Chosen Solution
After dropping my Nexus 4 and breaking the front glas, the touch screen did not work anymore. I decided to change the full display unit (digitizer + LCD). I have now replaced the display unit with a new one and connected everything as it was before. Turning on the phone worked instantly and the new LCD shows a flawless starting screen. However, the touch functionality does not work at all. So now I’m wondering if I made a mistake in reassembling the phone or if the new display unit is defective. Is there anything I might have missed? Or is there a way to test if the problem lies with the display unit or the rest of the phone? I should note that I got the new display from ebay and while it certainly is new, I assume it’s not an original part. I also noticed that my old unit had some sort of shielding on top of the chip that is right above the digitizer connector, my new unit does not have this shielding… Any help would be appreciated!
Hi there. I’ve just had the exact same issue this evening. As I had purchased a glass/digitizer only in first place (which I couldn’t manage to install without destroying the original LCD as it is glued to the digitizer), I was able to push the diagnosis a bit further. -When booting with the LCD/digitizer assembly connected, the digitizer is totaly unresponsive. I suspected a flex cable damage or ESR damage to the digitizer chip, althought I am an experienced repair guy with all the proper equipment. -I then turned off the phone, and swapped the digitizer connector with the Glass/digitzer I had purchased before, just to make sure the problem was not coming from the logic board of the phone. And the glass/digitizer worked fine. -Now with the phone still powered on, I hot swapped the two digitizers, and the previously not working digitizer started working. It all stops working when you reboot the phone. -I have double checked every connector related issues and tested continuity on all traces. Hardware failure is not the origin of the problem. So my diagnosis is as follows : the digitizer chip provided by the manufacturer of these LCD/digitzers is not registering properly at boot with the kernel. If you put a properly registering one, the drivers will load up fine, and will be used properly with the “defective” digitizer as long as they stay loaded in memory. I have a 4.4.4 Kitkat, I have looked several places on google to find any low level trick to fix this driver issue but could not find any real solution. I have contacted the seller on ebay (elife-tribe) to address the issue and to know if they are aware of the problem. I’ll keep you updated of any further development.
Hi Janus, It sounds like you got a defective part from ebay. Check the connections and make sure there are no microtears, then go about removing it very carefully so that you can return it for exchange/refund. LG devices are very finicky when it comes to touch and any slight damage to the digitizer can cause them to become completely unresponsive.
Hello, just wanted to pipe in and say I’m having exactly the same issue. I did however find a kludge if you are stuck and are willing to stay running 4.2.2. I downgraded to 4.2.2 and the digitizer now works… not a perfect solution but at least I have a phone.
TLDR: If you’ve downgraded to 4.2 to get a working touchscreen, try upgrading and see if it stays working. I had a very similar experience today. I replaced my digitizer with an lcd/digitizer assembly I bought from ebay. The touch controller chip is a “Synapdcs” [sic] 5500CB-5 with additional markings FCA6616 (I might have some of the numbers wrong, the silkscreening is very poor quality):
It seems to match the digitizer that Phillipe described, except with 6 chips instead of 5 (4 decoupling caps, 1 resistor, 1 diode). My phone was running Cyanogenmod 12.1 nightly build (Android 5.1 based). When I powered it on with the new digitizer it didn’t register any touches! Disassembled and jostled connectors, reassembled, same problem. Eventually I found this thread here and also a post on the CM forums that sounds the same. Based on the advice here I reflashed entirely back to a factory 4.2.2 image via fastboot, erasing absolutely everything, and the touchscreen worked. Yay! (After the touchscreen came good I found out that the proximity sensor didn’t work, so I had to disassemble the phone again to apply this fix.) I didn’t want to be stuck on 4.2 so I figured I’d try to fix the driver. So I installed CM 10.1.3 (Android 4.2 based), which according to the other forum post didn’t work (but 10.1.2 worked). The touchscreen worked. Installed CM 10.2 (Android 4.3 based) and the touchscreen kept working. Now I was confused. I installed the latest CM 12.1 nightly build 20150619 (ie Android 5.1 again). Touchscreen still works. Hard power cycled the phone a few times, including unplugging from USB. Touchscreen still works. Issued a Factory Wipe/Erase User Data from Recovery mode, touchscreen still works. So… I’m really confused! I don’t think I physically made the screen come good, although maybe I did. The touchscreen driver includes firmware upgrade code, and it seems the firmware is stored internally on the driver chip rather than loaded from the kernel each time the phone boots. My theory is that downgrading to 4.2.2 and then upgrading through the various versions somehow created a working firmware upgrade path for the controller! To test this theory - if anyone else downgraded to 4.2.2 to get a working touchscreen, can you try upgrading and see if it stays working? I don’t know if you can upgrade directly to 5.1 or if the interim steps I went through somehow helped as well - maybe try 5.1 first and if it fails then roll back again and try step-by-step. Finally, to help debug here’s some debug output from the touchscreen kernel driver via ‘adb shell’. That’s under 5.1 with a working touchscreen. I didn’t get output under any other versions. :( I will make sure to post back if my touchscreen suddenly stops working again…
Hi I had or I should say have the same problem, but I found out how we can fix it, not permanently but it’s better than throwing 100$ screen away plus the phone itself. First time when I encountered with this issue I checked this topic and realized that I have to throw away my nexus phone and new screen which is my second screen that I’m replacing. But don’t worry, I’m writing with my brand new screen now :D So after you replaced the screens don’t plug the digitizer’s cable in, you must use the old (broken) screen digitizer’s cable, plug it in and turn your phone on and waite untill the end of booting step, still the new screen is not working but now you must replace cables again, congratulations. Please remember that you should put the sim card in before turning your phone on and if you turn off your mobile you must do all the steps again. That’s why I said I found a temporary way to fix it.
I’ve had this problem for a few months now, my temporary solution to it is to reboot the phone into the bootloader menu and then start the phone. I’d say I have a 50% success rate with getting the touch screen to work after doing this. Could be coincidence though. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Make sure if you have attached touch screen ribbon properly.
my nexus4 screen broke. digitizer stopped working screen was still functional. i got a new screen from ebay and replaced it. since then bottom half of the screen’s touch wont work. reading this page i downgraded from 5.1 to 4.2.2 and still my bottom half’s touch wont work.
