Ghost inputs on FP4

I fixed the ghost input issue adding 3 layers of electrical tape on the back of the screen connector to raise its thickness. Thus the pressure applied by the foam attached to the back of the phone is a bit higher and the connector is more firmly engaged.

Ok, but the question is, how sustainable this solution is. I also put a foam on this position. The probabilty is lower than before but it happens again. When the root cause of the ghost touches should be this connector, then it should be a dependence of concussions But I couldn’t recognize that.

I did the same, had some ghost inputs this morning though… fix lasted about a week.

@Hans_de_Vries : where can i get thicker foam pad?

That’s not good news. I fixed my foam sticker around 5 weeks ago now. So now and then I shake the phone hard, drop it on the table and use it in my car where it shakes very often.

I think it is important that you use a foam sticker quite thick. I used the foam sticker that sits on the inside of speakergrill metallic plate of an iphone 8 lcd screen.

When I mounted the screen back in I noticed that the connector of the screen was really fixed on the mobo with this foam sticker.

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So I made a search on the internet for you guys which foam sticker I used. On this link there is the specific sticker I used:

After a couple of weeks (I think 6 now) I haven’t experienced any ghost inputs yet. Whereas only disconnecting and reattaching the screen I got ghost inputs within a week. With this sticker the ghost inputs stay away until thisfar.

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We are curious to know what Fairphone did to fix your Fairphone 4. Did they explain it to you what they have done to fix your phone?

Sadly, the touch screen had issues again today. It doesn’t feel like the same behaviour, because I don’t experience dozens of ghost inputs in a short period of time, I have a few ghost inputs and then the touch screen “freezes” until I turn the screen off and on again.
The support guy said, that they appearently repaired an issue with the proximity sensor, which I doubt that it was the cause of the problem.
I will get in contact with the support again and send the device in again. Since I have a replacement smartphone at hand (the old one I replaced with the Fairphone), I can do this until the 5 years of warranty are over (in theory).

I also mentioned this forum thread in my report.

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My phone came back yesterday with the exact same repair “solution”. I’ll keep a good eye on it and report back here if it starts again.

So, Fairphone answered to my request today and is offering a complete replacement of the phone. They acknowledged that they don’t know what is going on and that I should monitor the new device for a time to confirm that this issue doesn’t also appear on the new device. So, yeah I will get a new device, send the old one in and hope they figure out what’s wrong.

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Thx so much… i redid the fix, but lacking a proper pad i used 4 layers of electrical tape om the back of the connector. (as other described.) if/when it fails again, i will get a proper pad…

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Mine is quite bad actually. I think it happens every 30 minutes or so; while driving with nav, while watching movies, while texting.

Just found out that if I move the phone heavily front to back, forwards, backward I can somehow trigger it for a brief moment. Also the phone gets warm quickly I think.

I will try to screenrecord it if I get the chance!

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Try my fix. It solves a lot of problems m8

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So, since the issue is becoming worse for me, I think it is time to take some action. I would like to do the fix of @Hans_de_Vries. However, since I have no experience with repairing phones at all, I want to be sure about some things before I start. Here are four questions:

  1. I watched this video: Replace the Display | HOW TO FAIRPHONE 4 - YouTube. Doing exactly this (without actually replacing the screen) is what many people here did and what resolved the problem only temporarily. Is this correct?

  2. Where and how exactly do I attach the sticker, @Hans_de_Vries ?

  3. Can the sticker easily be removed in case this does not fix the problem, or causes another problem, or I want to try a different sticker later?

  4. Would attempting the fix have any (negative) consequences for a potential warranty replacement with fairphone, in case my attempt fails?

Any help is highly appreciated!

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Most likely, I was able to discover something revealing.
I can now provoke the ghosttouches.
That’s when I pull the USB cable over the display.
Then the ghosttouches begin. I have made a video, but I can’t upload it. No Video is allowed. This is very bad, but I can send it per Mail, when you want.
If I take the same cable and pull it over the display of my wife’s FP3, nothing happens. The display therefore reacts too sensitively to touch. Sometimes it should react to external influences (eectromagnetic waves or similar) and generate the ghosttouches without USB cables.
I have already attached a sponge to the DisplayPort, has brought nothing in the long term.
Therefore, my appeal to the developers to calibrate the display to less sensitive. This could be done by software. Can someone from the Fairphone Angels forward this to the developers?
I have Lineage OS 20 on the phone. This creates ghost touches as well as FP OS.

Greetings Martin

Hello @Martin_1964 , pls. post some screenshots of your video here. Still for me it is hard to understand what exactly you did with the charger cable to provoke the ghost inputs.

for the video pls. activate the visualization of the inputs like described here Ghost inputs on FP4 - #32 by facetto

BR

Angels dont have contact to the developers, if you want FP to see it, please send an E-Mail to support #contactsupport

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Here are the screenshots from my experiment. Here still without the visualization. You can see the USB cable and the shaky display image above the display.
What I forgot to mention. When I removed the cable slightly from the display, the shaking stopped immediately.
I am still contacting support.


just want to add myself to this problem.
I’m already in contact with the fairphone support since december '22 and by now, my FP4 was in repair on behalf of the support team in france. i don’t know what they did (except upgrading to Android 12) but the problem still unsolved.

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and you can repeat this behaviour several times and at any times?

BR

Yes, I can reproduce it at any time.

If you enable the Pointer Location feature to show the input on the screen, I would expect that it differs from the screenshots you will find above. While there you nearly exclusively see lines drawn vertically on the screen, I would expect your setup to produce a lot of input around the place where the cable touches the screen.

If you go to Settings - About phone and press Build number quite often, you will get a toast notification that developer settings got enabled. You find these as a new entry in settings, there you can switch on pointer location. All your input will be shown on the screen afterwards. You can of course easily disable the feature and even the developer settings if you down’t want them activated afterwards.