Almost all smartphones have touchscreen where you can tap on the screen to do operations like typing, making a call, texting, playing a game, etc. The mechanical type of physical buttons on the phones are usually limited to power and volume buttons. If the touchscreen of your Android phone stops responding, then it becomes difficult to do anything on your phone even unlocking the phone. If you are stuck with touchscreen not responding properly in Android phone, here are some troubleshooting steps you can try to resolve this issue.
Fixing Touchscreen Problems in Android
Android touchscreens can have the following problems depending upon models and the way you use.
- Flickering or flashing screen.
- Unexpected jumping to different location.
- Showing dead pixels leading to unclear display.
- Not responding when you tap on a particular point.
You may need to go with some basic steps to find and resolve the root problem.
1. Physical Examination of Touchscreen and Phone
If the touchscreen shows any problem, make a quick physical examination of the screen and phone to see if there are any signs of physical damage. Remove the mobile phone case if you have and closely see the touchscreen. You can check the touchscreen through different angles and see any signs of crack or damage. Swipe your finger from the upper left corner of your phone and slide it slowly and diagonally over the screen to the lower-right corner of the screen. If the quick settings bar and notifications are appearing on the screen, there is probably no physical damaged part on the screen.
If you find a crack or feel some part of the screen is not responsive, then there is most likely damage on the screen. Repeat this process several times and if part of the screen is still unresponsive to confirm your findings. For fixing physical damages, you may need to contact the relevant service center. Avoid opening the phone yourself and trying to check the components, you may further damage the circuits by doing this.
2. Restart Your Android Phone
When you find there are no physical damages, restarting the phone can solve many problems, including touchscreen problems.
- Even if your phone is locked, press the power button for a few seconds. It will show buttons for Emergency, Power off, Restart and Screenshot. Press the “Restart” button on the touchscreen to restart your phone. If it doesn’t work, move to the next step.
- If the touchscreen is unresponsive, press the power button for more than 10 seconds. Your phone will restart automatically without touching any button on the screen. Check with your mobile phone’s support manual to find how to restart your phone without using the touchscreen. Once the phone restarts, see if the touchscreen is working or not. If the phone does not reboot, the problem is probably in the operating system or an app causing this problem.
- Sometimes, pressing the power button for a long time does not restart the phone. In that case, see if you can remove your phone’s battery. If possible, remove the battery of your phone and insert it again. If it is not possible to remove the battery, wait for the phone to die out of the charging. Recharge the phone and turn it on to see if the screen problem is fixed. If none of these methods work, you must contact the service center of your mobile manufacturer.
3. Turning On the Safe Mode
Safe mode is a mode of operation in which the phone will restart without using any of the third-party apps installed on your phone. Don’t worry, this will not delete any apps, you can restore them for use by rebooting the phone again.
- To reboot your phone in safe mode, press the power button for a while until buttons appear on the screen.
- Now tap the “Power off” button on the screen.
- A message will appear on the screen to confirm if you want to restart with safe mode.
- Press OK to proceed.
If your phone runs fine in the safe mode, it is an indication that an installed app is probably causing the problem. Open the list of installed apps in safe mode and figure out which app might be causing the problem. Most of the time, these are recently updated or installed apps. Uninstall the suspected apps and reboot the phone normally to check if the touchscreen problem is resolved.
Note that the process of turning on safe mode could be different for your phone model. If the above steps do not work, check the detail in your phone’s operating manual. If you want to fix problematic apps, read our article on how to fix apps crashing issue in Android.
4. Factory Reset Your Phone
If the touchscreen issue is still present in the safe mode, the problem may be either in the Android operating system itself or the hardware. In such cases, factory reset may help to resolve the issue.
Important: A factory reset will erase all the data on your phone, including apps, relevant data, personal data stored on the phone memory, etc. Anything stored on the external memory card will not be erased. So, make a complete backup of your phone before factory resetting.
- If your touchscreen is responsive, you can do a factory reset using the menus. However, this procedure is highly dependent on your phone’s manufacturer. The process is as follows on a Google Pixel 3a running Android 12. Go to the “Settings > System > Reset options > Erase all data (factory reset)”. Give the confirmation, and a factory reset will run soon. Once the process is done, check the phone to see if everything, including the touchscreen, is working correctly.
- If your phone’s touchscreen is unresponsive, then a factory reset cannot be run through the menus. In that case, you have to check with your phone’s manufacturer and see what the key combination is to run the factory reset. Usually, you can do factory reset by pressing the power button together with either the volume up or volume down key for an extended time. You will see various options depending upon your phone’s model, find the factory reset and run it.
5. Testing Display with Third Party App
There are tons of touchscreen diagnostic and repair apps available in Google Play Store. You can use one of these apps to help you find the problems and possible repairing options on the software side. Display Tester is one of the free apps you can use for this purpose. It provides variety of tests to check your touchscreen and repairing options.
Final Words
Touchscreen is most important to work on your phone without physical buttons. You can resolve flickering and other minor touchscreen problems in Android phones by following the above solutions. However, if you there are physical damages or none of the above options work, you need to contact the authorized service center for fixing the screen.
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