✏ Solutions for FP2 blackscreen issues

There are a lot of topics about #blackscreen in this forum and it’s often not easy to distinguish between the different issues.

I started this #wiki to provide a rough walk-through to find out which issue you have so you can find the correct solution/workaround, or at least post in the correct topic to get help.
Please add questions that could help.

1) Is the screen black all the time?

  • yes:
    • continue with the question 2
  • no:
    • continue with question 3

2) Does your phone show any other signs of life (vibration or LED), e.g. while plugged in or when holding the power button for > 10s?

  • yes:
    • The display is probably not connected well/connection got dirty. Open up the phone - it’s easy (usually)) and carefully clean it from the inside before putting it back together making sure everything fits.
    • If this doesn’t help your display may be broken.
    • If you just got a new display a possible reason for your black screen is that your software is out of date and you need to update it to make the new screen work. Here is how you update your software even with a black screen.
  • no:
    • The battery is probably deep-discharged. Take it out and let it cool down for > 1/2h. Put it back into the phone and plug it in without booting. The Led should blink and then go from red to yellow to green. Turn on the phone.
    • If this didn’t work (LED won’t turn to yellow or doesn’t light at all) your charger/cable might not be compatible or functioning well. Try many different cables and chargers. You’ll need a high quality data cable (4 threaded). (Here is a long discussion about charging issues)

3) When is your screen black?

  • When calling someone
    • This is a common issue with the proximity sensor usually solved by recalibrating it via the proximity sensor tool that can be found in settings > maintenance.
  • When being called.
    • Check your phone app’s permissions and notification settings in Settings>Apps and Settings > Sound & Notifications. Also check if an antivirus app or similar may block your phone app from working properly.
  • Randomly. I also have other #touchscreen issues.
    • The display is probably not connected well/connection got dirty. Open up the phone - it’s easy (usually)) and carefully clean it from the inside before putting it back together making sure everything fits.
    • If this doesn’t help your display may be broken or you may have a rare software/hardware issue.
  • Randomly. I have to reboot the phone by pressing the power button for >10sec.
    • Continue here. No solution found yet as of July 11th.
  • After rebooting or in dark environments.
    • Sounds like a bug in 1.3.6. If you manage to update to 1.4.2+ you should be fine.
    • On rooted devices this also happens in other OS versions if you used a “bad” boot.img to root.

Please note that a blackscreen is not the same as

  • a freeze (screen is on but no response to touch inputs)
  • a crash (phone stops working - yes screen is black - and you need to restart it)
  • a reboot (phone turns off and on again by itself)
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