Pro1, Ghost touches and other digitizer and display issues

[VaZso 1,998]

45 minutes ago, Rob. S. said:

By the way, to me it seems some (if not most or even all) of the cheap screens which come through Aliexpress have a minor flaw in that the lower (seen in portrait orientation) two corners of the screen are not fully active, a small outermost part is blackened. While some of us might not even notice let alone care (only some sellers even mention this), it's something the manufacturer might not want to accept. And screens without such small faults might indeed be difficult to get for anyone at this point, not just FxTec. 

True.

I have bought some spare screens and I have only found one which is acceptable and another one which has only a really minor fault, so it is practically perfect.

The worst had a big black spot away from the edges which was practically unusable.

The rest has relatively small but noticeable issues at one or two corners.

So yes, these are not perfect displays what F(x)tec probably wants to get.

I have only used two - one which had some problems at a corner and the curent has the same problem at another corner and its colour temperature at low brightness is different than what original display had.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

Also remember that FxTec sees a larger part than the display it self as one spare part, so it might be other components they are missing for those.

[Val 75]

21 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

Also remember that FxTec sees a larger part than the display it self as one spare part, so it might be other components they are missing for those.

C'mon... it's not like the phone was released just yesterday or they're using some other display for the X. It is the kind of part which it should be always in stock and provisioned. Also, they're selling it as a spare from the begining. No valid excuses fot not having it in stock.

[Rob. S. 1,664]

1 hour ago, Val said:

C'mon... it's not like the phone was released just yesterday or they're using some other display for the X. It is the kind of part which it should be always in stock and provisioned. Also, they're selling it as a spare from the begining. No valid excuses fot not having it in stock.

You obviously didn't quite understand what he was saying. He said, in addition to the general problem of reliably getting fully-functional copies of the display panel itself (for which the sellers on Aliexpress do not qualify), there could also be a shortage in some of the additional parts that make the screen assembly Fxtec are offering as a replacement, which is substantially more than just the panel. The assembly also includes the casing plus several other components like front camera and speaker.

You do have noticed that there have been supply problems worldwide for quite some time with electronic components of all kinds?

Edited November 23, 2021 by Rob. S.

[Val 75]

On 11/23/2021 at 3:42 PM, Rob. S. said:

You do have noticed that there have been supply problems worldwide for quite some time with electronic components of all kinds?

Really? When exactly?

You seem to "forget" that ALL the parts for the X were "secured"/bought in FULL more than a year ago and the only reported problem was with the cpu. The components crisis, mainly chips, is something more recent, around 6-9 months.

And, besides the X case mentioned above, as a producer/seller/repairing company, they should have a buffer stock for the most common replacement parts like the display, which they're also selling. We're not talking about some weird/custom part needed in some very rare cases.

 

 

[EskeRahn 5,471]

5 hours ago, Val said:

And, besides the X case mentioned above, as a producer/seller/repairing company, they should have a buffer stock for the most common replacement parts like the display, which they're also selling. We're not talking about some weird/custom part needed in some very rare cases.

Do you expect say one making a washing machine to stock all the parts that might be needed to repair their machines for the whole expected life time of the device?

I doubt anyone would.

The sensible thing to do is to stock what can be expected to be needed within some reasonable time frame, where any needed reorder can be expected to be fulfilled. And with new models you never really can be sure which spare-part will be the one in most demand, so they would not want to buy a lot of parts they are never going to use.

The problem now is that reorder fulfilment expectations that made sense a year ago does not now....

Remember that this is not a billion Dollar business selling millions of devices. We are talking devices in the thousands here. So small fluctuations have a much larger impact AND the priority they meet everywhere is likely to be low.

[Rob. S. 1,664]

@Val I'm not forgetting anything, and I'm not confusing "secured" with "bought and received", either. Also, while I agree that "they should have" done that in a perfect world, and I add that they should have done a lot more and should be doing a lot more in general, and also a lot of the things they're actually doing could and should be done better, this world isn't perfect, and with even just a remote idea of how the smartphone business works no one would have had any right to assume that they were even still alive after the Pro1 production had hit all those obstacles, let alone have substantial amounts of spare parts in stock for a device that hasn't even shipped yet.

Now that they still are alive and we can at least still hope to get something worthwhile for our money, the least we have to assume is that they've been on a super tight budget themselves for quite a while. Otherwise they wouldn´t have needed to go through Indiegogo for the Pro1X in the first place. Also, we can safely assume that things can still get awry for them at any time, for any minor additional obstacle. Do and think what you will, but I'll just act chill and lay low, follow the information that frequently trickles in, patiently wait for the two devices and those spare parts I've ordered and paid for myself to actually show up, and in the meantime perhaps get two or three more display panels through Aliexpress to be on the safe side there, and hope that things may become more normal for everyone involved when the Pro1X has become a real product that actually leaves the factories and might even be ordered with a sensible delivery time.

 

 

[Doktor Oswaldo 906]

Well while I understand the frustration, everybody does, we all have been there, I think it is important to remember that we just have no idea. FxTec may have done things wrong. Or they just don't get what they have paid for.

The truth is, to produce a smartphone you are highly dependent on a few big players that can play ball with you. Sure if they don't send you the parts you may consider legal steps. That may bring you your money back but you surely won't get any parts afterwards. Not when you are so small that they don't really care.

In addition to having no leverage at all, a lot of the supply chain is controlled by china and they must and will fulfill the needs of Chinese companies first.

Having spare parts lying around is expensive and isn't really the way things are done anymore. With the huge global transport network in place, it is often ordered in time. This should not really be the case for fxtec themselves, since they only have a few thousand units BUT they don't produce themself. The factory doing it may require them to not have any spares lying in the way but to organize a JIT-supplier.

In conclusion, there is a highly complex supply chain, probably spanning multiple countries, which is probably completely uncontrollable for fxtec. The Error could be anywhere also at FxTec but they are just the last Part.

Why are they not explaining it to us if it isn't their fault you may ask? Well if you are at the goodwill of your supplier, it may not be wise to publicly blame them for anything.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Doktor Oswaldo

[Val 75]

On 11/25/2021 at 9:58 AM, EskeRahn said:

Do you expect say one making a washing machine to stock all the parts that might be needed to repair their machines for the whole expected life time of the device?

"Might"? 😄

So... again... we're not talking about some strange custom part or all of the parts. The display is the same part for Pro1 and Pro1X. 

You're telling me that after 2 years of real life data of the defect rate for the display, the demand for buying it at 149gbp, as offered, you cannot estimate and have a buffer stock? Really?

 

On 11/25/2021 at 1:43 PM, Rob. S. said:

 I agree that "they should have" done that in a perfect world

As you see, I'm not talking about a perfect world, but a real one based on facts, when you can learn from mistakes, not repeat them as if it didn't matter.

Same "perfect world" argument/advice for the customer who passed the 200 days without his phone sent for repairs?

 

On 11/25/2021 at 3:48 PM, Doktor Oswaldo said:

In conclusion, there is a highly complex supply chain, probably spanning multiple countries, which is probably completely uncontrollable for fxtec

Exactly! When you know from past experiences that there might be delays for sure, you'll order 20pcs (5 already sold and 15 confirmed warranties) or 40-60pcs for the UK hub?!? I'm not talking about thousands of displays, as subtly implied by one or the other.

 

[EskeRahn 5,471]

12 hours ago, Val said:

You're telling me that after 2 years of real life data of the defect rate for the display, the demand for buying it at 149gbp, as offered, you cannot estimate and have a buffer stock? Really?

In short, no I'm not telling you that.... Reread

[Rob. S. 1,664]

22 hours ago, Val said:

As you see, I'm not talking about a perfect world, but a real one based on facts, when you can learn from mistakes, not repeat them as if it didn't matter.

Same "perfect world" argument/advice for the customer who passed the 200 days without his phone sent for repairs?

Getting upset helps noone, least of all yourself. All we can do in such a case, after two years of complaints publicly and directly to Fxtec's support, is actively trying to help them by pinging Erik. 

Your prime mistake here is to somewhat naïvely think Fxtec wouldn't know that their support sucks, and how it sucks, and that therefore they could simply improve things by "learning" something.

As I said earlier, at this point we can call ourselves lucky that they even still exist. The main consideration of all of us who still are waiting for a device (or, like me, two) should be that they at least make it until our devices will be manufactured and delivered. If they fold, it won't help those with existing devices in need of repair or spare parts, either.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Rob. S.

[Val 75]

On 12/2/2021 at 3:32 PM, EskeRahn said:

In short, no I'm not telling you that.... Reread

I did: "might". You also used italics.

 

On 12/3/2021 at 12:38 AM, Rob. S. said:

Getting upset helps noone, least of all yourself. All we can do in such a case, after two years of complaints publicly and directly to Fxtec's support, is actively trying to help them by pinging Erik. 

Your prime mistake here is to somewhat naïvely think Fxtec wouldn't know that their support sucks, and how it sucks, and that therefore they could simply improve things by "learning" something.

I'm not upset, just trying to make a point and hoping that maybe they'll change the wrongs for which there are no valid excuses. 

I own several small companies, but one of them is the main backbone. One of my main employees left, you can say without notice, although in reality it was about keeping her word as agreed. In the past + one month I was practically doing also her job while teaching new staff and doing my part. There are some costs, less personal life and related, but if there is interest from management, it's doable. We're talking about more than two years, not smth that just happened yesterday, unexpected.  

Some things/procedures can be observed and fixed just by reading the forum. It's not a problem for you that you suggest to ping someone from the management, when the same management can read ALL the messages posted in a week in less time than needed to light and finish a smoke?!? 

 

Update and no so update:

FxTec support told me that they'll receive a shippment of displays at the end of November and that they'll contact me. Nothing so far, but December is still young.

Meanwhile, I just received my Aliexpress Elephone U Pro display, ordered in the same time with the support ticket. 7 days from China and the rest at the mortal postal office in my country.

I hope that an adjustable lidl heatgun will do the trick, because It didn't work just by trying to pry apart the screen and I didn't want to force it. I've read that someone used a hair dryer to dismantle the diplay from the frame. 

 

[EskeRahn 5,471]

See how 'easy' things are, even for this minor fruit company, according to nikkei here.

Surprised that some seems to expect that it is super easy for a huge player like FxTec to get parts as they need them, just they try a little harder....

[mbecroft 82]

I have the same issue. Have contacted support, received no response after about 2 weeks.

Tried @ToniCipriani's suggestion of taping down the black PCB. Since the pictures are gone from github, I'm not sure precisely what he meant, but I just some capton tape along the side of the black PCB adjacent to the display connector. Also left all the screws out (front panel just clipped on) for now. So far, so good. Fingers crossed...

Further data points:

- A reliable workaround is to squeeze the lower right of the display in a very particular way: with two fingers, push down in the far lower right corner, at the same time lifting up the right-hand edge about 20mm from the bottom with a fingernail. This reliably gets it working for a short time.

- Interesting to note that with the display unclipped there is no issue. More specifically - with *only the bottom right* unclipped, still no issue. It clearly has something to do with pressure on the display connector or the black PCB this attaches to.

Thanks for all the good advice in this thread.

[mbecroft 82]

I spoke too soon - it worked for a little while, but now is as wild as ever. It is possible to obtain a mode where it works, but not reliably, now even when leaving the display casing completely detached. Looks like another screen from aliexpress...

[EskeRahn 5,471]

It is really odd that this is seen by a number of people, but not everyone.

Would be nice to understand the root cause. Is it a quality issue on displays or connectors? Is the connectors sensible to e.g. humidity? Is it an assembly issue, that goes wrong on some? Is it a grounding issue? Is it a special mechanical stress that triggers it, that we could all accidentally trigger? Air humidity? Or???

I see something somewhat similar to the described while using a non-grounded cheap charger (tried several). But no issues while charging it through a grounded pc. So this make me think of static electricity and surface currents, that somehow triggers the digitizer...

[VaZso 1,998]

59 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Would be nice to understand the root cause. Is it a quality issue on displays or connectors? Is the connectors sensible to e.g. humidity? Is it an assembly issue, that goes wrong on some? Is it a grounding issue? Is it a special mechanical stress that triggers it, that we could all accidentally trigger? Air humidity? Or???

I have attached a photo earlier of the back of the display itself.
It has a ribbon cable at the botton side of the display (on the pure panel), that is where display and touch-related wires come from the display itself to the internal display controller and Pro1's controller speaks to this internal controller.

I am almost 100% certain the problem is caused by a discontinuity in some of the wires of this ribbon cable and the root cause is the movement of the display panel in relation to its base which causes this ribbon cable to move while the phone is in use and results in a break of the wires.
Maybe some of the Pro1s had a bit weaker gluing at the bottom side of the panel which allowed it to start moving (or binding of glue became worse as a result of external circumstances) while other Pro1's may not ran into similar related issues.

59 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

I see something somewhat similar to the described while using a non-grounded cheap charger (tried several). But no issues while charging it through a grounded pc. So this make me think of static electricity and surface currents, that somehow triggers the digitizer...

This kind of problem exists while using cheap chargers.
It is because it generates a lot of electrical noise and touch panel tries to deal with capacitive charges on its surface.

Edit:

I am speaking about the green ribbon cable in the following photo where it is circled with "1." as label.
It has a curve where it comes from glass towards the flex PCB and that curve is sensitive.

Edited December 11, 2021 by VaZso

[mbecroft 82]

First, to clarify one thing: the issue talked about in this thread is not to do with grounding or the charger used. It is some type of physical/mechanical problem in the display/digitizer.

Since the vast majority of reports relate to the same exact row in the digitizer, it can be inferred that it is a latent fault in the LCD/digitizer assembly design, or in the way the LCD assembly is mounted in the Pro1.

The idea that something is not fully secured and moving slightly, eventually damaging sensitive flex cable or potentially ever more sensitive connections to the actual panel and digitizer itself (circled in above post) is interesting...I noted on disassembling the display enclosure of my Pro1, all the screws were fairly loose. I'm not sure how exactly this might lead to stresses on the much more sensitive phone/digitizer cables/electronics illustrated by our friend above.

Update:

The trick I spoke of - pushing firmly down in L/R corner and up 20mm above on right - for me was 100% repeatable, so a starting point.

In trying out various further solutions, I first focused on that corner, but now, I've left the entire R/H side of the display assembly unclipped - so the display bezel edge is not being squeezed down to conform with the chassis - in other words, the display R/H side essentially can float with no strong stresses on the screen assembly. It is working 100% as of my morning today.

We'll see how long that lasts. It seems pretty clear that, by whatever root cause, the design of the screen or the phone makes it susceptible to this highly-specific failure mode, and I suspect that once failed, all the attempts in the world to repair it are merely rolling the dice and hoping that by bending things in a certain way, whatever it is will make proper contact, at least for a time.

Needless to say, I'll be ordering a new screen from Aliexpress today.

[VaZso 1,998]

2 hours ago, mbecroft said:

The trick I spoke of - pushing firmly down in L/R corner and up 20mm above on right - for me was 100% repeatable, so a starting point.

It was the same for me.
I suspect the lower-right corner of the PCB, so the left part of the wide ribbon cable near the edge (looking from behind) has the wires coming from touch-related signals.

2 hours ago, mbecroft said:

We'll see how long that lasts. It seems pretty clear that, by whatever root cause, the design of the screen or the phone makes it susceptible to this highly-specific failure mode, and I suspect that once failed, all the attempts in the world to repair it are merely rolling the dice and hoping that by bending things in a certain way, whatever it is will make proper contact, at least for a time.

I think it will last till the ribbon cable has a position where it conducts as it should.
I don't think there is a huge design issue with the screen or the phone itself. It may be related that they wanted to make the screen replaceable, thus, covered much of the self-adhesive area of the screen originally has. That makes the screen removable but if bottom part is not secured well, it can cause break in the flex cable part.

If the self-adhesive area would not be covered that would make screen replacement hard as it would need a heat gun for the screen to release and also it would make relatively high risk of the part below the screen to break as it is plastic.

So I think the problem is not huge but bottom part of the screen should be glued well enough.
Also, it may happen the glue itself holds well, but something - like cleaning it several times using alcohol - can go under the edges and may slowly dissolves the adhesive part.
So that is one circumstance which may matter as the real source of this issue.

Edited December 12, 2021 by VaZso

[Rob. S. 1,664]

Has this been happening with both original and (Aliexpress) replacement screens?

[VaZso 1,998]

12 hours ago, Rob. S. said:

Has this been happening with both original and (Aliexpress) replacement screens?

- My original screen was working for eight months.

- I have replaced it using another screen bought from Aliexpress which was worked for 4.5 months then started having screen issues - collecting colour dots which have disappeared by turning the screen off and on, later it became permanent (ribbon cable was injured at other part).
Gluing this case was not perfect as I only used double-side adhesive tape provided with the screen.

- I have replaced my screen once again using another screen bought from Aliexpress but using a better gluing method.
So far it works well since 10 months now.

So it may happen also with stock and replaced Aliexpress screens, so I think the latter is not better nor worse in this relation.

Also I would like to say again the curved ribbon (bottom) part of the display should be glued well to not allow that part of the screen to move and also need to be ensured that ribbon cable is not bent in a sharp edge.
Don't misunderstand me, the glue should be flexible anyway to allow the screen to be replaced but not loose.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

Does anyone know if the Elephone U is plagued by the same issues?
If not, it could be interesting to get a display with an Elephone-frame, to see if we can spot what they have done differently in the mounting,

If could well be, like @VaZso suggests, that it is the repairability that has this negative side effect.

[VaZso 1,998]

4 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Does anyone know if the Elephone U is plagued by the same issues?

I don't know but earlier I read about problems with replacement displays only worked for a short while on Elephone U Pro.
(I think as a result of unprofessional replacement.)

5 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

If not, it could be interesting to get a display with an Elephone-frame, to see if we can spot what they have done differently in the mounting,

Once I bought a display together with a frame for Elephone U Pro.
The display was glued in full original sticky surface, thus, it was hard to remove - however, I could manage to remove it.

Also, it had a metal frame as opposed to plastic here.
Of course its metal frame was much heavier...

7 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

If could well be, like @VaZso suggests, that it is the repairability that has this negative side effect.

It does not necessary the repairability which has negative side effect, but could be related.

What I suspect is the potentially weak/narrow gluing of bottom part and maybe some fluid can go below as a solvent.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

5 hours ago, VaZso said:

It does not necessary the repairability which has negative side effect, but could be related.

Ah sorry, I was unclear. I meant that the way they implemented the repairability might have given us a vulnerability, due to less glue than the Elephone-U. Of course it is not the repairability as such.

[ToniCipriani 194]

So my Aliexpress display arrived, and looks like I eff-ed up the repair and cracked the display trying to get that double sided tape to hold... also it sometimes flickers when I open and close the slider, so I think I broke the flex cable. 🤦‍♂️

Guess I'll have to order another display now, too bad no more discounts right now (got this one via Nov 11 sales).

Meanwhile, the promised display from F(x) _still_ hasn't arrived.

Edited December 16, 2021 by ToniCipriani