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Help Note 5 Screen Drama!

The_Chief

Accept no imitations!
  • Nov 17, 2009
    15,864
    18,364
    Manchester, Tennessee
    UGHHHHH....

    So I love my Note 5... except that it has this really annoying problem. There's one place on the screen that the S Pen will NOT write or draw. Want the whole drama? Click and enjoy...

    Here's a screen grab:

    SM920V_S_Pen_Dead_Zone.jpg


    That circle is the Dead Zone. But it's only dead in Action Memo and S Notes! The S Pen will swipe and whatever on the home screen or any other app... it just refuses to mark in that circle in those two apps.

    Being the freaking brilliant technical guy I am, I deduced that the digitizer control is corrupt in the Note 5, so I called Samsung. The obviously NON-brilliant geniuses at Samsung determined that it was the S Pen itself that was faulty, and sent me a label (UPS 2nd Day Air) to ship just the S Pen back to them.

    Okay... just to humor them, I did. I also ordered a brand new Samsung Note 5 S Pen with one-day shipping to rule it out. Surprise, surprise, the replacement S Pen does the same thing!

    The tech people at Samsung then maintained that BOTH S Pens are faulty, and I need to wait to get my original S Pen back from Samsung (coming back to me via UPS 2nd Day Air) to verify the fault. Problem is, UPS lost the package! They can't find it!

    So now I'm stuck in limbo... Samsung has now spent far more in shipping the stupid S Pen back and forth than it's worth, and now it's lost, but they want to give UPS more time to try and locate my package before they ship me another one. Meanwhile, my Note 5 (with the new S Pen) still doesn't write in that circle.

    Just to humor myself, I asked the tech support lady, "Just between us, from one technician to another, can you explain to me what circuit in the S Pen knows WHERE on the screen it's drawing so it knows not to write in that one spot consistently?"

    I could hear the smoke coming out of her ears as her brain short-circuited. :p

    Finally, she surprised me by defaulting to HONESTY! She said they are required to follow the troubleshooting flow charts in order to rule out the least expensive and most easily replaceable parts. Hence the S Pen had to be shipped back to be checked out, even though there is NO WAY the S Pen could be at fault.

    So anyway, here I sit, bad Note 5, impatiently waiting for UPS to either find my S Pen or write the package off as lost forever so that Samsung and I can get to maybe actually fixing this issue.

    Hope you enjoyed reading about my little adventure. I'm open to suggestion here!

    :D
     
    Is it in a case? Remove it

    Uninstall Facebook and Facebook Messenger

    Well, that's interesting... how would FB and FB Messenger cause one spot on the home screen to be effectively a dead zone for two completely separate apps?

    EDIT: By the way - it's in a leather(ette) portfolio case. I don't understand how the case would affect screen writing, either.

    EDIT 2: You know what, PyroSporker? YOU DID IT! You sent me down the rabbit hole and I found the culprit! It wasn't a very deep rabbit hole...
    :p

    Anyway, yes it's in a portfolio case. But the case stays closed with a flap with a little magnet embedded in the end. Usually I fold the little flap under the phone and it stays there until I close the case. Problem is, that MAGNET is right underneath the phone, right where the Dead Zone is.

    Just to play around, I pulled out the flap and let it hang out in the air and opened Action Memo. The S-Pen writes there all day long. I opened S Notes and scribbled all over the screen without issue. Then I folded the flap back under the phone - DEAD ZONE!

    So now I get to explain to Samsung that the CASE is the issue, not the Note 5 (thankfully).

    Thanks Pyro!

    :D
     
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    Glad to assist! I did really enjoy your little adventure. :cool:
    I had a feeling you had a case with a magnetic close kickstand or a flip case with a magnet latch.

    The Facebook/FB Messenger thing was something I read when researching the "dead zone" issue. As strange and head scratching as it is, I had read it from multiple sources regarding the Note 5 and I decided it was worth tossing out there just in case it works. I do not understand it, at all, but it must work for some. All I can do is use it as even more evidence to back my theory that Facebook is Evil :mad:
     
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