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Help My droids' touch screen is going crazy!!!!!!!!!

hey guys / gals, first post and i can chime in on what causes this problem.

I personally have the first gen Moto Droid and it's done wonders for some time. wasn't until recently (more or less the last few months) that i have had this crack smoking screen issue... but i have found the cause!

it's caused by the following factors:
A - Temp (if phone is at or below 50 degrees F, EI - hot summer day, you go to bed, keep your window open and your phone is within the breezing air coming in and the night gets to or below 50-55 degreese F, it will cause condensation to happen inside the phone. moisture = bad for micro-electronics on an astronomical scale.
FIX - warm up the phone. best way to do it is keep it in a pocket closest to your core body temp. even better fix, hold it in your arm-pit (i hope to god it doesn't smell like onions when you do...). and last, don't keep it anywhere in or near an area that's 50 degrees F and colder on it's on for longer than 15 minutes or in a room of your home that's going to be colder than that over night.

B - Moisture (covered in A as it's the only real time you'll have moisture unless you drop your phone in a poddle of water of some sort.)

C - Electronically conductive substances (this is anything other than water. don't use your phone if you've JUST RECENTLY put lotion on, sun screen on, worked with engine grease *like i do on a daily basis* or anything of the sort that may be goopy and able to squeeze it's self into the small cracks and into the circuitry.)
FIX - disassembly of phone, lots of rubber alcohol and cleaning whipes. don't screw your phone up this way... it's a pain.


in all reality though, 95% of these issues will come from problem A as we all generally will have that exact senario come about and is exactly the cause of why mine has acted up. every time i've opened my window during the hot summer for a good cool breeze at night, i've woken up to a phone that i simply want to bash with a sledge hammer until only dust remains. if you want a phone that will tolerate those conditions, use that newer rugged military droid from verizon (no i'm not a verizon rep, just a suggestion) as it actually is shock proof, water proof, dust proof and scratch proof. my cousin's got one of those things, not the fastest as it uses the first gen processor but it's the newer OS version and works great. infact the other day he came home with a burnt hand because he droped it into this water boiling system that keeps food hot at his work. he freaked out, totally forgot about it being water proof and he rushed to grab it out and burnt the hell out of is hand... and then by his own "genius" realised there was a pair of tongs right there next to him had he just stoped and remember his phone was water proof...
 
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My Motorola Milestone has same ghost touching function ....and all the screen start vibrating going ups and down ....now rhight side of touch screen not function ......i claimed on varenty 3time the every time returened after 7 to 20 days with software update....any budy has an idea of touch screen sensores placement or its repairing????
 
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The person who said moisture is the problem was absolutely right. On multiple occasions, my Droid's touchscreen has gone out-of-control for a couple of days or a week. I ALWAYS traced the problem back to sweat, spilled water or moisture of some kind. It gets trapped under the screen so it isn't able to evaporate that easily. Once I spilled water on it and it immediately started pressing random buttons, scrolling down my contacts list and calling people I didn't want to talk to.

The key is applying mild heat to the phone to encourage faster evaporation, as well as blowing air on it with a lot of pressure so some of the air molecules make it into the hard to reach crevices and sweep those water molecules away.

It usually needs to be blow dried for 5-20 minutes, a minute won't do. I didn't want to stand there that long, but was worried about just leaving a hot blow dryer unattended and starting a fire or overheating my phone. So I triggered the "cool" button on the blow dryer by taping a coin over it, so it blew only lukewarm air. I placed the phone 2 inches from it, left it for 20 minutes, and when I came back the touchscreen worked perfectly!

Solving this problem was my greatest achievement. It's all downhill from here.
 
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Over the past week or so my phone has become progressively worse to the point where it was unusable. As suggested I tried cleaning the screen thoroughly, and also leaving it in a warm dry place, but it hadn't helped. Then for no good reason I tried using it with it plugged into the charger but with the battery removed and it worked fine. So I figured maybe the battery was bad (although it can run the phone for a whole day so I doubted it). I just cleaned the battery contacts in the phone and on the battery and restarted and the problem seems to have gone away. fingers crossed.........
 
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Just reporting that for me, HIGH HUMIDITY was the issue. I was staying in a 'Bed and Breakfast' where everything was just moist/damp. Besides causing hell due to mold allergies, my phone would exhibit the reported behavior after a night of sitting in this room. I naturally found this post, and attempted to clean my screen and what not. I left the room, and soon after (didn't keep track - one to two hours?), my phone functioned like normal. I was there for another night, and once again, the same behavior repeated itself in the morning. I left for home, and it has been fine ever since.

Unfortunately, I don't know what one can do if living in a high humidity environment except for running a dehumidifier for long periods of time (unless its extremely humid outsideas well...).
 
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Ok guys, I went thru the same problem, the only way I fixed was buying an used one, now, if you take the battery off, it works for a little bit, but this is the problem, (it has nothing to do with the charger), the droids have sensor on their screen, once the get damaged this is what happens ( phone acting possessed, doing weird things) I hope this helps, as I said I went thru this, if you guys have insurance you just pay the deductible and get an used one that looks new, or just go to a phone technician expert, they can fix it, but honestly it would be easier to buy an used one.
 
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It happens to me every coupe of weeks, and I have to really clean the screen with a weak windex solution sprayed on a cloth.

i will wash the screen a 1/2 dozen times and really try to remove any residue.... My phone then works for a few weeks. But it WORKS

if there is damage then obviously cleaning won't work.. but my phone has been so bad I thought for sure it was shot, but cleaning the screen thoroughly has brought it back everytime
 
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I definitely have to agree with the previous posts about cleaning the screen. My touchscreen was goiing nuts. I have a screenlock because I my toddler gets into my phone all the time, so I couldn't even unlock my screen because it would just go crazy and "the ghost" would push all the numbers. It would not react at all to the numbers I pushed. So I got all desperate and tried to figure out how to solve the problem. I tried the cleaning suggestion and wiped my screen off with a drip of Windex and it worked perfectly! My screen now works like new and i'm happy. :) So everyone who has the same problem, I can only suggest to CLEAN YOUR SCREEN!
and to everyone who suggested it previously, thanks a million! :)
 
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For the last 2 weeks my screen issues have come back and gotten progressively worse. Last night it was completely unusable. Cleaning and drying it doesn't seem to work anymore.

I think the touch sensor is completely shot. I'm trying to hairdryer it and I also have a packet of silica that I am going to seal the phone in a bag with to try to dry it out. I just don't think moisture is the problem at this point.

I just don't know what to do....insurance is a waste, I'm not going to pay $100 for a refurb droid....and Verizon won't release the friggin Nexus. I can't go 2 more weeks with this phone.
 
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Just thought I'd add that my phone went thru the ghost crazies, randomly dialing, opening programs, typing all of that. I thought it had to do with my charger, maybe it did, I don't know, but after a day of this crap, I put it near a low heater for about 3 hours, making sure it didn't get too hot, but it was pretty warm, after that booted up an older rom pre-.2.3.7 and the problem goes away. If I put anything newer than October on there, I get the screen crazies.

I'm just glad I can use my phone once again. It rained out here 4-5 days ago and although I don't remember it getting wet, maybe it did. I think drying it out thoroughly helped.
 
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this just happened to me yestarday but instead im using a htc inspire, but..... a few weeks ago my htc charger broke and i started to use a mortarolla charger and thats when everything started . even if i dont touch the screen it goes crazy also if im on the web it would start going crazy and if i touch the home button or anything on the lower screen it would touch something all the way at the top of the screen, and some times it doesnt let me charge my phone like it would charge for 5 seconds then turn off the charge then turn back on. android has so many problem thats why i suggest you go with an iphone next time
 
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My droid has been going crazy every since I accidently spilled just a small amount of wine on it. I noticed that for months it seemed to stop and then today I had an incident where a hose pipe on my radiator (heater) was sprinkling out steam and the droid got some on it and went back to: randomly taking pictures (of everything), dialing random phone numbers and sending smiling face texts. Thank you to the person who reminded us (droid owners) that moisture may play a role in this bizarre behavior. I am so glad that I can finally rest now. "Whola! Happy days are here again, because I love my.....droid!"
 
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:eek:
My droid has been going crazy every since I accidently spilled just a small amount of wine on it. I noticed that for months it seemed to stop and then today I had an incident where a hose pipe on my radiator (heater) was sprinkling out steam and the droid got some on it and went back to: randomly taking pictures (of everything), dialing random phone numbers and sending smiling face texts. Thank you to the person who reminded us (droid owners) that moisture may play a role in this bizarre behavior. I am so glad that I can finally rest now.
"Whola! Happy days are here again, because I love my.....droid!"
happy.gif


[/ QUOTE]
 
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I had the same problem. erratic touch input - AND the middle column of the screen didn't accept touch anymore.

It worked again after:
a.) applying the hair dryer on HOT setting for 20s. Medium setting for 7min didn't help
b.) cleaning the screen AND the speaker opening. within the last years dirt accumulated there, but when I scrapped it out all worked fine again. incidentally, the portion of the screen NOT working was the same width as the speaker housing...


thought i need a knew phone, but all praise goes to the hair dryer and the anti-dirt application!!
 
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My droid was going crazy all day long. It was calling people and opening apps all by itself. It was possessed. I did a master reset and it didn't work. Then I read about the screen needing to be cleaned and so far it has worked. I was worried I was going to have to get a new phone. I just took a damp towel and wiped the screen and it looked greasy. I do wear hand lotion a lot. I will clean the screen more often now. Thanks! :)
 
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my motorola milestone has same ghost touching function ....and all the screen start vibrating going ups and down ....now rhight side of touch screen not function ......i claimed on varenty 3time the every time returened after 7 to 20 days with software update....any budy has an idea of touch screen sensores placement or its repairing????


huh??
 
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Ok, so here's the dealio:

Dropped my phone from about a height of two feet onto a snow/ice covered driveway. Screen starting acting absolutely crazy. This had happened once before when I dropped my phone into a sink with running water. At that time I'd grabbed my phone out of the sink as fast as possible, tore the battery out, and proceded to hairdry the entire thing for like 10 minutes. Popped the battery back in, turned on the phone, and (voila) it magically worked again. This time though, I thought I was screwed because the damage (so I thought) was from the drop and not moisture. Wrong.

Took the measures people recommended here. Didn't have a hairdryer on hand so I aimed a space heater at my disassembled phone parts (at a safe enough distance) for about a half hour (rotating the phone every five minutes or so such that the different sides would each experience roughly equal amounts of hot air). Sprayed a tiny bit of windex on some toilet paper and smeared the screen with the solution. Then wiped down the screen with a microfiber cloth. I repeated the windex/microfiber technique three times. Put the battery back in, turned it on, and bam! Back to perfect baby!

I'm not kidding around here, peeps. This seriously works for some arbitrarily insane reason(s). Make sure that you do exactly what I did and unless you're phone is severly damaged it will most likely operate properly once again! Thank you very much to everyone who has posted thus far!
 
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