Hello!
I recently purchased a broken S4 with a 'flickering screen' issue. Normally, people are told to return the phone for a replacement, but I can't do that.
In more detail, the problem begins after using the phone continuously for several minutes. The phone works flawlessly regardless of the broken glass screen, but after a while, begins to flicker. Only slightly at first, but then more and more severely until the screen shuts off. Turn the screen on and off again, and it's back to normal. (you normally need to leave the phone for a while before turning it back on, or it'll quickly just flicker itself off again). This to me suggests an over-heating problem, but I can't be sure.
I've wired the phone up the the TV using cheap cable, and the flicker doesn't show on the TV. That is, the phone starts going mental, doing its flicker thing, but the image on the screen remains constantly smooth when swiping - no flicker.
So... is this an image with the digitizer or the cable attaching the digitizer to the motherboard? If the screen doesn't flicker on the TV, that means we can rule out a motherboard issue, correct?
I just want to know what part of the phone to replace really. I don't want to buy a £80 digitizer only to have the same problems once it's been replaced.
Any suggestions welcome, cheers!
Based on your testing, it's very likely that you can rule out the motherboard. Unfortunately, that leaves the screen. You'll have to replace it, and you can reuse the existing midframe, but save as much of the adhesive as you can after peeling the old screen off, as the new screen doesn't come with adhesive to mount to the midframe.
Unless of course, the place you buy the screen from includes a small roll of the stuff.
Hello,
As @Strephon Alkhalikoi said it may depend on the motherboard.
Sometimes the kernel may be the cause too, I suggest to try first to reflash stock ROM. Here you can find how-to
With due respect to Antaresone I think I've found the best solution out there for most annoying screen flickering issues... Done a substential amount of digging and finally discovered the app "Twillight" works like a charm by enabling backlight control feature... Try it out first, then thank me and share your experience here ...
Related
If anyone can offer any advise/assistance, it would be greatly appreciated!!
I have 2 AT&T branded 8525 phones. Both have issues and I assumed I could make one good working phone from them.
Phone 1 had a touchscreen issue. It is not responsive what-so-ever. I tried the credit card trick, cleaning out the edges, hard reset, soft reset, etc... nothing seems to make it respond at all. Reflashed the ROM, but of course I am stuck at the "Touch Screen to Begin" screen.
Phone 2 works just fine, but when plugging in the mini usb charger the screen starts to fade to white (with many vertical lines appearing...but eventually the screen goes to white). If you wiggle the charger, it will clear up, but then go back to the fading white screen. If you leave it long enough on the white screen, it will lock up.
So I thought I could take the known good LCD from phone 2 and put it in phone 1. Yesterday I took both phones apart to do this. I placed the good LCD in the phone that had the possibly bad LCD. Put it all back together and found the touchscreen still does not work . So perhaps the LCD was fine and it was something else. I then decided to just take the motherboard from phone 2 and put it in phone 1 along with the LCD I just replaced (effictively moving the lcd and motherboard over to a new case). Same issue... touchscreen does not work. I assume moving the parts around eliminates a loose connection of some sort. I did make sure the ribbon cables were properly aligned and secured well. I am guessing something is wrong on the motherboard.
Does anyone have an idea of what could be wrong to prevent the touchscreen from working?
Oh...moving both the motherboard and lcd with the whitescreen issue(phone 2) over to the other phone (phone 1) casing didn't change anything at all either...so I assume that is not a connection issue with the cables. I also looked closely at the mini USB connector on the motherboard to see if there was bad solder or something that was making it act up. I am guessing bad hardware in both phones, but was hoping I could somehow make one of these phones work and junk the other. Sounds like I may have to junk both as the cost of parts is probably is silly.
Thanks for any help!!
Eric
Do I blame the onboard video or the LCD itself for this problem? I've taken the phone apart and re-seated the motherboard connections, which was no help. If I connect using EveryWAN the phone appears to be working fine, in fact I flashed the T-Mobile ROM and than the Button ROM thinking it was a IPL/SPL issue. Even if I try to start in boot loader mode the screen still looks the same.
Just trying to decide If I need to replace the motherboard or the LCD.
Thanks,
Bump back to the top!
Screen seems intact without any damage visible, no cracks or out?
Had this problem once with my old Universal, was the colour transfer wires that were loose, but pretty sure the Uni is totally different to our wizards.
Prehaps open her up and see if theres anything thats loose prehaps.
I had it opened and re-seated both the connecting cables, but no luck.
Ive had this problem with my wizard .. i couldnt find a solution. tho i didnt really try very hard. Basicaly just picked up another one on ebay for like £30 seemed cheaper than spending the time and effort fixing it. I think mine got progressivly worse. It used to do it occasionaly and now just it as soon as its switched on
i have a same sort of problem...
left of the screen fills with lines and the whole screen fades to white.
turning on and of the screen via power button takes it back to normal but then it happens again.
noticed it only happen in portrait so i have to set it to landscape all the time
for some rom and spl's it happens just a few times a day and others i cant use it in portrait.
If i find a solution it might be working for you to
Fading white screen of death
Could be the battery. Have you tried a new battery?
Solved.
The LCD itself was bad.
Hi all.
I have a strange hardware issue with my hermes device.
Suddenly the screen started to *vanish, meaning when turned on, it turns all white/shows little stripes.
I figured that there must be a defective contact from the board to the screen.
I took the whole phone apart already, and reaatached all plugs/contacts.
This helped for a few days, but now I start getting the same flickering again.
Did anyone in here run into the same issues with this device?
If yes, how did you fix it? What can i do, to get the contacts stay in place?
Thx for your advice,
trial
Hi,
The Screen LCD has a black ribbon at the back which attach's back to the main board. It could be:-
(1) That the ribbon is not alinged or fully home in its cradle. If you prob the cradle with a screw driver (gently) you will find it opens upward and thus you can remove the ribbon, clean then replace and close the cradle lock.
(2) More likely that (hard to explain but if you tinker you will work this out) the componets around the camera include a power regulator to the LCD display. It is held in place by the case and if not seated correctly prior to closing the unit will move and thus the LCD losses nearly all abilty to be seen & sometimes causes the flicker you describe.
Hope this helps. For novices be aware that tinkering often leads to breakage and while I'm happy to break things you may not be and thus I'm only another blind fool leading you on a path of destruction !! lol
Okay, a couple of days have been past now. I was using my phone back then, playing a game and then suddenly the notification led lighted blue and then the screen turned black. But it's still working. I thought it got hanged out or empty battery but it didn't show the samsung logo. So I restarted it. It started and I can unlock the lockscreen but it's all showing black screen. Can't see anything. Menu, home, power, volume and back buttons are all working.
I brought it to phone repair centers and they all said it was LCD problem and I need to pay for like $100(converted) for a new LCD. Are they saying the truth or I can still resolve this?
Yes, there seems to be a physical problem.
I cant say if its the LCD itself, or a cable, or a conector, or the graphics chip on the board. But yes, it seems to be a hardware issue.
If you are able to work on stuff like that, open the phone yourself, clean the board with Isoprophyl, clean the connectors and put it back together.
Maybe that will already fix it. If not, let them take a shot.
If you are not sure about that procedure, there are a lot of videos on youtube showing you how to dis- and reassemble an S4.
First things first, Hi
Second, Only the S4 Active has an LCD screen, the others are AMOLED.
Third, You say that all the keys are working. Are you basing this on the touch sounds, or are the any visual indicators?
what reaper said... if you go ahead and get it repaired insist that you get an AMOLED panel and not an LCD, you'll regret it if you don't...
GDReaper said:
First things first, Hi
Second, Only the S4 Active has an LCD screen, the others are AMOLED.
Third, You say that all the keys are working. Are you basing this on the touch sounds, or are the any visual indicators?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes. ui touchpad works, volume buttons, power and home. i can hear the lockscreen being unlocked when i swipe it after being locked.
it's just the screen is all black.
Backe888 said:
Yes, there seems to be a physical problem.
I cant say if its the LCD itself, or a cable, or a conector, or the graphics chip on the board. But yes, it seems to be a hardware issue.
If you are able to work on stuff like that, open the phone yourself, clean the board with Isoprophyl, clean the connectors and put it back together.
Maybe that will already fix it. If not, let them take a shot.
If you are not sure about that procedure, there are a lot of videos on youtube showing you how to dis- and reassemble an S4.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's what i'm guessing but i let them use my phone and see the problem and they all said LCD considering it's amoled yeah. I may try that but i need tools to open it like small screw etc..
Hi,
i bought a factory refurbished I9600F from aliexpress. It worked great for 3 days, then the phone became slow to respond, the screen was flickering in yellow-green tones, and then wouldn't come back on but stay black. (but I would still get notification sounds for incoming messages, the notification LED was still working, and the menu keys also light up when I press home/power).
Pulling the battery fixed the issue once, but the problem came back after 1 hour.
I managed to revive the phone once more by pulling the battery and holding the power button to drain all remaining power in the device. The phone was working again for a few hours, but now it's back to having a black screen and even the power drain method doesn't work anymore...
So i'm guessing that replacing the screen won't fix the issue, since the screen is working just fine for a a while (both image and touch are perfect) - but then somehow there must be some electrical issue that causes the graphics unit to malfunction.
I checked the easily accessible connector to the left side of the battery, but it seems that the screen is mainly connected via flex cables that cannot be accessed unless you heat up your device and pry out the screen.
I have found some information on the internet that pressing hard on the spot where the flex cable connector is might fix the problem, but this didn't work for me.
FYI, I'm running the default Samsung firmware the device shipped with and used Kies + OTA update to get the latest official FW. No rooting or any other mods. Just some regular apps installed.
Any recommendation what I could try to fix this problem? Thank you all!!!
BTW, I have found similar reports on the internet here:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s5/405238-galaxy-s5-static-screen-won-t-turn.html
But the linked how-to-fix guide states that heating up the display assembly is only recommended on devices with a broken screen... So now I don't want to risk breaking my working screen.
So mainly my options are
a) open the device to check the flex cable connection
b) buy a new battery to see if that solves if (some people have reported success with a different battery)
c) buy a new screen assembly on aliexpress for around €135 and hope that a new screen will fix it...
Thoughts?
wutzin said:
So mainly my options are
a) open the device to check the flex cable connection
b) buy a new battery to see if that solves if (some people have reported success with a different battery)
c) buy a new screen assembly on aliexpress for around €135 and hope that a new screen will fix it...
Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello, how did you solve this? I currently have the same problem.
gustav9797 said:
Hello, how did you solve this? I currently have the same problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry, i actually never was able to get this resolved. I tried removing the screen to get to the flex cable, but broke the screen because I hadn't heated up the glue enough...
Had to buy another device.
Sorry I don't have better news...
wutzin said:
sorry, i actually never was able to get this resolved. I tried removing the screen to get to the flex cable, but broke the screen because I hadn't heated up the glue enough...
Had to buy another device.
Sorry I don't have better news...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going find out the cause for this issue. I've disassembled one device that only lights up when it is warm. If I put it in the cooler it refuses to light up for some time after that. I tried placing only the screen in the cooler, also only the phone body in the cooler, but couldn't find any difference doing this as it refuses to light up both times for a couple of minutes then it works great again.
I've ordered another device that had its screen shattered so I will try my current screen on that device.
It could be some internal hardware fault in the mobo, it could be the LCD connector having a bad connection somehow, it could be the screen assembly itself, but I will find out eventually.
I've seen many places on the internet where people say this is a software issue. There is a very simple answer to that question. How could it be a software issue if not even the boot logo shows up when you start the phone?
I will keep this thread updated.
Verified that this is a problem with the motherboard. What circuit on the motherboard could have problems with cold temperatures? The main power one? If so, I will try replacing it with a different one.
Update: Was not able to fix it. Motherboard is now scrap.