Last week I broke and replaced my FP2 screen (here the full story).
The new screen is working fine, but I have a strange issue happening that I never had before.
From time to time (I am looking for a pattern but I have not found one yet), my screen gets all blurred and dotted (see pictures), it stays like this for a couple of seconds and then goes back to normal.
It is not a huge issue, it is just an unexpected behavior, but I would like to solve it and, especially, to know if it is a symptom of any bigger issue (e.g., hardware failure etc). Iām still in time to send it back and ask a new one.
Has this ever happened to anyone else before?
Pictures with a reddish tone were taken with the blue-light filter on.
I have the same behavior on LOS from time to time.
I assume itās a software thing as the screen works perfectly fine.
Nightly updates so far havenāt changed anything and I havenāt gotten around to try a hard reset yet. Mainly because it doesnāt bother me.
It is definitely this Android 7 related bug. And apparently it could be related to Night-Light. Well, I am happy to know I am not the only one to experience it.
It is (I also have that a lot). Unfortunately the root cause seems to be unknown so far. Maybe you could contribute your observations on the bug tracker? The issue doesnāt seem to get a lot of attention and I think itās very annoying.
With a brand new Fairphone, I see a strange issue: The screen occasionally shows a varying degree of noise - sometimes in limited portions of the screen, sometimes over the whole screen.
It seems to be a software issue - screenshots also show the noise. Here is an example of how it looks like:
The issue quickly resolves itself, in the worst case I have to switch to the home screen and back to the app I was using to get a proper screen display again, so itās just a minor nuisance.
Iām currently running Fairphone Open 18.10.0. I havenāt seen this issue on another phone running the same version. Is this a known issue? With quick search here in the forum I didnāt find any topic describing such problemsā¦
So I continued to have this issue since my post in November and didnāt really care about it, but then I also got FP2 incoming call screen freeze issue, so I tried replacing the screen and that fixed both. So it seems not to be a software issue after all. On the other hand I wasnāt able to reproduce this issue on the other FP2 running FP Open beta yet.
Iāve been having the artifact issue since I had the phone and it hasnāt been too much of an issue. But over the last couple of months Iāve been experiencing the FP2 incoming call screen freeze issue, but it is also happening with other apps.
The screen wonāt respond and sometimes the image on the screen splits down the middle and one side lags a fraction of a second behind the other. Then it usually doesnāt respond for about 30-60 seconds and then itāll show an āApp isnāt respondingā message and I can close the app and the phone is back to normal. After that I sometimes get strange looking icons as I posted in the first screenshot here.
Iām using LineageOS 17.1.
I know your post is from nearly 2 years ago, but did you manage to fix this issue? Did the new screen help in the end? Iāve cleaned the contacts of my current screen and it doesnāt look damaged.
I know you didnāt ask me but since I had similar issues and followed @paulakreuzerās attempts also, I thought Iād chime in.
As far as I know, the new screen didnāt help. (See comment here)
I donāt know if your problem is the same as mine was, but my issue was fixed by sending the phone to be repaired. Iām not super knowledgeable in these things, but I tried explaining my issue and everything I tried as best as I can in this thread. Iām not exactly sure what the issue in the end was, but FP support thought that it might be a problem with the GPU, and the issue was fixed by changing the motherboard/core module. If youāre better than me with tech stuff (which, admittedly, is not a very high bar), you might be able to fix the issue without having to change the whole module, but for me that was the only thing that helped.
Itās been maybe a year since my phone was repaired, and the problem hasnāt come back so far. I mean, my phone is slow at times and I do get the occasional noisy/pixelated stuff, but I barely even notice it (itās nowhere as bad as before, just a few pixels here and there once a month or so).
Thanks for the reply! Thatās really useful information. Iām glad you managed to solve it .
Sounds very much like a core module problem then. I think repairing that might be a bit out of my comfort zone, but Iāll have a look into it (or getting a second hand module on the forumās marketplace). Iāve had it for 3 1/2 years so itās not in warranty any more.
In itās current state it is becoming unusable, but I feel optimistic that I can keep my FP2 going a bit longer .
Iām just trying to troubleshoot a bit deeper and see whether it is a hardware or software issue .
Iāve managed to get a logcat of the āincoming call crashā I mentioned above.
Iāve tried finding a guide, but havenāt managed to find anything illuminating. Can anyone point me in the right direction? There appear to be a lot of graphics related errors that I donāt understand. I have LineageOS 17.1 (latest build) with pico opengapps.
Many thanks.
PS: If itās of interest, whatās the best way to share the logcat file here? The forum wonāt let me add a text file.
You may zip the logcat and add e.g. ā.ttfā at the end of the filename. Then you can upload it to the forum. You should mentioned that anyone downloading it should remove that extensionā¦
Or you can surround it by the tags
[details=āClick here to see logcat outputā]
your logcat output as text
[/details]
So for anyone who would like to take a look. Iāve attached ālogcat.zip.ttfā. Please remove ā.ttfā from the filename and unzip to reveal the logcat.
Iāve started the logcat just as the call comes in, but I get a similar behaviour when an app crashes. This is now happening more often (5-6 times a day), but it always appears to recover after about a minute or so with a āClose Appā message.
Iāve tried looking up the different entries, but I havenāt manged to find anything relevant online. To me it looks like the error occurs at 15:02:38 with a whole series of GPU related entries. This roughly fits with me observing the screen stuttering for a second or two before the screen freezes completely. The ring tone continues to play and stops as it should when the other person hangs up.
Any help is appreciated. I guess my initial question is, does it look like a hardware or a software issue? My instinct is a hardware issue, as it appears to be getting worse.
Hello,
I have the same issues (strange screen issue + incoming call screen issue). The āApp isnāt respondingā issue described by @gapintheclouds also happens with other apps. The worse is when it happens with the clock app and I canāt turn off the alarm in the morningā¦
I will try to make some tests during the holidays as I have a second FP2 I can use in the meantime. Until then, I tried the advice found in another thread: I turned off the transition animation scale, the window animation scale and the animator duration scale. I have had just a few app crashes in the last 5 days and never with the phone app. So Iām pretty happy that my elderly FP2 isnāt dying after all. Not yet!
The behavior has nothing to do with the OS. Iāve test LOS, Fairphone Open as well as /e/: The artefacts and the freeze occurs in all 3 OS. It seems to be a GPU-issue - a manufactured or damaged chip.
Thanks @chrisse. I tried the advice in the thread you found, but it didnāt make a difference. It took a while as it kept crashing while scrolling in the Settings app.
But since then a generous person sent me a spare core module they had and itās all working again. Iām now thinking about how I can prevent this from happening again. If itās because the GPU is overheating, does anyone know if it is possible to minimise GPU usage? I can disable the animation settings mentioned in the link in the post. But are there any other methods in Android to do this? Iāve had a look and I canāt find anything useful.
For reference, I managed to take a picture of the split screen issue I was having (below).
@LL435 I already answered you in the PM you sent me, but hereās the same info in case anyone else is wondering:
My device was still under warranty when i sent it in to be repaired, so I actually didnāt end up paying anything. Fortunately, though, there was a mix-up at the repair center and I got a quotation document / bill after they diagnosed my phone. So I still have the information youāre after
The shipping was free (not sure if this was because of warranty or do they do this with all cases). The price of fixing the phone was 165,83ā¬, VAT included. I was also given the choice of not getting the phone repaired after all, either getting it shipped back to me in the condition it was in (this option was 15,30ā¬) or having the repair center destroy it (free of charge).
Hi, thank you very much for the reply and the information. Our problem is exactly the same as you had. I think because our phone is 6 years old then, if itās likely to cost that much, we may put that money towards a new FP3 instead as thereās no guarantee something else might go wrong. Thanks
Hi @gapintheclouds,
After re-reading this thread, I am wondering if you already had these problems before Lineage 17.
I have experienced the same issues as you on Lineage 17 (I think it started on 16 already). Then I did a complete reinstallation from scratch and installed /e/ pie. I havenāt had any troubles for 15 days (some mild dots like @morgensternās pictures in the first post, but not as bad). Then I have upgraded to /e/ Q and some of the problems are back. Mainly: the dots appear more often and are often followed by an app freezing. It happens a lot with my news app, so I thought it might be related, but it also happens with Signal.
I upgraded yesterday and I already have had 3 freezes today.
Could it be Android 10 -related? I would guess not, because I think that I experienced issues on Lineage 16, but the problems appearing with my upgrade are quite obvious. Could it be something else related to my upgrade, but not Android-10 related?
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