Help Pull the ring to unlock doesn't bring up keypad

[Bluxter]

Hello,

Sorry if this repeats another thread. I tried to search for it various ways and couldn't find an exact match. The closest was this one but it didn't solve my problem:

http://androidforums.com/htc-wildfire-s/543498-touch-screen-not-responding-temporarily.html

Here is my problem.

I have an HTC Evo 4G LTE. Within the past month or so, I have seen the following behavior:

1. When I press power to turn on the screen and log in to the phone, all seems normal.
2. I pull up on the ring at the bottom to unlock my phone.
3. Instead of bringing up the keypad to let me unlock the phone, the ring just sits there pulled as far as I can pull it.
4. The time at the top disappears and is replaced by the text "Pull the ring to unlock."
5. After a few seconds, the "Pull the ring to unlock" message disappears and is replaced by the phone time display, but the unlock keypad still doesn't come up.
6. Sometimes, depending on the time of day or maybe what is running in the background, I don't know yet, the ring responds and allows the keypad to pop up.

This is very frustrating , because it prevents me from using the phone at all until the keypad comes up and lets me log in. Sometimes I just give up after 10-12 tries. At other times the keypad comes up after 2-3 tries or even immediately on the first try. Completely unpredictable. I also sometimes have seen a different (but maybe related) problem where my phone starts randomly and spontaneously typing long strings of text.

Has anyone seen the above behavior? Is this a bug or app interaction? Has my phone been hacked or infected somehow? Or is somehow my touchscreen messing up? I've had the phone since around summer 2012.

I tried installing SwiftKey, but that didn't help. Then I thought it was my messaging app, HandCent, so I tried Go SMS and then Chomp without success, and finally reverted back to the stock Android SMS app. Again, the problem persists.

Thanks in advance for any help. Let me know if any other information can help diagnose this problem and let me fix it. It's driving me crazy.

 

[marctronixx]

this could be any number of reasons.

i suggest you take it into a sprint store. do you have insurance?

could be a rogue app, could be low memory. hard to diagnose over the internet.

IT is NOT a virus so get that out of your mind.

have you thought about doing a factory reset?

do you have a screen protector applied? what about a phone case?

 

[bhero]

do you have the phone in a covered case? one that covers the screen. i would remove it.

the behavior is unclear until you get to the random strings of text appearing. if you dont have a cover or jelly smeared on screen i would suspect the hardware. lets see what others have to say.

 

[Granite1]

I would follow marctronixxs advice above and take it to a Sprint store. Let them take a look at the phone to rule out any hardware failures.

Just as a precautionary step, I would back up any info you don't want to loose. Backup your internal memory to your computer, and any messages or call logs you want. Make sure all of your contacts are sync'd to the cloud.

Sometimes the technicians will perform a factory reset to try and fix any issues that aren't hardware related. This will wipe the phone clean, like it was when you first took it out of the box.