Flickering display and deffect touchfunction in lockscreen

Hello, my brand new FF3+ has arrived and after setting it up and restarting it a flickering startet to appear every now and then. When restarting or starting in safemode the screen is clear and does not flicker. But when I enter the Lockscreen a strange flickering happens randomly and everytime when I use the touchscreen.
I`m hesitant to open up the screen so I first wanted to ask if this is a know issue or if it is most likely a broken part.

Thank you for your help!flicker-small-min

Might not be what you’re comfortable with, but these two things you can definitely do:

And welcome to the community forum! :+1:

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I had the same issue. I worked around it by disabling auto brightness for the screen and setting the brightness at a point where it didn’t flicker.

Ultimately I replaced the screen and the problem disappeared.

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I reported my main problem with the flickering screen (that does appear on the home screen, lock screen, camera app, HP Smart app etc., but on certain screens it does not or only for parts) that renders my FP3 often unusable, because touch input also does not work then, like the last ten(!) hours. Adaptive brightness is off here, so will this announced fix (for the brightness dropping to minimum, that I also get) cure my main problem? If not, I will need to send in the phone as defective. (Sadly, my FP1 had one floor crash too many and needs to be replaced now.)

Sometimes, putting the FP3 on a solid surface seems to stop the flickering and the touch block, so movement sensors might play a role, or there is an actual hardware malfunction on my phone. Toggling Smartlock, Dark Design, Autorotation etc. does not help. Rebooting by removal of the battery has removed the issue a minute ago (forcing a reboot with the power button was inhibited, too).

That sounds more like loosen screws, mainly the ones on the left side. Below them is the main connector between the display and the main part.
Open your phone, remove the battery and thighten those screws. That helped me a few times after I dropped my phone.

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@Tarantel I moved your post here as it will get lost in the other thread and this seems to fit better for your issues, as I also doubt it is related to the adaptive brightness bug.

Please see especially Urs post above

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I have tightened the screws on the back of the phone–they had received very soft torque originally–but the malfunctions remain. I hesitate to completely disassemble it, because it is under warranty (bought in August 2021). Giving the device a bump often makes the problem go away for a little time, or makes it worse.
I have asked FP support for a repair RMA. If it’s just a software issue caused by the latest OS update (that I ran very early), they can at least restore the phone to the presumably working state as shipped. P.S. Restoring factory defaults did not help.

Disassembling the phone into constituent models does not void the warranty and may actually not just resolve the problem in reassembly but provide other info. (3 below) And you only have to remove the screen.

  1. Look at the iFixit description to disassemble. Going beyond Step 7 does void the warranty.
  1. Secondly follow the Fairphone instructions to remove the screen, not the iFixit one.
  1. One thing you can discover is if the phone has been damp internally as you will see red markers once you have removed the screen. If you send the phone off and Fairphone discover the red markers they will not repair it under warranty.
    Rain water inside - what could be wrong? - #3 by anon9989719

With the very fresh current OS version (8901.3.A.0132.20211027), the problems persist, yet I have made an interesting observation: while the flickering is occurring, the contents of the status bar at the top are changing very often as well, specifically between 4G active (with no WLAN) and WLAN without 4G (only 2G). This should not happen, but could explain how the flickering eventually fades out once the network stack sleeps again, except some flickering still occurs then, also even in flight mode (well, the loopback interface can be expected to remain busy).
If these display updates reflect the actual system state, there is something else broken in addition to the GUI (which might still do an unnecessarily large and frequent refresh or even reset of the display functions, thus breaking touch input). The displayed status changes might be caused by hardware, firmware, HW driver or network stack malfunctions. So I still cannot tell if my phone is defective or the software. Fairphone (company) will hopefully be able to install older, working OS and firmware versions. I have not seen other error reports of this kind. Hmm, I need to test changes to my WLAN, like band and IP config (IPv4+6 are active).

P.P.S. I post this in both the forum und my support ticket.

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I finally removed the display module of the phone and found: the display only works well if its screws are not tightened at all, or just completely absent. Yes, you read that correctly. There might be a short circuit or a bent component that is triggered by a screw or its force.

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Sounds to me as though it needs to go back for repair, it’s obviously hardware-related and apparently under warranty.

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Indeed. FP has finally given me an RMA, probably replacing the thing as a DOA case. At last, it did work well when only the (backside) screws above the display module’s contacts were tightened.

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Many thanks. It worked fine after I removed the protective case. Didn’t need to go further with others tips.

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