Help Bottom touch buttons not working

[lizrd]

Hi, thanks for your time in advance. I got my Incredible 2 just over month ago. Suddenly yesterday, when I hit the home button at the bottom of the screen I only get a blank black screen. The screen lights up like usual, but when I pull down, I get the black home screen. So I'm unable to access anything; phone, music, internet, messaging, etc. I'm limited to this: I can pull down notifications to get to settings, and the top button (that gives the option of airplane mode, power off, and reset) works.

I tried restarting (several times), power off (which actually just restarts it now for some reason), and removing and replacing the battery.

Before this, I had noticed that it was hard to get my gmail to update. Otherwise, everything has been 100% normal. I'm out of the country right now, and I've emailed Verizon, but otherwise I'm kind of stuck.

Any thoughts?

 

[bberryhill0]

Did you pull the battery while the phone was on?

 

[lizrd]

Yeah, I had to, since I couldn't shut it down. Since then, I have done nothing, because I'm worried about damaging it further. I tried power off again today; same thing, it restarts.

 

[TheAtheistReverend]

Factory reset ftw.

 

[nickc9.3]

Factory reset ftw.

he cant get to settings

 

[TheAtheistReverend]

he cant get to settings

Did you mean to say "is there a way to do it without using the soft keys?"
Because if so, there is!

Pull the battery if that is what it takes to shut it down, then hold the volume down button and press the power button to get to the bootloader. From there you should be able to access the factory reset function.

Edit:
What about long press on the home screen and try to create a shortcut to settings?
Just another idea.

 

[lizrd]

Got it, thanks. I actually can get to settings(by pulling down the notifications tab->quick settings->settings), and I think there's a way to do factory reset from there?

I was also told by Verizon, when I emailed them, to do a factory reset. However, they said to do it on the phone with them. That seems wiser because following their advice gives me a stronger argument if anything goes wrong in the process... not sure about the odds of that.

 

[cmybliss]

I was also told by Verizon, when I emailed them, to do a factory reset. However, they said to do it on the phone with them. That seems wiser because following their advice gives me a stronger argument if anything goes wrong in the process... not sure about the odds of that.

Good idea. When I was having trouble with my orig. Inc, I took it to a corporate store and had them do the reset there. That way, there was no way they could claim I did something to the phone that caused the problem. They eventually replaced it with an Inc 2, because everything tried was documented.

Good luck.

 

[bberryhill0]

Settings>SD & Storage> Factory Reset