If you’re phone’s touch screen stops working, it can be an odd – and extremely annoying – situation.
When your phone can’t feel your fingers, it can make you feel like you’re losing your mind. We use our mobile phones all of the time and for the last decade, the mobile phone world has been dominated by smartphones with touch screens. So, when the screen suddenly isn’t responding to your touch it can make you question everything. Did you actually touch what you meant to touch? Maybe your hands are too cold? Are you Bruce Willis at the end of sixth sense?
Well, the thing is, there are lots of reasons why your phone screen might stop feeling your fingers, and today, we’re going to tell why it can happen and what you can do about it. So, keep reading to find out more.
So, why is my smartphone screen not responding?
Unfortunately, like lots of things that can go wrong with your phone, there are many reasons why your phone screen, whether it is an iPhone or Android phone, might stop responding to you touch.
Most often, it is related to the digitizer, which is a layer of glass that has been designed to be able transmit your touch into digital signals. There may be a problem with this physical part of your phone’s display, as in it might have been physically damaged somehow, or it might be because the software of your phone stops communicating with the hardware properly.
So, basically, it could be a hardware problem, a software problem, or a combination.
How can I tell what has caused the problem?
Ok, well we’re never going to tell you to take apart your phone yourself – smartphones are highly complex and devices that have very delicate internal components and one wrong move will leave you with a phone with an even bigger problem than not being able to feel your touch.
Instead, we ask you to think about the following three things:
The first is, if you have a screen protector, the problem could simply be related to this accessory. If the screen protector is old, coming off, not fitted well, or has dirt and dust between the screen and screen protector, this could be causing problems. A simple test is to remove the screen protector and checking to see if your phone will respond to your touch.
The other thing to think about is if you’ve dropped your phone recently – a drop can lead to hardware issues for your touch screen. There might be an obvious crack or break showing damage or the drop might have caused one of the many tiny wires to come lose and start causing problems for you.
The third thing to think about before you start any “major tests” is whether your touch screen is totally not working at all or if it works sometimes. Perhaps some areas of the screen are responding to your touch or perhaps it’s only in some applications that your phone isn’t responding to touch in.
My phone screen is working – sometimes
If your phone screen is intermittently not responding to touch the problem could be related to an app or the software of the phone.
App related issues
If your phone screen stops responding to touch in certain applications, the problem might not even have anything to do with your phone, but the app itself.
There are three things you can try to fix this problem:
1. Update the app - if there is an update available, the developers may have fixed a bug in the app that is causing the problem. So, try updating the app is there is an update available.
2. Delete and reinstall the app – if there is no update available or updating the app didn’t fix the problem, then try uninstalling the app and installing it again.
3. Contact the app developer – by this stage you might be unimpressed and not that keen on contacting the developer of the app, but if you really want to use the app again, this feedback can be vital to the developers. To get in contact with them you can visit the app’s website and submit feedback or questions via a contact form. Most app developers will have a way to contact them through their websites.
Your phone screen sometimes works but there doesn’t appear to be a pattern
Though it is a rare occurrence, if your phone screen only occasionally has issues with its touch response, it could be related to the operating system you’re running – especially if it’s outdated.
Your best bet here is to ensure your phone is using the latest software update – so check for an update and get the phone back to the future.
My phone screen is not responding at all
If your smartphone screen cannot feel your fingers no matter what you do, this can be very annoying because it makes it a whole lot harder to troubleshoot. It even makes the classic “have you tried turning it off and then turning it on again” hard to do because we often need to confirm that we want to turn the phone off using the touch screen.
So, instead of waiting until your battery runs out, you can essentially force a restart on your phone.
There are various ways to do this, most commonly it will involve holding the power button in at the same time as the volume buttons on the phone or holding the power button and home phone at the same time until the screen goes black.
If the force restart doesn’t get your phone screen working, then it may be worth trying to restore your phone to the factory settings. You may be hesitant because you don’t want to lose everything, which is why it’s a good idea to always back up your phone. Even if your phone screen doesn’t respond to touch, you should be able to back it up using your computer. Once your phone is backed up you can restore it back to factory settings. The easiest way to do this is through the device itself, however, as the screen isn’t working, you won’t be able to do that. So, depending on the type of phone, you may be able to use your iCloud or Samsung account to wipe the phone and reset. There is usually a combination of the physical buttons on the phone that you need to press to force a total reset – though this does differ by phone brand and model.
If none of these solutions work…
So, you’ve tried everything we talked about today and still, nothing? Well, it’s time for the professionals.
Like we said earlier, there are just so many things that can stop a phone screen from responding to touch that it makes it difficult to fix yourself.
But this is where we come in. We can fix all sorts of problems that might affect your iPhones and smartphones, including a lack of screen response. We can run tests to assess your phone and we can safely take it apart to see what is going on inside. Not only can we take the phone apart properly, using our specialised equipment, we know exactly what we’re looking for – there’s no guess work.
So, save yourself time, a headache, and let’s face, most likely a lot of money by booking in your phone screen repair with Fone Teknician. Our services are available within a 15km radius of the Sydney CBD, and we come to you!