Help Blank screen but phone still on, hardware or software?

[Budak Kampung]

I recently had this same problem on my HTC Desire running Froyo 2.2.
The only way to get out of the "deep sleep" was to remove the battery and restart the phone. However, the problem reappears almost immediately when the phones blanks the screen. Pressing the power button only causes the HTC's hardware buttons to light up but nothing appears on screen.

After some testing and I realised that the problem goes away the moment I removed the microSD! Hence the issues appears to be that Android was not able to read/mount the card correctly and hence exhibits this odd behaviour.

My solution:
1. Backup all contents of the microSD card (including hidden files)
2. Prepare a new card & format it as FAT32 (with checks to ensure no bad sectors etc)
3. Copy all contents to the new card
4. Re-insert into phone and restart
5. Enjoy!!

Hope this helps for those of you having the same problem.

PS. I realised the old microSD has a lot of issues and even reformatting it was not possible.

 

[nabot68]

Hi All,
got my Desire since less than two months, and it started to behave as described: the screen would go blank. "Fortunately", by applying slight pressure on the side of the phone, the screen turns on again, which indicated a hardware problem. A first (virtual) look inside the phone at https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas...me=N&application_id=261070&fcc_id='NM8PB99400' (check out 'internal photos', and say 'thank you' to the FCC for me ) showed numerous connectors between the boards. It turns out that these connectors may pop out sometimes, leading (among other possible symptoms) to the dark display.
It is relatively easy to repair the phone in this situation, but this VOIDS THE WARRANTY, so what follows it at your own risk ! Use high quality tools, avoid electrostatic discharges, and avoid forcing parts. Attempt to repair it yourself only as the last option (seller or manufacturer not willing to repair it under warranty for instance)
Backup all your data first, just in case. Remove the back plate to access the battery. Place the phone with the battery compartment visible, the camera and audio Jack pointing away from you, like in the FCC document. Remove the battery, the SIM card and the SD card. Remove with a scalpel the two tiny 'VOID' stickers hiding the screws on the upper and lower right corner. If you are careful and lucky, you can remove them without damaging them, and place them back after reassembling the phone. Use a Torx TX5 to remove the four screws on the four corners of the phone, and a small Phillips screwdriver to remove the two screws on the left and right sides. Remove the antenna cover (see 'WWAN Main Antenna' depicted in the FCC document linked above). You can now GENTLY unclip the plastic frame, and access the electronic boards below. There is an additional Phillips screw on the top left corner, holding the board with the audio Jack on it, which you might need to remove as well.
Now it is possible to remove all the electronics, and press the connectors again into their respective sockets. You can now re-assemble the phone. Stick back the 'VOID' stickers if you managed not to damage them (I did not ).
'hope this helps a few of you...

 

[Kav]

Mate

Thank you so much - you are a genius! All sorted :-D

Cheers
Kav

 

[karmanndroid]

Hi all,
I also had this black screen problem, sometimes more than 5 times a day!
So, after reading the post about tightening up the contacts, I opened up my Desire, removed the battery, SIM and SD card. But then I did not have the correct screwdriver etc, so I reassembled everything back.
And guess what: no black screens since then!

Thanks very much, Hans

 

[SergioRuiz]

Hello there,

I have a somehow similar problem with my HTC Desire HD. Yesterday my 16-months old son was "using" the phone. Basically he was rebooting and switching it off.

At some point I managed to recover the phone and now I switch it on, I get the PIN request for the SIM card, unlock pattern, etc. on the screen. However the home screen is black... If I push a button it vibrates, and if keep the search button pushed I get the google voice search and I can even open a browser.

Clicking on home, though, gets me to a blank screen :-(. This is very annoying, I would like to solve it before doing a factory reset. Any clues?

I have tried removing battery, sim and micro sd... without any success.

Thanks for your help,

Sergio

 

[SergioRuiz]

Clicking on home, though, gets me to a blank screen :-(. This is very annoying, I would like to solve it before doing a factory reset. Any clues?

A factory reset solved the problem... it was not so bad in the end .

Greetings,

Sergio

 

[Flumme]

I am at a loss!

I rooted 2 weeks ago using (unRevoked 3.21 & CWM 2.5.0.7 S-ON) the guides and FAQ here from stock 2.29.405-5. i didn't do much to begin with, just did a battery stats wipe I read about in a thread somewhwere in order to get better batterylife. No Juice Defender. I also ran the adb-command to install all apps on the SD-card (setInstallLocation 0/2 in adb shell).

Almost right away my phone began to freeze completely. The screen mostly stays on (if it happens when I'm actively doing something on it) for the standard amount of time until it spontaniously goes to sleep. I can sometimes use the powerbutton to wake it up again, but it just shows the frozen screen image. Most of the time, the powerbutton does absolutely nothing except for lighting the hard buttons underneath the screen. It has never been possible to shut the phone off using the power button. My only choice is to pull the battery and reboot.

When the phone freezes up, it appears to be using a very large amount of battery.

I tried to fix this by first preforming a hard reset, then flashing a new ROM (InsertCoin 1.0.8 which I love!) after a full wipe, but the problem persists.

There doesn't seem to be anything to go by. It's irregular in occurence, sometimes lasting for 1 hour, sometimes for 30 sec. It's been getting more frequent, though. Sometimes my phone gets really warm, but it will freeze when it's cool too.

Just to needle me further, it appears to be working perfectly for the last 3 hours without the SIM-card... And recoverymode is okay too (found that out by reading a lot while flashing IC)...

This has me stumped! Hardware/Software? Bad mojo?

 

[Flumme]

I'm at my wits end...

Decided to flash the RUU, to see if the problem persisted. The stock ROM seem to be okay, no probs that I could see. The SD-card was mounted as read-only, which I find wierd.

I reformated it using Gparted, rooted the phone using unREVoked 3.21 S-OFF. Everything went perfectly until I made a nandroid recovery image. That process was equally successful, or so I thought. When rebooting after this the damn phone entered an endless boot loop...

Now I restore the nandroid copy to see what happens...

Edit: for no apparent reason the backup works fine

Now, off to the custom ROMs to flash IC again! Wish me luck...

 

[helenfoz]

The same thing has happened to me :-( Sent it off to HTC to try fix but because its had water damage they wont fix it.

The water damage happened in May 2010 and Ive never had any issues with the phone since then and the problem didnt start happening until I dropped it so I very much doubt it is water damage!)

My post is at http://androidforums.com/desire-sup...wont-turn-after-goes-standby.html#post2948623

Not sure what to do now :-(

 

[Flumme]

After an enormous amount of reading and experimenting, I`ve finally gotten around the problem!

I believe it was a combination of slightly defective/unstable SD-card (from SunDisc; I`ve read that Kingston have better cards) which made the EXT-partition on my SD-card act up, and an incompatability between the ROM (the radio?) and the SIM-card making the phone in some instanses enter a loop requiring me to reenter my SIM card PIN code every ten seconds as long as the SIM card was active...

I repartitioned the SD-card, removing the EXT partition, flashed the Alpharev Oxygen R2 HBoot table, and finally flashed Oxygen 2.2.1. Now I have a phone that I can trust, and plenty of space for apps!

 

[danstrange2000]

@Flumme. What made you think it could be an imcompatability between the Radio and Sim card?

I only get the phone locking up at work where I have low signal (never happens at home) so I am also suspecting it may have something to do with upgrading the radio? Is there a way to check whether my phone is going into the same loop? I've tried various different ROMs (leedroid and insert coin) and have had the same problem on all of them which is rather frustrating.

I will also now try a different SD card to see if that fixes it. Thanks for your useful info!

After an enormous amount of reading and experimenting, I`ve finally gotten around the problem!

I believe it was a combination of slightly defective/unstable SD-card (from SunDisc; I`ve read that Kingston have better cards) which made the EXT-partition on my SD-card act up, and an incompatability between the ROM (the radio?) and the SIM-card making the phone in some instanses enter a loop requiring me to reenter my SIM card PIN code every ten seconds as long as the SIM card was active...

I repartitioned the SD-card, removing the EXT partition, flashed the Alpharev Oxygen R2 HBoot table, and finally flashed Oxygen 2.2.1. Now I have a phone that I can trust, and plenty of space for apps!

 

[Flumme]

I hope it works out for you!!!

I don't remember exactly where I found the thread, possibly on xDA-forum, but there was an israeli guy who seemed to have this problem too. He found out that putting the phone into air plane mode prevented it from going into this loop. Going from there he discovered that it was the SIM-card, since the phone was very stable indeed on Wifi only. Unfortunately, it also prevents you from using your phone as anything but a very small tablet...

I am truly sorry to tell the world that i now seem to have a very expensive paper-weight. It crashed completely a couple of hours ago, and will not respond in any way to anything I do. The only thing that happens is that the LED turns on when I plug it in to charge. If I touch the powerbutton, the LED goes out, and nothing else happens.

My message to you is: RUU and hope that the repair shop will not notice that you've had it rooted! As of now i cannot even do that...

Started a new thread about this http://androidforums.com/desire-support-troubleshooting/407929-true-brick.html

 

[mickmartin16]

Ive but the same problem, Phone switches on...screen works the cut's off,all sounds and alarms are still working just no display!

 

[latearrival]

There's another fix posted in this thread, post #31: http://androidforums.com/desire-sup...wont-turn-after-goes-standby.html#post3070047

Seems that a broken capacitor will give you the same symptoms.

 

[clu3less]

thx for the tip!

 

[rustybarnet]

Hi people,

I was having a similar problem - screen was cutting out after every call. Extremely frustrating!

I eventually backtracked through my apps and it seems that Lookout Mobile Security was causing the issue. I've uninstalled it now and everything seems to be ok... (touch wood)

So the app that was supposed to be protecting my phone from bugs and viruses actually messed it up. Sweet, sweet irony...

*EDIT*

So basically, as soon as I posted this I made a call and the same thing happened again. For some reason I had the idea of removing the clear plastic screen protector that came with my phone's case, and as soon as I'd removed it the phone sprung back into life! Seems that the protector was obscuring the proximity sensor near the top of the phone and was causing it to cut out.

I've now reattached the screen protector, using the "Proximity Sensor Finder" app to make sure it doesn't obscure the sensor again. Hopefully that's it this time!

 

[deswchypoo]

I had this same problem on my Motorola X. I was getting so frustrated because I work with and sell cell phones all day. I realized my problem had started when I bought a new SD card. I totally forgot to "mount" my SD card when I put it in. I put a new card in this morning and "mounted" it and also formated it just to be safe. We will see how it works but I am almost 100% positive this was why my phone kept going into the black screen. I also could only get it off that screen by taking out the battery and putting it back in. Hope this helps anyone that possibly just put a new SD card into their phone.

 

[apt4all]

****** FIXED******* i have the same problem that my Desire's screen has just stayed black when pressing the power key to unlock it. I found a way without removing battery.. Before raising the ring to unlock we can scroll the notification bar down and can go to settings. Then i added a lock pattern. After that it works fine..try...

 

[Brazy]

Since a battery pull seems to solve it for a little while it is possible you have something installed that causes the problem, unless you start eliminating suspects you will never really know. A full factory reset might be a good idea and then install minimal apps and leave it be to see if it does again.

If it does you can get it replaced, but you need to find out if it is something you have installed causing the problem because if you get another phone and install the same things you will be going around in circles.

I have the black screen after a phone call/voice mail issue as well. VERY FRUSTRATING. I removed the plastic cover and everything seems to work. Thanks to the post for that suggestion. If problem persists, I will remove task killer and look out. Then remove crime city. If none of this works, I will try the clean swipe and try the phone out with the add on applications removed. If this doesn't work, I will tie a rock to it and fire it through the window of the local cell phone provider. I will repost to confirm the culprit of the locked/black screen

 

[M0sX0tReL0s]

Several times now my Desire's screen has just stayed black when pressing the power key to unlock it. It's like it's in a deep sleep with no way to wake it.

If you call it the screen will not light up but the phone will either ring with no way of answering it or just flash the missed call light. The call can still be silenced or rejected with the buttons.

So my question is this a hardware or software issue? I'm inclined to think software because pulling the battery then rebooting solves it, until it happens again, sometimes the same day others a few days later.

I always switch the phone off at night to give it a fresh start each day. I do not use any task killers or obscure apps.

Phone has minimal virgin mobile UK branding on it, and running firmware 1.15.405.4 with no option to update to the newly released version.

Thanks in advance.

i have the same problem if you knwo what is plzz say to me...

 

[Abdul01]

I solved this problem few times by completely opening my HTC Desire Z mobile phone and then reassembling it. Third time, I noticed that the problem is due to looseness of two, out of three, tiny screws at the "camera" button of the mobile set. Therefore, mobile set was not properly pressed and sealed at the "Camera" button and due to some protection by HTC, screen went black. Now I have used new relatively long tiny screws and the problem is solved permanently.

 

[Hadron]

The original Desire doesn't have a camera button, so probably not exactly the same here. Interesting though

 

[gurgial]

just remove proximity sensor {complete Flex}
tested by me 100% working

 

[psionandy]

just remove proximity sensor {complete Flex}
tested by me 100% working

I suspect this isn't an issue anymore, since its nearly 5 years since the last person posted in this thread.....