Chosen Solution
Hey gang. About a year ago, my GF dropped her iPhone SE in water, and her AppleCare replaced it with a ‘“new” iPhone SE 1st gen, whatever that means (probably refurbished?) On this replacement SE, this morning after a call, the right half of the screen stopped responding to touch input. I also just noticed some vertical gray bars starting to appear on the very top of the screen (see attached image), mostly on the right half. Does it seem like this could be JUST a bad connection between the screen’s flex connector and the logic board? Or does the presence of the vertical banding imply damage to the screen?
It looks like it just needs a new screen as I see issues like this quite often after replacing the battery in the 5 series. As Charlie mentioned above, I’m not familiar with touch disease being a known issue in the 5 series but it could be a possibility. You won’t know unless you try a new screen. Good luck!
I replaced the screen and this problem went away – the phone works fine now, good as new. The battery was in good shape, no puffiness there. As I was pulling the screen up with the suction cup, I noticed that the screen glass wasn’t attached solidly to its plastic underlayment, with a slight bit of give between the two layers, on the top-right corner which was exhibiting the vertical bars and touch-screen failure. I’m not sure if this was a manufacturing defect or drop damage, but this is most likely the culprit. Thanks for all the help!
