Help G1 Black Screen

cid7 · May 1, 2009

Hello, my phone is having a very weird issue, I will be ordering a replacement, but I was wondering if anyone knew what was up with the phone before I do so.

Basically the problem is that the phone's screen blacks out as if the power was cut off (the pixels don't refresh back to black normally). The phone works while the screen is black, and may even come back from time to time, however, if I hold the scroll button down, and press end + home twice the screen re-appears until I let go of the scroll button, and the screen once again goes black. If I am typing a number while the screen is blacking out, it will keep beeping until I press the end key (assuming I have it to beep when you press keys). When I power into boot manager (Power + camera button), it shows everything, and it does not black out...

Sometimes it shows the G1 logo, at other times it does not. I've tried factory resetting as well, with no success.

Whenever the phone does come back from the black screen I get a message with 'Sorry <AppName> is not responding. Force close or Wait'. No matter what , the android core, or any other app (even Setup Wizard).

On the day that this started happening I installed a wifi program (I can't quite remember the name, something like WeWifi - it searches for community wifi spots), and the day before I installed 2 sound boards.

So, any idea what could be going on? I could post a video later to demonstrate what I mean by holding the scroll button / blacking out.

dynodroid · May 5, 2009

Where's the video? I'm curious, this sounds made up. Hah, I don't know. That's really weird that it blacks out during regular use but not during the boot manager. Hm..

crystalnwa · May 13, 2009

Did you ever find out what was wrong?

Mine is blacking out too. It has happened when i hit the (red phone key) to put it to sleep. I can hit menu and it won't come back on.
The last time it just shut down but the keys on the bottom of the phone still light up so I know its working just the screen didn't come back up. Then when i do get it to work it was on a different page then the home page. So i know by me touching the Black screen it was activated just not visable.

Very frustrating to be locked out.

Thankfully if I wait long enough i can use it again with no problems. But why should I have to wait a couple minutes to use my phone.

pacothebandit · May 13, 2009

uhhh does anyone else think something fishy is going on here....

devolio · May 13, 2009

Yeah, seeing the video would help a lot. Also, you could try posting your logs (Log Collector on the Market) and we can see if it's something visible.

ABDada · May 16, 2009

My phone's been doing this since last week. I have not re-initialized it yet. I did just install a TON of apps, and left two: BuddyMob and Palringo.

I have a feeling it's BuddyMob, but I'm not certain. I'm going to try removing them and checking again.

This is how it happens: phone works fine until I hit hang-up to put it to sleep. Then, if I hit menu, the buttons light up, the screen lights up, but it stays blank. Won't turn out for any reason.

The only way to get it to turn on is for me to hit hang-up on the blank screen, OPEN the keyboard, and hit menu a few times. Then it's fine.

Annoying as hell.

crystalnwa · Jun 1, 2009

Well I called T mobile and will be getting a new phone. Today it happened once again but was unable to get it to come back on for an hour. I really needed to make a call.

I've had it happen before where if i let it sit for 10minutes or so I can hit menu and get it to come back on but today was way to long.

So we'll see if a new phone helps. I've seen on other boards it is happening to them too.

If anyone knows any tricks to keep it from doing that let me know.

Crystal

GoSpeed.Racer · Jun 2, 2009

I just got my replacement phone (for the last replacement that went funky after 4 months) in the mail last night, fired it up and was struck with this EXACT same problem. I have tried multiple different builds (JF, Haykuro, Dude) and it makes no difference. Any time my phone goes to sleep, you never know if it will wake properly. Sometimes it is fine, sometimes I get a blue or green line (looks like the screen broke!), sometimes it stays black. Very frustrating! I am not very happy with the build quality of these Dreams.

I will see if I can get a video up in a bit.

justjimjpc · Jun 2, 2009

GoSpeed.Racer said:
I just got my replacement phone (for the last replacement that went funky after 4 months) in the mail last night, fired it up and was struck with this EXACT same problem. I have tried multiple different builds (JF, Haykuro, Dude) and it makes no difference. Any time my phone goes to sleep, you never know if it will wake properly. Sometimes it is fine, sometimes I get a blue or green line (looks like the screen broke!), sometimes it stays black. Very frustrating! I am not very happy with the build quality of these Dreams.

I will see if I can get a video up in a bit.

Maybe they just sent you your bad phone back to you rather than a replacement.

GoSpeed.Racer · Jun 2, 2009

Hope this works, posted from my g1

works great as long as it doesn't go to sleep!

YouTube - Dream G1 screen problems

cred05 · Jun 2, 2009

My first G1 did that, except it never came back on. The screen just completely died. Tmobile sent me a replacement.

GoSpeed.Racer · Jun 2, 2009

They are sending me another replacement as well. Had this one less than 24 hours as of right now. I feel sorry for the customer service rep that got me tonight- but she knew I wouldnt really track her family down (I hope) hahaha.

I have read of this happening on a few forums, but never have seen any kind of ideas as to why.

Damafiarejectkidd · Aug 1, 2009

dynodroid said:
Where's the video? I'm curious, this sounds made up. Hah, I don't know. That's really weird that it blacks out during regular use but not during the boot manager. Hm..

STFU!

why would he lie! My fone does the same exact thing. If i turn it off or the batt. runz out and i turn it back on the screen will be light up blue but no G! logo. And i gotta go through alot of shit just to fix it. Now i gotta re open my g1. In stead im just gonna take it to the shop. Its much easier for me. Dueces!

Damafiarejectkidd · Aug 1, 2009

pacothebandit said:
uhhh does anyone else think something fishy is going on here....

no!

Damafiarejectkidd · Aug 1, 2009

GoSpeed.Racer said:
They are sending me another replacement as well. Had this one less than 24 hours as of right now. I feel sorry for the customer service rep that got me tonight- but she knew I wouldnt really track her family down (I hope) hahaha.

I have read of this happening on a few forums, but never have seen any kind of ideas as to why.

its the ribbons inside the fone.

Xmandroid · Oct 30, 2009

Is it the flex cable causing this: :thinking:

When shut it doesnt show screen but when i slid it up everynow and then it shows the screen i have to constantly press the end/power key until it shows up. when in the slid up position you can push the end/power key and i will work fine. boot up fine from that position until it's slid down.

anything?,,... helpa droid homie out. haha

I just wanna know before i order the flex cable and have it fix. o and i got this phone for 25bucks :eek:

that's the only thing so... my phone has to stay open to work. :mad:

Pron00b · Dec 12, 2009

I'm having the same issue. Is this the flex cable, or should I be looking into buying a new LCD for the phone?

I bought the phone from third party market, so can't do an exchange.

laffytaffy · Dec 15, 2009

what i do when i press the end key and it blacks out i open the key board and press the end key until the screen turns on, or just wait until it turns on once the key board is open if not than jus press the end key. hope this works

Pron00b · Dec 15, 2009

laffytaffy said:
what i do when i press the end key and it blacks out i open the key board and press the end key until the screen turns on, or just wait until it turns on once the key board is open if not than jus press the end key. hope this works

I had the same issue, it eventually led to the screen not turning back on though.

techimanu · Dec 27, 2009

even i am having the same issue.
If i keep my phone idle/sleep for a long time, the screen does not come back when i press the menu keys twice to activate the phone. I have to press the end key and menu key many times for the screen to come back. It usually takes about 2 mins for the display to come back. Once the display is back, it takes another 1 min for the touch screen to be responsive. And Yes i do get "Activity Home (in process.android.acore) not responding" :rolleyes:

One thing i have noticed is that, this does not happen when the phone is charging. Also, when this happens, if i plug in the charger,the display comes back immediately.
I am wondering, if this issue is related to battery power.
My phone is about 1.2 years old and i even tried reseting to factory settings.

Please let me know, if anyone has found solution to this problem or has clues,

Thanks
Manu

Poohder · Jan 8, 2010

Okay so look i have the G1&& my phone just blanked out&&i tried charging it&&changing tha battery what do i do you guys?

drumsmasher · Jan 16, 2010

Mine has the same problem.. I remember I rooted it in order to install Hero's version. I had it running for a week and it was slow, then rolled back by using the NBH image for RC28, then it updated automatically from the network.

It was working well but after 2 weeks, but it started having issues when I opened the keyboard, it get stucked for a while after closing and opening the keyboard three times it worked, but this stopped working few days later.

Now I have the no video issue here. If I press Menu button it light up the buttons but not the screen. So I blocked the cell by pressing power button and then Menu for several times (sometimes it took me 10 minutes) and it worked.

Right now.. the cell is not showing video at all.. no T-Moible logo screen, No Android splash screen, No POST. If I press camera+power it doesn't show the color bar screen.

Tried to reflash it again to RC28 at "blind". So I puted the dreimg.nbh into the SDcard, turned on by pressing power and camera, then hit power after a while and wait for few minutes (half hour) tried to soft reboot it by presing home+back but it did not came up. So I removed the battery and it never showed video again

PLEASE HELP!! I really love this phone, can somebody help me? Maybe with the ADB we could do something.

Sdot · Feb 18, 2010

Hey all,

The same thing is starting to happen to me and I personally don't think it has to do with anything you've downloaded from the market. I ordered a replacement phone for another reason about a month ago, refurbished or brand new, whatever it may have been, yet the black screen came on before I was even able to download any apps. I wasn't able to get the screen to stay on normally for more than 2 minutes; this phone was replaced a few days later. My replacement phone was working perfectly until a few days ago when it happen again. This time, it turns black but if I take the battery out for a second then it'll work for awhile. It so far has been working today, but will most likely be ordering a new one since this shouldn't be happening. In the end, I think there's some kind of short in the new phones, I never had a problem like this with my original G1 because it'd definitely not due to my sim card or battery. This has also happened to another friend of mines a few weeks ago. T-mobile needs to figure out the source and fix it.

FYI - Irrelevant from the black screen - I've also learned through a knowledgeable t-mobile tech that you should keep your memory above 26MB of available space to prevent errors from occurring. I used to download a lot of apps and would always get funny little errors, but since I took this advice my phone has been great besides this new black screen problem.

If anyone figures out why this is happening, please repost.

Thanks!

TiamatStudios · Apr 2, 2010

THE SOLUTION!!!

Try a factory reset, it fixed the phone for me!
To do this is simple:

1. Power off the G1
2. Hold Home Key + End key for 20 seconds or until you see a "triangle with an exclamation point and a picture of the G1"
3. Open the QWERTY keyboard and hit Alt+W
4. Restored!

To do a soft reboot, simply hit the Home+Back buttons when you reach the "triangle with an exclamation point and a picture of the G1" screen.

Hope this helps!

Found on:
How To Factory Reset Your T-Mobile G1 | Android Central

My Site:
Tiamat Studios - Home

boselixer · Apr 19, 2010

as of last night i started having the same issue.
it started with screen went dark and wouldn't come back. so I rebooted and the screen remained dark and never booted.

I did a soft reboot (grn+menu+red) and then held (home+red) to get into recovery mode (still black screen with back light on. hit (alt+l) to get to the menu and flashed a factory reset. (not recommended without a data plan on phone)

as of now the phone continues to not boot, so when i do power it off, i go though the above sequence though instead of factory reset just do a soft reboot (grn+menu+red) and the phone boots up.

however, now when the phone is left inactive, or the screen times out and goes black, I struggle with button combinations to bring it back. ive de activated the screen time out, and once i watched it literally fade to black.

ive no idea whats causing this its an original phone bought one of the first ones off the line and haven't had a single problem up until this point. running all factory updates, no mods, very few applications, definitely not any in the last several months.

Help G1 Black Screen

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