Hey there. I'm a bit new to this side of XDA. Honestly with how long I've been AWOL from this site nothing is familiar anymore. How time flies. Well my first post back in years couldnt be more unfortunate phone wise, I've had my Z2 for a couple of months now and as a mechanic it's been treated like all my others phones prior, rough. I've been locally recognized as the guy who has a new phone every couple of months because he can't not shatter a phone. An expensive hobby of breaking phones. Well luckily I didn't shatter my Z2. I just water logged it. Gotta change things up right? So here's where the interesting problem comes in, I let the phone sit in rice for 30 hours, switching the rice out half way through. It acted up like you would expect in the first couple of hours but then stopped. When I pulled the phone out I scraped the rice out of all the books and crannies and tried to power it on, to no avail. Dead battery I assume, so I plug it in. Charge icon pops up, a sign of life! How glorious. So I let it sit for a minute as I assume the battery probably dropped below minimum voltage when the LEDs were freaking out. Went back to the phone, held the power button and no screen, but "Hello, Moto!" So at this point I'm convinced the screen is dead, so I force it off with the volume down method and pry off the screen. To find what? More water. Good Lord. This phone is incredibly water resistant just in reverse. So I do the only thing that makes sense at this point, I remove the ribbion connector from the board for the display and put the phone back in new rice as 2 separate pieces. I then leave it in there for another 30 hours switching the rice halfway. Bringing us to now. I took the phone out, cleaned all the rice out of the 2 pieces and off the remaining adhesive and connected the ribbion back to the board. Plug the charger in, and again, charging logo. But then I hold the power button and the TMobile splash screen pops up! Then the screen goes dead and once again, "Hello, Moto!". But whats different is now when the boot sequence is finished I can interact with the phone and it works, shake for flashlight, enter my passcode (just by feel cause I'm good like that, ladies hmu), and the button responds with vibration. The phone is working but no screen. So at this point I'm sure, the display driver is done. I murdered it in cold daylight. So I shut it off and start looking around for new screens, in the midst of this I knock the phone and accidentally hit the power button, and it starts to boot up. T-Mobile spash screen, screen death, "Hello, Moto!", and nothing. Now that seems weird. Why would it work twice on the TMobile splash? So I decide I'll try putting it in fastboot for S&G's. Restart, put it in fastboot and the screen stays on. Beautiful and clear as day, all buttons work, everything reads fine, but, if I go to boot it or do anyother action than "retart bootloader", the cycle continues. T-Mobile, death, hello Moto, nothingness. Now at this point I'm okay with the phone being dead, it's fine, but I'm intrigued now. What would cause the screen to work just fine when in the bootloader and the TMobile splash screen, but die when it boots? The phone is very clearly working in the background. I logged in, used Google assistant, used the flashlight, pressed buttons on the dialer, all without the screen but with haptic feedback and audio. Could the graphical side of the main partition just be corrupt, or maybe the display driver is dead but the main board interacts with it differently during fastboot? I'm far from being knowledgeable on the hardware side of these things but I'm really genuinely interested in getting feedback here from anyone with an idea of what is going on. I'll post a video here in a half an hour or so when I finish up with dinner.
AFAinHD said:
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Well... It sounds like there is a short between the screen and the main board. It could have happened when you plugged it into power while parts were still wet causing a short to ground and frying a chip that controls display but not touch on the screen.
Best way I can describe it for you is if an ECU on a car got wet and shorted out. Everything works but you get an engine code for TPS sensor failure due to said short. (The ECU can't read TPS due to a short). That is what seems like what happened.
Uzephi said:
Well... It sounds like there is a short between the screen and the main board. It could have happened when you plugged it into power while parts were still wet causing a short to ground and frying a chip that controls display but not touch on the screen.
Best way I can describe it for you is if an ECU on a car got wet and shorted out. Everything works but you get an engine code for TPS sensor failure due to said short. (The ECU can't read TPS due to a short). That is what seems like what happened.
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Well see I would think that as well but the screen does work. Just only in fastboot, and the boot logo.
I got the video here.
Fastboot is a pretty low level and most likely uses basic hardware. I mean really what is there to see but a simple background with some text. Once you load the OS then all the hardware and it's drivers into play. Have you tried booting into safemode? Ultimately you'll probably have to repair or replace, but there could be a slim chance that there's still a little moisture in there and it still has a short somewhere.
Related
Last night I was out and during the night I pulled my desire z out of my pocket to find that the screen was dead, the soft touch buttons were still lit up and working but no display. I pulled the battery and tried to reboot and no luck, you can hear it booting and even unlock/receive calls and txts etc once it has booted up just the screen stays blank the whole time so have to do everything on feel.
Essentially does this just mean my screen has a hardware fault? is it worth trying to fix? I assume the only option would be to purchase a replacement screen and dissemble and reassemble it?
(warranty is not worth it as I live in New Zealand and would have to send my phone back to the UK where I bought it from, also I have dropped it quite a few times so probably voided anyway...)
Thanks in advance for any input
Does it never display anything? So not even a flash during boot or something?
Because then it is probably a hardware problem.
Since the soft touch buttons do still work I think there might be a little crack or something in the flat cable that connects the bottom half with the top.
Maybe you could check whether you can see if the cable is broken or not?
The best thing to do then is to look for a replacement and try to fix it yourself or bring it to a shop where they can do it for you.
No it never displays anything, completely dead the whole time. The touch input is still working though as I answered a phone call this morning on it by making the usual gesture just without being able to see anything. Doesnt seem to be anything wrong with the cable itself as far as I can see. Yea might have to get someone to have a look at it.
My phone is acting the same. I dropped my phone in the pond before, but pulled battery out on time and had it in rice for a day. My phone was still working for about two weeks after that incident. I dropped it and had one little crack at the top of the screen and about a week after that it died when I had a water balloon fight with the phone in my pocket. D;
Do any of you know if the replacement lcd screen/digitizer for the Desire Z would work for the G2?
I had the same thing happening to my G2 screen, only it was intermittently working for a little while, then just completely died and wouldn't work. It was doing this crazy flickering thing then the back light wouldn't go on at all. If I held the phone at a certain angle in the sun, I could see that the pixels were indeed working on the display, but there was no backlight to make them normally visible.
So I purchased a replacement screen from ebay and carefully followed the directions on a youtube video for a G2 take apart. Its not a hard task to take apart and get down to the screen itself. It was rather easy. After putting it back together the screen still didn't work! Sounds work, i can also receive calls etc. But the screen still doesn't work!
Is there any way that this could be a software issue?
Oh and PS, I believe the LCD replacement would work for both the desire Z and the G2. They are identical phones after all right? I'd say its a safe bet. The screen I bought was only 35 bucks. Didn't think that was a bad deal.
Another dead screen or something else?
Few days ago my phone fell of the couch onto a rug - no big deal, so far it has survived much worse, but when I picked it up, the colors were all messed up - overly green and red. Tried restarting - no luck. Everything worked fine, except the colors, but then the screen turned of completely. I could hear notifications, phonecalls, but the screen was dead. After some tapping on the screen, it turned on again - with ****ed up colors. Then started flickering and was gone again. Few more times I could turn it on by tapping before it was dead for good.
Figured, after all these drops it survived, maybe the screen connector is a bit loose. I mean, I could sometime get a contact when tapping it, so I dissasambled it completely, secured all the connection, put it all back tougether and fired up - same thing: dead screen, phone working.
Has anyone had such problem before? Is it screen that is dead, or connector or... I have no clue... I would like try to fix it on my own, with some replacement parts I could get on ebay - but, what gave?
Hiya,
my Desire HD got wet in the front pocket of my fleece, not drowned just some droplets of water that got inside the Otterbox case and into the phone. I did try and turn it on before I realised it had got wet, it wouldn't power up.
I removed the phone from the Otterbox and dried everything and tried to turn it on again as there was only very slight traces of moisture apparent. There was condensation and a couple of little drops of water inside. I discovered there must have been enough moisture to short out the battery as there was a little residue mark above the contacts on the inside of the casing. I then noticed the liquid indicators had turned red.
I removed the battery cover and dried the phone gently using an electric room heater for hours, I also put the phone in a bag of rice for a couple of days.
I tried to power it up again after a few days in the rice and it wouldn't start up. I measured across the battery contacts with a multi meter and found the battery was open circuit, so I know it must have shorted. Hoping that this was the only damage I bought a new replacement battery. When I fitted the new battery nearly a week later and switched on the phone, everything seemed to be fine but the display seemed to flash, and as I had a Leedroid rom installed I heard R2D2 chirping and could see the device start to boot up as normal on the screen. Then the display went dark and hasn't worked since. I stripped the phone and cleaned a couple of patches of residue, one of which was right in the lcd connector.
Now when I try and start the phone there is no display, the phone vibrates once when I hold in the power button. Approximately 40 or 50 seconds later I can hear R2D2 making his tweeting noises which always happens on boot up. I didn't think it took so long to hear R2D2 but maybe the phone is checking the file system or something now, and I just can't see it.
It may be that I just need a new screen & digitizer to repair the phone, but I can't tell what might be on the display - maybe it's the phone unlock screen asking for my pin number etc. I can't see any image on the screen, that you would normally see when the baclight is faulty, I have tried to view it with a desk lamp, but it's just black. The capacitive buttons at the bottom don't seem to have any effect, perhaps they are not enabled if it's sitting at the password screen, if it is at that screen.
The l.e.d's don't light up at the top when I turn it on or plug in the charger.
I might have also damaged the volume key switch/ribbon slightly.
What would you do with this phone, any advice on how I could proceed ?
Would it be working just with no display, as R2D2 is squeaking(Leedroid rom has this when the device boots and has an animation of a pc booting up with the post screen) ?
No l.e.d's is a bit worrying and it doesn't seem to know when on charge etc. but perhaps they only work once the phone has booted, I can't remember DOH!
I just thought I would ask, as there are a lot of knowledgeable people on here and it might be possible to save my droid.
Grateful for any help or advice
kind regards
Barry
Hi. I am not sure this is the BSOD problem that others have had.
I bought a second hand i747. It came with 4.3. It will work fine for a few minutes when first turned on, then the screen will go dark. The menu and back buttons stay lit, and the touchscreen still works, the LCD just cuts off.
If I hit the power button, it sleeps the phone. When I hit again, the screen will come on, but only for about 5 seconds, then it's black again. Everything works, just black screen.
Is it possible for it to overheat or something? It doesn't feel hot at all, but if I turn it off and leave it for awhile, it will again work for about 2-3 minutes, then only about 5 seconds at a time again.
I swapped batteries, and it's the same. The battery had pink on it. I opened it up, and none of the other stickers showed water exposure, and the board itself was clean.
It has stock 4.3, and is not rooted.
I did go to phone settings and turned off the "darken screen during calls" checkbox.
I am wondering if the proximity sensor heats up and shuts the screen off. Grasping at straws I suppose.
Any idea of how to fix this?
Thanks
Perhaps a bad capacitor in the digitizer/lcd assembly? My TV had an issue with a bad capacitor that would cause the screen to blank out after a few minutes???
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
I'll try swapping boards in it later, and maybe at least narrow down if it's the board or the screen assembly. I have an extra proximity sensor I could swap, but it doesn't seem like it's that to me.
thanks, will post more after the board swap
Update: I switched boards (different carriers), and I could not replicate the problem in either phone. I had hoped that would show that either the board or the LCD assembly was bad, but I didn't learn anything useful either way.
I put the boards back in their respective bodies. It still happens now, but not as often. It also appears to be totally random. I did switch batteries in the problem phone, and it doesn't seem as bad. I will try another battery switch and see if that helps it more.
When the screen goes dark, the menu and back buttons are lit. When it went out last night, I could see that there was still some faint background light that I can't see in the day. I pulled up Youtube and did a video, and when the screen went dark, I could still see movement, but couldn't make anything out. So, the phone is still going in the background.
If I push the power button, it sleeps, then push it again, and it wakes up just fine. Sometimes I have to do that 4 or 5 times for the screen to stay on. Sometimes it goes dark after 10 minutes of use, sometimes a half hour, sometimes just a few.
Any help is appreciated.
Well, right before throwing the phone into the wall, I noticed a partially removed liquid exposure indicator. I pulled the phone apart to check the motherboard.
In the process of taking it apart, I forgot to take out the SD card. In so doing, it pulled the sim/sd card module off the motherboard. Low and behold, there was a very light corrosive glaze in a few spots under the module.
So, I got out the 99% IPA, and a toothbrush, and cleaned the whole entire board. Since then, it seems to be working fine.
I don't know exactly what part getting cleaned fixed it, because I just cleaned the whole board.
Anyways, maybe that'll help someone with inexplicable issues downstream.
Thanks for following up with how you fixed the problem. In retrospect, water damage makes sense.
I dropped a Captivate into an ice chest full of melted water last year. I immediately pulled it out and the phone was mostly okay for a while but then the microphone didn't seem to work so well and occasionally the right third of the screen wouldn't respond to touch until I cycled the screen on and off. The water damage sticker and phone interior showed no signs of water.
I will probably sell the old captivate but with full diclosure about the history. Would have been nice if the seller had done the same for you.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
Thanks, I should have thought of it sooner, but it didn't seem to have any signs of water damage otherwise.
I ordered the 99% IPA online, because I couldn't find any locally. It works wonders with previously wet boards. You might be able to bring it back.
So during my holiday my HOX got splashed with a bit of water from a wave. The battery was running on fumes and, when I looked at it, the phone was dead. It did turned on later while in my pocket and I happened to press the power button.
I let it dry on rice and nothing. I made the potential mistake of trying to charge it so it would heat up and it wouldn't charge. I then bought another mobile and, just to try it, I took opened the HOX and hoovered. Nothing.
Miracle happened yesterday when, just for kicks, I tried the charger again. It power up!! Everything seems fine, no visible screen damage, wifi works, everything works just fine but... screen won't respond to touch on the very bottom, say, the capacitive and menu buttons (the ones just above the capacitive ones).
What do you guys think? Is the screen dead there, maybe I didn't put the screen back properly or should I wait as some moister might yet be there?
Cheers!
Kutusov said:
So during my holiday my HOX got splashed with a bit of water from a wave. The battery was running on fumes and, when I looked at it, the phone was dead. It did turned on later while in my pocket and I happened to press the power button.
I let it dry on rice and nothing. I made the potential mistake of trying to charge it so it would heat up and it wouldn't charge. I then bought another mobile and, just to try it, I took opened the HOX and hoovered. Nothing.
Miracle happened yesterday when, just for kicks, I tried the charger again. It power up!! Everything seems fine, no visible screen damage, wifi works, everything works just fine but... screen won't respond to touch on the very bottom, say, the capacitive and menu buttons (the ones just above the capacitive ones).
What do you guys think? Is the screen dead there, maybe I didn't put the screen back properly or should I wait as some moister might yet be there?
Cheers!
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This is a flashback to me. Same thing happened to me few weeks ago - first 3 bottom buttons stoped working, and now 7 days ago part of touch screen is not working anymore. I am going to replace lcd+digitizer+frame, lucky me nothing else need to be fixed. And IMHO trying to heat closed HTC when water was in it doesn't make a sense as a water will condense (as it is closed) so it would make more damage. Oxidation sucks :/
I do have the SIM slot opened but yeah, that's a tinny opening, not much space for water vapour to escape... it's been a few weeks since I thought it had died though, it's pretty amazing to me that it came back at all. Some tough phones, these...
Anyway, I think I'll try to take the screen out again, I wasn't too careful putting it back in because I saw it wasn't charging or powering up or anything at all.
Hey all, so I just replaced the screen (followed the great guide on this site) and now I'm getting some odd behavior when trying to boot.
The power button is completely unresponsive. When I plug the phone into power, the LG screen comes up for ~3 seconds, as normal. The LED is flashing thru all the colors per the usual as well. Then the screen goes black for another 3 seconds, all the while the LED flashing. Then LG pops up again just for a moment, then to the normal phone-is-off-but-charging screen, with the LED flashing red.
Really don't know what to make of this. I had it rooted with a one-click root from here. The only changes were deleting stock apps and enabling the front touch keys (but never had an issue with it booting after this, I did that at least a week ago). Also my PC recognizes that something is plugged in, so I guess that's good.
Thoughts?
Update: tried booting into recovery mode, I held the buttons for much longer than normal to no response. As soon as I let go, I get the LG screen. Then black. Then LG. Then an unusually long AT&T screen, then it booted. Now the power button works as it should, and it boots in that same odd fashion. And it seems that I can not go into recovery. Yikes.
I'd be fine with that except I have a dead zone across the lower portion of the screen, it's about a half inch tall and about covers the asdfgh... row of the keyboard. Weirdly if I start pressing on any other key and then swipe to any area in the "dead" zone it WILL register, as in, I can select the S key, normally in the dead zone, but swiping to it from a working area. Will try soaking the mobo in alcohol and swabbing the digitzer connector with a q-tip. Any other thoughts?
Update 2: I tried cleaning the contacts of the digitzer connection- both the end of the cable and the motherboard connection- with rubbing alcohol. Reassembled, and we're back to square one. Power button unresponsive, when plugged in I'll get the LG screen, then black, then the LG screen will flash and I'll get the chargining screen. But now, trying to boot into recovery mode does nothing. So then I soaked the mobo in alcohol, and cleaned ALL the contacts and ribbon cables on the frame. Reassembled, no change. I really hope someone sees this, as I'm at he end of my tech know-how. Tonight I'll try to reconnect my old touchscreen and see what happens. Maybe the new one is just defective? But you'd think the phone would still turn on...
God I hope somebody sees this. I feel like a complete nut talking to myself.
mityman50 said:
Hey all, so I just replaced the screen (followed the great guide on this site) and now I'm getting some odd behavior when trying to boot.
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Okay sounds like a hardware issue with the power button being unresponsive. I would take the device apart look around all connections of the power button and look for any hair line cracks or dirty, sticky, grimmy connections. Try cleaning upall that stuff, while there I would look at the digitizer and clean that up. When done flash a new rom with the LG flash tool, allow boot and reboot normally several times before testing. I hope this helps I am new to the phone and have yet to get my repair kit for it so I will not know much more about it till I get into it myself. Hair line cracks can be easily fixed as long as its on the sadder areas. Just re sadder it
---------- Post added at 09:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:34 PM ----------
Now for the weird flashing on and off booting mine does this as well but all functions regardless are working flawlessly. My phone will need serious structural repairs but nothing I can't do just had a horrible owner. Definitely worth the trouble this thing runs so smooth better than any other I have used and it will continue to hold for a couple years cause of the power behind it. I wouldn't worry about the booting flashing like that I'm just thinking it does this to show it has been tampered with.
Sent from my LG-E980 using XDA Free mobile app.
Hey man thanks for your reply. Reminded me to update this for anyone else who finds it.
So the new screen was definitely defective. The one time I managed to get it on there was a dead spot. I sent it back, a replacement is on its way.
Now the good news- I realized why my phone wouldn't boot. Turns out that when removing the motherboard, the top part of it got a little... bent. Nothing bad, nothing permanent, but when I mounted back onto the housing, the top part of it had a tendency to stick up a little bit. Well if you follow the small ribbon cable off the power button, it leads to two gold contacts. Sure enough on on the bottom side of the motherboard there are two nodes that would press against the contacts.
Basically, the power button wasn't even connected to the board.
So I actually put the whole thing together, screws and all, and with that, the motherboard sits snugly as it should and the button works fine.
Right now my phone is some sort of hacked up zombie, with a cracked up screen, an upper-left corner that's completely decimated/missing, and no adhesive to hold it together. Hopefully the screen makes it here soon!
Oh and I agree totally, this is the smoothest and most reliable Android I've owned, better than the Evo 3D (which I quite liked) and a GS3 (meh, it got very unreliable after a year). I'm happy the screen replacement is cheap and easy so I can keep this thing for at least another year.
Cool glad it worked out for you or hopefully will. Can you do me a solid once your screen comes in and if it replaced well all working that is could you post the site you got it on or pm me with it. I am here tons of issues with defective screens. Would like to have a reliable market to shop from.
Sent from my LG-E980 using XDA Free mobile app
Fant0m3 said:
Cool glad it worked out for you or hopefully will. Can you do me a solid once your screen comes in and if it replaced well all working that is could you post the site you got it on or pm me with it. I am here tons of issues with defective screens. Would like to have a reliable market to shop from.
Sent from my LG-E980 using XDA Free mobile app
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I have never had a bad part for any kind of phone from Wholesale Gadget Parts in Bixby, OK (Tulsa area). I found them on Amazon and originally ordered because they were close and I was in a hurry. I kept ordering because they get it right. I have about a 50/50 success rate with phone parts off other sellers on Amazon. If you buy cheap, expect a high failure rate.
Glass and digitizer for G Pro is about $18 before shipping and any applicable tax.