair store?
Try pulling the battery
Maybe it the screen protector touching the soft keys...
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA
shook187 said:
Try pulling the battery
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Click to collapse
That's cold.
sent from 2yr old Evo on ICS
shook187 said:
Try pulling the battery
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Click to collapse
Seriously, that's the first thing I wanted to do when the problem started. *smirk* That was a bit frustrating. I thought I was going to have to wait until the motor draining my battery. Sounds like I'll be taking it to the store. Annoying. Oh well, I'm making up for the perfect luck I had buying the original EVO on launch.
-E
Hopefully not a design issue and just a lemon.
I've had screen protectors do weird crap if they have tension on them. Pretty rare these days though.
I'd try removing screen protector (but I hate to see you waste one if that's not it).
Also if you hold volume down it will vibrate. Not sure if it will be continuous.
You might stopp fussing with it and get swapped out, when it's easy to show the problem they should replace it on teh spot.
Newest HTC evo LTE also vibrates nonstop even with power off
Same problem as noted. I have this HTC evo LTE 4 months
No screen protector.
Phone was on bedside night table charging when it wakes me up at 4AM on a Sunday with the nonstop vibrating. Powering off did not stop the vibrations.
Any suggestions
Going to necro rez this thread to share my experience with an identical issue.
Couple weeks ago I noticed that once in a while the vibration motor of my Evo 4G LTE (bought in June 2012) would turn on for a second or so for no particular reason (no incoming notifications). Several days later the motor started vibrating constantly, even when the phone was powered down. Taking off the back cover and "massaging" the area around the camera LED and headphone connector would slow down the rotation speed and sometimes completely stop it, but it would always start rotating again in minutes/hours. Putting the back cover on would always start the motor again.
I took the phone to the Sprint store for repair. The tech said he had never seen this issue before, but was quickly able to figure out that there was a short circuit in the two-pin connector for the vibration motor leads. Luckily, he had an extra connector, so I was out of the store in about 15 minutes with a perfectly working phone. Who knew I didn't have to RUU and S-ON, the guy didn't even turn it on
I'm having this issue as well. Exactly as described in OP. Pull the plastic cover and no more vibration, just the slightest pressure towards the camera and it starts again.. sucks.
jshow816 said:
I'm having this issue as well. Exactly as described in OP. Pull the plastic cover and no more vibration, just the slightest pressure towards the camera and it starts again.. sucks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like I said in the post above yours, might be a very simple repair that's worth a trip to a Sprint store.
Replaced vibration motor worked for me
I believe someone else mentioned on another site they replaced the vibration motor and the phone stopped vibrating all the time.
That is what worked for me. Took about 10 minutes. I had an old Evo LTE that was not working (glad I kept it) and removed the vibration motor assembly from it and swapped it for the one in my working phone.
All is well now. FYI...If you don't know what the motor looks like search for HTC Evo LTE vibration motor.
They are also being sold on Ebay for about $6 if you don't have one handy.
Thanks for the help, viva la Internet!:good:
I have the same problem. it is so annoying
To my surprise the other day I got my phone to turn back on after dropping it in the hot tub while it was on, almost. After pulling off the back half and thoroughly drying it out the phone powered back on everything else works except the home back and search keys the ones that light up at the bottom. But they do work sometimes, most of the time actually. When the keys are working, every once in awhile the menu will keep flashing up on screen and when i hold the menu key it stops.
I re flashed the ROM thinking it may have developed a glitch being wet, nothing.
I tried drying it out more, nothing.
I'm not sure how the keys work but if i completely remove the front glass and clean the inside of it would that do anything? When it dried out the water did leave a slight film. It almost seems like there is a bad connection somewhere.
Thoughts?
should of left power off and in rice for 24-48 hours + befor turning it back on but it may help im not to sure havent taken the glass off my phone yet
let me know what happens
Might not want to hear it, but if you have insurance, NOT warranty, you should go ahead and get it replaced. Water logged phones never work the same, and usually don't last much longer when you do get it running again.
Thus device is still new enough that you should be able to get a replacement brand new out of the box from the insurance company.
Sent from my DROID RAZR using xda premium
I am having some major problems with my touchscreen/digitizer.
About three months ago I dropped the phone and it cracked the screen in a few places. It was still completely usable.
In the last month, there have been some areas of the screen that have become completely unresponsive. I could usually get around this by rotating the phone, touching a different area, and then rotating it back. However the problem seems to be getting worse where larger and larger areas are unresponsive. There is now a rectangular band about one centimeter high that goes the complete width of the screen that doesn't respond to any touch, ever.
In addition to the completely dead zones on my screen, the touchscreen sometimes becomes completely unresponsive which can be fixed by locking and unlocking the screen.
I don't have a lot of money for a new phone, so I was able to live with these problems, but they're getting worse. Also, if my wife or anyone needs to borrow my phone they often find it completely unusable. In the middle of me explaining the problems and workarounds, they usually just give up.
I'm wondering if I replace the digitizer, will this problem go away? Or is there something else wrong with the phone that might not be serviceable by me? In addition to the digitizer problem, my headphone jack stopped working. If I plug anything in, nothing happens and sound continues to come out of the phone speaker. That's leading me to believe the phone has some deeper problems that I might not be able to fix, but if I can fix the screen I can live with the headphone jack problem.
My digitizer wasn't cracked, but I have the same problem. I send my phone to service and I'm waiting for response.
"Service" is not an option for me. The warranty is gone. I do not have insurance. I purchased the phone refurbished for $50. The only reason I did not replace the digitizer the moment it cracked is because the digitizer is the same price as what I paid for the phone in the first place.
Mine under warranty so I send it to motorola service centre and they replace the digitizer for me. I get it back in 2 days after sending it in.
But they flash my ROM and I'm not sure whether my phone still unlockable or not.
Btw, I have read a lot of atrix user with digitizer issue. It send common for our phone. You can easily spot few threads showing you how to replace the digitizer.
Sent from my MB860 using xda app-developers app
Soooo, I hate to bring back a dead thread, but I figured it was better than starting one of my own.
My Atrix recently had a sudden impact of its own. Cosmetically, it is still perfect. The touchscreen no longer responds though.
Phone still works. It receives calls, text, syncs with email, changes volume, etc. The touchscreen just wont respond to any of my fingers lol.
My question to Ovitz (or anyone else) is, did you get your phone back fixed and what was the solution?
I am leaning towards the digitizer, but I just want to verify before I put money into it. There are no rattles in the phone. No crack at all. I, generally, take great care of my phones and this one looks basically like it did out of the box.
Thanks in advance!!!
§
You dislodged the connection for the didgitizer or broke. I suggest you replace it. There have been plenty of Q and A threads on this. Get one from eBay oem, YouTube search a how to, and take it slow.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 2
so my amaze has been out of commission for a solid four months and i now have a nexus 5, but today i tried something. I originally thought my amaze's screen ribbon was messed up (it also has a missing contact in the headphone jack the left one to be exact, and both speakers are shot -prior to demolition-), but as it turns out there is actually a short somewhere in the circuitry. I took the liberty of completely tearing apart the phone (literally the plastic band around the glass is destroyed now). so after I have a pile of phone guts i start to put back together what I can. basically I had the screen, circuit boards, and battery sitting in it's shell. I also cleaned off a little corrosion on some of the parts too. then I plug it into my computer and bam the screen comes on! I almost had a heart attack, I honestly didn't expect that, and what is more interesting is that I was able to everything fine until it came time to flashing a ruu to get it back to stock, it wouldn't do it. but I kid you not, after multiple failed ruu flash attempts and a re-lock of the boot-loader I push the power button (more of a squishie than a button now) it started booting up CM10 like it was the day it died on me four months ago! Then when it finished booting up, the touch screen started freaking out and thought that I was touching it everywhere (i'm so glad I always turn on show touches in dev options) then it died again, I guess the short became active again, but here is the weird part, when I had it plugged into my pc and it started glitching I would unplug it and it shorted my pc and made it do a self-save power-out. I just thought i would share this with you guys to see if you have had any hardware probs out of you'r amazes.
I'm sure plenty of people have them.
Screen bleed is the most famous.
Randomly shutting off is common too.
HTC has crappy power buttons on a lot of devices.
I got bit by all 3 of those (but my power button wasn't quite dead yet) before I got bit by the bug that our flash chip has. I was trying to use my phone as a USB drive and copied a ton of stuff over, the progress bar stopped moving and the phone didn't seem to be running right, so I rebooted. Somehow it bricked and now the charging light wouldn't even come on. Started from the unbrick tricks, but I was way worse off than what they are for and near as I could tell something had disappeared really early on in the bootchain process and it was unfixable without direct access to the eMMC to rewrite the whole image.
Later found out once I got a pantech burst (which has very similar hardware) to replace my amaze that the MMC chip we have can get confused and randomly swaps blocks of storage around. It's easiest to trigger if you have lots of writes pending and the operating system tries to deallocate a block (like trim on a SSD); sometimes the chip will de-allocate the wrong block. Mine happened to garble something really close to the beginning resulting in my brick.
Much later I got a broken phone off ebay to rip apart to see if I could get the many gigs of data I MOVED to my phone immediately before it died only to find it just had a dead battery...maybe. It was well used, but didn't look physically damaged. It turned on but the screen was just static, like an analog tv with no channel. Couldn't get it working, but on other phones it looks like this is what happens when the chip in the LCD dies.
Combined the two broken phones to make a working one and find that this board has something going on where the battery drains when the phone is shut off, thus explaining why the battery that came with it was completely toast. Maybe I screwed up the rebuild, but I don't know how.
tl;dr: Yes, I have had some hardware problems.
Yeah I had that power button issue ( the problem is it splits apart and gets corrosion in it and its awfully wobbly) I had had that problem with my galaxy Nexus's volume rocker too (I had it for development) , i split it open and scraped off the corrosion and closed it back up it didn't come apart after that either it was fine. I also had the reboots , random extreme power drain from 100% - 30% - then dead in minutes ( it was a rare occurrence though), the LCD short, bad charger connection, and like 1/2 inch of the touch sensor didn't work( it was just at the tip of the twrp slider too so I had to use clockwork). You know its ironic looking back before I got it I was looking at reviews and they all said it had that "unmatched build quality" and it ended up being one of the most hardware plagued phones of its time, quality was a key factor when I chose it, though I did slightly overuse it, i think it shouldn't have been so badly designed, I only had mine for just over 1 year of my 2 year contract and I didn't even get it from the contract, I broke my T-Mobile g2x after 6 months with it and got the amaze through insurance [which was BS since i paid monthly for it, had to send my broken phone to them (which I could have fixed for less), and pay the difference between its price and the price of the amaze. I ended up paying full price for the amaze and the monthly insurance bill, I would have been better off not getting the insurance because it limited me to only getting the amaze and the sensation "phones of equal or lessee value" ($250 more than the g2x), they screwed me over]. Even though its in pieces and will most likely never work again I will probably hold onto it forever because it was a great phone, even if it let me down a few times. I learned around 90% of everything I know about android developing and software developing in general from that phone and its really sentimental to me. Lolz all my broken and worthless stuff is sentimental to me, I think I'm may be a little bit of a hoarder but oh well.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using xda app-developers app
Uuhh this post was a mistake... My bad, I done messed up
Here are pictures from after I tore it apart to get it working and it booting up after it was dismembered (after it booted it was fine, It would pick up touch from the messed up side but at the same time it went crazy and picked up "touches" everywhere, even when I wasn't touching it so everything almost worked but then died again) sorry the last one blurred I was riding in a car
Sent from my Nexus 5 using xda app-developers app