Help S9 screen *mostly* black when unlocking

[thomaswp]

About 30% of the time, when I unlock my S9, the screen briefly comes alive, and then turns black. Often the top ~5% of the screen is still visible, but the colors are wrong and it's distorted. I can still interact with the phone, and that 5% of the screen does change in some way, and haptic/sound queues show the phone is working.

This happens most often when I quickly lock and then unlock the phone. It has happened with increasing frequency over the past ~3 months, and now is quite common.

Usually I can fix it by locking again, waiting 10-15 seconds, and unlocking. If I unlock too soon it happens again. However, today after my phone got hot from being in the sun, it took ~20m before it would unlock properly - gave me a scare. Notably, when the phone was stuck this way, I could restart it, and the boot screen showed the Android logo just fine, but as soon as it booted the screen went black again.


To fix it, I've tried a hard restart, full factory reset, and booting in safe mode - nothing seems to affect it. Phone otherwise works great.

Is there anything I can do to fix this? Or do I just need to resign myself to getting a new phone?

 

[ocnbrze]

well if a hard reset does not do the trick, then it most likely not a software glitch, but rather, a hardware issue.

you can either take it in to get fixed, or move on and upgrade your phone.

 

[Dannydet]

I agree with ocnbrze on this one

 

[puppykickr]

To be honest, when you mentioned that the problem increased when the phone got hot...
sounds like a battery related issue.

The device is at the age where this should be a concern anyway, and heat is a destroyer of batteries of any age.

 

[Fox Mulder]

I have never experienced something like this on my S9. If I did I would definitely be looking to replace it right away as it's an obvious hardware problem without an easy or cost-effective solution.
But for now mine is doing just fine and in fact it just got a security update today.

 

[thomaswp]

Thanks all for the advice. I was afraid it was a no-easy-fix hardware issue - I appreciate the confirmation.

 

[flgirl04]

I know this is old but for anyone else who has this what stopped it for me was turning brightness up to max and turning off 'adaptive brightness'. It started it on my Galaxy s9 while playing an app so I uninstalled it. I waited about a week and I never had another problem. I recently tried reinstalling this game and the same issue started again. I uninstalled the app and it stopped. So try and see if those help and try uninstalling any new apps. I was about to buy a new phone.