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We received a tip a few days ago of how some HTC Sensation users are reporting some really strange touchscreen issues with their devices. Apparently, the device becomes unresponsive, unable to register quick button presses and swipes. Sometimes, it wont register touch input at all. You can imagine how frustrating this could be when trying to send off a quick text message or pick up someone’s call, let alone in an emergency situation.
Although we’re unsure of how widespread the problem is, I can tell you I’ve experienced this “unresponsive touch screen issue” first hand after messing around with my brother’s Sensation 4G. According to one of our readers, they’ve spoken directly with T-Mobile customer who is well aware of the issue and currently waiting to hear back from HTC. Using the power of Google, I’ve found more than a few Sensation owners on XDA experiencing the same problems with their devices and even one of the guys over at Android Police who recorded this video demonstrating the issue:
With no fix or workaround in sight (factory resets and hardware replacements failed to solve anything), many are left wondering if this is a hardware defect or something more along the lines of software? General consensus seems to go more along the lines of software and it actually brings to memory the same issue Sense ROMs were having on the G1 back in my day. It was 100% a software issue back then, which leads me to believe the same about the Sensation today. If that’s the case, a simple OTA update from HTC should be able to fix this annoying bug. Seeing how the Sensation is considered to be HTC’s newest flagship phone, let’s hope it’s a speedy update. You guys experiencing any touchscreen issues with your Sensations?
Thanks, Rob!
I definitely experience this issue & its annoying because I have to turn ny phone off & on because it just won’t work!!!
Haven’t experienced any of this yet.
my sensation started doing that when i added more apps and added twitter to the lock screen. after removing some apps and replacing twitter back to mail, it worked perfectly. it still does!
Now that I think about it, I’ve only had that problem when I had the FriendStream lockscreen. It went away when I went to a plain lockscreen with just my wallpaper.
I’ve had my HTC Sensation for about 2 weeks now and I haven’t experienced any of these issues.The touch screen is just as responsive as when I first started it up.
Yeah it happens every once in awhile. It was so bad this one time because I couldn’t answer a phone call because it wasn’t registering my touches and I was waiting for that phone call all day!!!
i’ve had the same issue numerous times! so frustrating!!!
I think it’s a bug in Sense. I’ve experienced it but not since I’ve been running a custom ROM.
I have not experienced this at all, but Ive been using Adw launcher since the start, so I think this is a sense 3.0 issue.
i’ve never had any issues (any at ALL)…have had the phone for over a month now
Yup, once in a while. Usually I just hit the power button, wake it up and its back to normal..
No problem so far.
Nope.. not this issue.. “except”. When I first installed Traffic Jam after getting the phone, the cars would only slide on vertically, which increases the difficulty a bit when you can’s slide anything horizontally (if you could finish a level that way, your special).. So I uninstalled and reinstalled the game and it works fine now… That has been the only touch screen snafu to date for me.
my wife’s sensation has been doing this for the past few days as well. i figured it was all the makeup on her screen o_O
cleaning the screen didn’t fix it. i’m hoping there’s a response from HTC about this. i didn’t want to have to exchange the hardware…
T-mobile gave me a HTC Sensation to try out for a few months, so I’ve only had it a couple of days and I haven’t had any issues with it, I’ll be on the lookout now though
I am having this problem as well
I have this problem very often with the lock screen and the lock pattern. Hope they fix it soon.
Yeah mines has touch screen issues but its definitely software related. Doesn’t happen all the time. It usually becomes unresponsive in the lockscreen.
If you are having this problem, please sign in to this petition as well:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/htcsensationtouchscreenproblem/
There is a temporary fix for this.
Have a look here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1129272
Just to summarize, use the phone until the battery dies, pull out the battery for a few minutes, put it all back and charge it fully. The most important think is NOT to play with the phone while is charging. Do this cycle two or three times and it should be ok.
As long as you don’t use the phone while is charging the problem doesn’t come back. This worked for me and many others.
PROBLEM IS SOLVED, with 1.35.401.1 update from HTC
Not for me and many others
lol “and many others”
sounds as if you are desperate to prove something
I am ! Want to swap your sensation with mine so I can rest and you can see for yourself how it is in my shoes ?
Many others (at least 135 users of XDA forum ) wasn’t an exaggeration…
I’m sorry but for what its worth HtC just doesn’t have the technology to make good hardware built in a small compact space
Dust getting inside the screen…et etc just can’t handle it.
A lot of comments suggest it’s a sense problem, but just in case his helps there was a similar issue with the Dell Streak. The touch screen would become unresponsive and you couldn’t even unlock the screen. It was found out to be caused by having the phone in your pocket with the screen facing your leg. Now that I keep the screen facing outwards, the problem is completely eliminated. The Sensation issue might be something completely different, but this could be worth trying
Glad I bought a Galaxy S II !!!! :D
I thanks god! I did the same.
Had mine since it first released on T-Mobile and have had zero issues with touch at all and I’m a heavy user. Ordered mine through T-Mobile website just as an FYI. I know some people that got them at Wal-Mart had some issues, so maybe the bad batches were only at certain locations. Could be software but then it should affect most, or all, users, so who knows?
yea me too first day i got the phone from Tmo no issues i had wit this phone n pluz since its S-OFF n Rooted still good to go
Mine sporadically has issues and I got it from a TMo store.
As Steve Job would say, you not swiping it right!
hahahahahahaha!
No issue here. Only had the phone about a week but no issues yet.
I have experienced the touchscreen issue a few times. It does eventually come back, but it is annoying. I hope there is some sort of software fix for it. I haven’t seen any software updates since I bought the phone a month ago. It would be nice to see HTC working on that, but maybe all their time is being spent on the unlocked bootloader. Shame really.
What lockscreen are you running?
The standard one with nothing but the date. The very first option.
Sim Floyd, Jr.
i have this problem all the time im ready to go back to mytouch 4g it seemed to run alot smoother
and im a big htc fan
also the 3D effect when switchin home screens lags
its a software issue. i had a same problem with a sense 3.0 rom on an inspire.
Hope you are right and HTC will get off their bottoms and issue a fix earlier rather than later
More importantly why don’t they do something for the battery life. I bought a 1900 battery and I still get only 2/3 of a day worth. This has to be the worst phone i’ve ever owned battery wise.
I woke up this morning at 6AM with 100% and its 11:30 and i’m at 43%. I did use it heavily for an hour but that is still pretty bad.
Have you tried Green Power Free? It maximizes your battery life by turning off your data when you aren’t using your phone then automatically turning it back on you go to use it. My Evo went from dying at 2pm to dying at 8pm.
Seriously, its such a shame to have a flagship phone which has a pathetic battery life…I face the same problem…I am starting to hate this phone. Whats the point of having features on the phone when the battery life is very bad….
Inexplicably it will stop responding in the lower portion of the screen (like when I’m trying to pull the ring to unlock) but only for the first few seconds after activating the screen, almost as if the capacitive layer of the glass wasn’t active just yet.
This will happen sporadically for a week or two then it pops up again randomly several weeks later. Mine right now is perfectly fine.
ive had minor issues with the touch screen not responding at times but its mostly when my phones on a table top or something flat and i dont pick it up to use it. but has anyone else experienced issues with the camera/flash? when my phones at a low point of battery percentage and i try and take a picture WITH FLASH the phone fully shuts off and i have to remove the battery in order to turn it back on. ive factory resetted my device and have also gotten 2 new ones and i still have the problem.
The issue could be a potential internal heat problem … capacitive (if thats how you spell it) touch screens are super sensitive to heat sources. If not shielded properly or buffered from a heat source correctly issues such as the ones people are currently experiencing can happen. I experience this same issue with my Dell Streak, HTC Incredible, and HTC Aria if I put them in my pocket screen facing my leg.
From what i have seen in the video, a person’s hand can give off enough heat or the battery during use can create enough heat to cause the screen to behave such as it is.
I have had the same issue, I also experienced a screen shift, the lockscreen shifted about an inch up. Leaving an inch of blackness at the bottom of my screen.
I can also confirm this. In two different Mobile-Operator-Shops i played around a bit with the sensation and both times i observed exactly what you see in the Video above. I really had the feeling, that the phone doesn’t do what i want.
I started to think that it’s in a kind of ‘Demo-Mode’. Weired….
Sensation, vodafone UK 1.35.161.2
Has this issue since day 1, lock screen playing about and unresponsive moments on home screen also typing. I then installed a theme by CypiS published here http://phandroid.com/2011/08/02/sexify-your-htc-evo-3dsensation-with-amazingsense-skin-no-root-required/
It seriously sorted the problem out, haven’t had it freeze or play up since. Definatly recommend trying it out, hope maby someone else finds success!
Matt
I don’t think I am having any of the issues mentioned in the video, but a couple of times my phone went into this strange mode where the bottom half of the screen went black and the top half showed what is normally on the bottom half of the screen, but half of the lock ring was missing. Has anyone experienced this problem and how frequently did you experience it? is there a fix?
sensation is awsome. ive had no problems. but I did notice that Tmobile is already selling referbished ones on line. this is a clear sign that some of them are having isues..