💾 Archived View for jacksonchen666.com › posts › 2023-07-10 › 19-07-16 captured on 2023-09-28 at 16:23:31. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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2023-07-10T19:07:16Z (last updated 2023-08-08T12:30:00Z)
I own a Fairphone 4. It's been over a year now, and I'm getting annoyed with the amount of ghost touches that randomly happens.
This started as a form of random keyboard presses and random scrolling. Then I escalated it to a phone that's constantly showing all the touch points (with Android developer options thing). Then I escalated it into constantly showing what the touches did, like where it swiped and how much it swiped and whatever (another developer options).
It is now, where I replace the screen with the exact same screen, because apparently it did help some people with the issue.
Oh, and did I mention other people had issues?
Yeah, there's a forum thread on the issue. Here's the link:
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/ghost-inputs-on-fp4/82837/
For what I've experienced, this issue sometimes happens. Cause is not known, and reproducibility is also unknown. However, given I had turned on the setting to show touches, I can see that there were ghost touches.
The ghost touches were extremely fast, and almost all over the place except it was in one line: From the top of the camera to the bottom of the phone.
If the ghost touches did happen, I found an easy way to stop temporally: Tap and hold on the screen. This stops it from happening, but then I always press the power button to turn the phone into sleep mode, then wake it back up and continue with things.
And yeah, turning it off and on again seems to throw the problem away, at least for that case.
I used a video from Fairphone for replacing the Fairphone 4 screen, followed it, and used the same screen as I had before.
Replacing the Fairphone 4 screen
I had a little trouble doing one step, and quite a few questions for some of the prerequisites.
1. Some prerequisites are useless. The fully charged battery doesn't really apply to anything, nor the cotton cloth. In fact, I've never touched the cloth in the entire procedure.
2. My credit/debit card did not work so well on the connector. My not fully tested but working recommendation (if your card doesn't work well/too thick) is to use something thinner and maybe flexible, because the space you have to get into is tiny, and the idea seems to pushing the connector up and out. (If you have a thin enough guitar pick or something, try using that)
3. You may ruin your credit card/debit card/guitar pick/thin picking object. Use something that you don't use e.g. expired cards or another useless thin picking object.
My phone still works! Ghost touches though, I'm not sure if they're gone. It takes a while for it to happen, so results may come later. I'll try to remember to report back.
Update on 2023-07-13T23:10:00+00:00 (3 days after repair): I have not observed any random ghost touches so far.
Update on 2023-07-25T23:20:00+00:00 (15 days after repair): I have observed 1 instance of random ghost touches. It is similar to how it usually is, but I only observed 1 so far. (Observation was on 2023-07-24)
Update on 2023-08-03T20:00:00+00:00 (21 days after repair): I observed 2 instances of random ghost touches. Maybe 3.
Update on 2023-08-06T18:00:00+00:00 (24 days after repair): I observed 1 instance of random ghost touches. Potential cause may have been rhythm gaming.
Update: 2023-08-08T12:30:00+00:00 (26 days after repair): I have observed too many instances of random ghost touches. Suspected cause is still extreme rhythm gaming, but it's getting really annoying.