I’ve had my FP2 for 4 1/2 years now without any real hardware problems. All components are still the original ones except for the case - not so bad!
About half a year ago I noticed that the left side of my screen does not react to touch any more. It effectively prevents me from pressing the “q” on the qwerty keyboard - but I can live with that.
Last week another problem appeared: Ghost touches. My screen went completely wild and made the phone unusable. I disassembled the phone and cleaned all screen contacts with alcohol. It worked again after that - up to today. Out of nowhere the same problem appeared again while I was using my phone. I disassembled it and put it back together. This did not help. So I cleaned the contacts once more. That helped - for now.
I’m willing to buy a new screen if that is truly the problem. But before wasting money on that I’d like to know if anyone knows of a non-screen related problem that could cause this. I’m currently ruling out software issues based on my experience with the phone so far and the fact that cleaning the contacts seems to help.
Any hints about what I could still check are welcome!
This really seems to be the screen. To have many touchscreen issues probably means it is indeed the display module. I have not seen anybody reporting such problems without it being the display, though it doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
To be sure, you could contact a #fairphoneangel that might be able to help you by helping you testing spare parts.
Thanks for the feedback. I also cannot come up with another explanation than it being the screen. What is a bit weird is that cleaning the contacts seems to help. I cannot really explain why that should work.
I have considered borrowing a spare part from a #fairphoneangel, but as the problem seems to happen without clear cause it would be difficult to reproduce. Under normal circumstances I’d have checked with some people at a #meetup, but I guess with the screen being the most likely culprit I’ll just get a new one except if anyone else has another idea.
Just to mention it (probably not the cause of your ghost touches, but it doesn’t hurt to mention), I have had sudden ghost touches when I held my Fairphone 1 near a medical device whose purpose is to emit radio waves.
Just a quick update: I received and installed my new screen today. The obvious dead area on the left is working again as expected. No ghost touch so far - but as I was never able to reproduce it I’m just hoping that it solved that problem as well.
Final update: No more problems with the screen to date. So I guess it was really the screen that was broken.
I’m happy that my FP2 is in its 5th year of operation now with this being the only real problem so far.
Another observation: With the original screen I had problems when using a particular (Samsung Galaxy S2) charger. Namely, the screen would stop to respond when it was charging on it - a common problem for the FP2 as far as I know. It works perfectly fine with the new screen now!
