Keyboard Backlight Not working?

[Jormsen 12]

I just received my pro1 x, while using it in the dark i missed the keyboard backlight. Is there a trick to turn in on or is it defective?

[mosen 202]

Firstly, congratz!
The backlight should auto switch on and off when you slide the keyboard from android build 2.1.0 on.
Check in the bottom most settings item for the build number. it should say 2.1.2 since that's what the production run was flashed with.
In that case, i'd advise to contact support@fxtec.com.
If its a lower build number, you could try flashing a newer on. dd`

[VaZso 1,998]

23 minutes ago, Jormsen said:

I just received my pro1 x, while using it in the dark i missed the keyboard backlight. Is there a trick to turn in on or is it defective?

You may also check if your Pro¹X stays in landscape mode when the keyboard is open while you rotating the device.

[EskeRahn 5,459]

1 hour ago, VaZso said:

You may also check if your Pro¹X stays in landscape mode when the keyboard is open while you rotating the device.

Also check if Caps changes.

And if you are in E.g.Settings search (at the top), does the fake keyboard disappear when you slide open the real one.

(Trying to find out if it is the light in it self that is the issue, or it does not detect the keyboard being opened)

[Jormsen 12]

Thank you for your tips. Wondering why i didn't get any info on your posts...
The screen goes to landscape as soon as i slide out the keyboard, also the caps lock led works and the onscreen keyboard won't show up.
I contacted fxtec Support on my issues (no key backlight, right/bottom speaker only occasionally working and poor GPS).
I was supposed to try the android beta version and than to flash a generic persist img (without any advice to backup before).
Both steps didn't help. So i'm stuck with more problems than before.
Hope the Support will help on my first problems and reverting the new one, as it seems to be a hardware issue.

[EskeRahn 5,459]

2 minutes ago, Jormsen said:

Thank you for your tips. Wondering why i didn't get any info on your posts...

My fault, I replied to the post by @VaZso , i can see, sorry.

Sad to hear that it seems to be hardware related. I guess you will have to send it in. 😭

[Jormsen 12]

2 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

My fault, I replied to the post by @VaZso , i can see, sorry.

Sad to hear that it seems to be hardware related. I guess you will have to send it in. 😭

Don't think it's your fault, most likely it's just the forum not sending notifications.

Waiting on Franciscos reply on what to do next, but i expect to send it to fxtec.
Most likely i could fix the speaker issue by myself as it seems to be a contact issue, but i'm not opening the phone before they fix the backlight.

[matf-kabouik 414]

14 hours ago, Jormsen said:

I was supposed to try the android beta version and than to flash a generic persist img (without any advice to backup before).

Erm, it would have been wise of them to warn you on the need to do a backup first, as the stock persist.img doesn't contain device specific information that came with the persist partition originally on your phone. 

At the moment, it's not a huge deal as it's not even sure that any software uses that kind of hard verification, so your phone won't be broken, bricked, or unusable in any way, so don't worry too much about it, but we never know if the attestation keys may not be necessary in some obscure software you'd want to use, or in the future years. There may also be ways to regenerate this information that we don't know of yet. In general, I think every flashing instructions here on the forum or by email with the support or a community group should be prepended by a warning of this kind:

First and foremost, backup your "persist" partition. Better safe than sorry. Instructions are in other guides, Please, do not skip that step, there is no other way back to the vanilla persist partition.

You may as well try an alternate OS now, just to cross check and see if indeed your backlight issue may be an hardware one (keyboard backlight works in SFOS and Droidian at least, and I believe Ubuntu Touch too to some extent), and then come back to stock. Perhaps it could also just be a loose connection on a ribbon cable? I don't know how the backlight is wired.

 

[Jormsen 12]

12 hours ago, matf-kabouik said:

In general, I think every flashing instructions here on the forum or by email with the support or a community group should be prepended by a warning of this kind:

First and foremost, backup your "persist" partition. Better safe than sorry. Instructions are in other guides, Please, do not skip that step, there is no other way back to the vanilla persist partition.

Something like that would have been nice, only can hope i'm the last one to experience this.
Only backed up my data but nothing else as there were no instructions on how to backup any of the partitions.

12 hours ago, matf-kabouik said:

You may as well try an alternate OS now, just to cross check and see if indeed your backlight issue may be an hardware one (keyboard backlight works in SFOS and Droidian at least, and I believe Ubuntu Touch too to some extent), and then come back to stock.

As there still seems to be some hassle on sensor data when reverting back to stock, i'll just wait on the support to talk to their dev-team.

12 hours ago, matf-kabouik said:

Perhaps it could also just be a loose connection on a ribbon cable? I don't know how the backlight is wired.

Tried to figure that out on their videos https://vimeo.com/user124749107.
It seems like there is only one connector for keyboard input, backlight and caps lock led, but it's hard to tell based on that footage.
I'm tempted to open it, but it's new and i don't want to loose warranty on a already defective device. Also i don't have my tools with me as i'm visiting my parents.

Maybe someone who already opened the Pro1 X can tell if there is only one connection to the keyboard or if the backlight is connected by its own?

[matf-kabouik 414]

I've opened Pro1s but don't really remember, and it could be a tad different here anyway. What I know however is sometimes the FPC were not perfectly connected, but not necessarily completely disconnecter either. This happened to me after a soft fall when the USB charger was plugged, which applied some force to the USB board and probably disconnected it a bit. After that, several things stopped working, including I think the microphone or the bottom speaker. Reconnecting the ribbon cable fixed it.

I can't tell however if the same could happen with backlight. In general, unless you really break your device while disassembling, F(x)tec tends to not void warranties when devices have been opened. They even tend to encourage it if you know what you're doing, but I think it's still be best *not to do it* before they explicitly tell you so.

[Jormsen 12]

On 8/19/2022 at 4:29 AM, matf-kabouik said:

What I know however is sometimes the FPC were not perfectly connected, but not necessarily completely disconnecter either. This happened to me after a soft fall when the USB charger was plugged, which applied some force to the USB board and probably disconnected it a bit. After that, several things stopped working, including I think the microphone or the bottom speaker. Reconnecting the ribbon cable fixed it.

Thank you! That sounds promising to me. Hope to hear from the support on Monday.
Would be great if that's the case on my phone and they allow me to open it so i don't have to send it in.

Meanwhile I rooted the phone to have a look at 

/sys/class/leds/button-backlight/

max_brightness has a value of 255, so that should be when backlight is on from software.
While closed brightness has a value of 0, while open 255 so software seems to work as supposed.

[brunoais 334]

44 minutes ago, Jormsen said:

While closed brightness has a value of 0, while open 255 so software seems to work as supposed.

Yep. Seems like a hardware issue. Possibly the cable not well attached (as suggested before) and possibly detached itself during shipping (because not well attached -_-)