Fixing Touchscreen Issues in Android Phones

Fixing Touch IssuesI have always been hearing a lot of touch issues in Android phones, particularly in most budget phones like Sony Xperia Tipo, Miro, Xperia J, Xperia U, Samsung Galaxy Mini to name a few. Lately, one of the phones in my household, a Sony Xperia Tipo, had the same issue. A quick search online made me realize that it was common among most Xperia phones.

At most cases, this could only be a calibration issue. This can usually be identified when your phone receives wrong co-ordinates. Simply put, if you happen to press the top-left corner of your screen, your phone might understand that you’ve pressed on the center of the screen, and the corresponding action happens then. This could really be a pain when you happen to type on the soft keyboard and your keystrokes are wrongly interpreted by the phone, as a result, when you press ‘e’ on your soft keyboard, you might get, say ‘t’ in the textbox.

Identifying Touch Issues

Before you proceed, make sure you really have the touch issue. To do so, we’ll access the Service Test menu by keying in *#*#7378423#*#* (Sony), *#*#197328640#*#* (other phones*) in the phone dialer (where you usually type in numbers to call). On the menu that appears, press ‘Service Tests’ followed by ‘Touch Screen’ to test your touchscreen

Here, try drawing with your finger over the dark area. This creates a pixel-thick stroke. Check if the co-ordinates are properly matched and that you get what you’ve drawn. If the stroke is off the way, or has jumped or creates a random stroke, it could mostly be a calibration issue and could be solved just by installing a tiny app and running it once.

Calibrating the Touchscreen

To calibrate your phone touchscreen, we’ll have to install an application (APK). Before you proceed, make sure to enable application installation via unknown sources. To do so, open up Settings > Security, scroll down a bit to turn on “Unknown Sources”.

Now, download Calibrate.APK and save it to your desktop. Transfer it to your phone via Bluetooth or data cable to install the application. Once the application is installed, place the phone on a flat surface, open up the application and press the large “Calibrate” button on the screen. This shouldn’t take more than 15 seconds. Once calibrated, see if the touchscreen works good. You could follow the same steps you did now to identify touch issues.

Or, if you have Android SDK on your computer, you could just push the apk and start it via adb. This could prevent the long procedure of transferring to your phone and changing the settings to install the application.

If the problem still persists, get in touch with the manufacturer authorized service center. It could be an issue with the firmware, or the hardware itself.

[*] The service test number depends on your manufacturer. Please do check online.

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