wash your screen
if not i guess the digitizer is fried, there’s an app that shows what part of the screen is currently being pushed
Huh - so the thought is maybe something is constantly triggering the touch screen?
Yeah the whole jittery thing really seems like it’s constantly “clicking” somewhere.
Maybe one of these will work (well I guess since you are doing warranty replacement it doesn’t matter much)
Actually I suspect that somehow washing the screen this morning before the weirdness started may have brought the problem on. (despite the fact that I took care to hold my finger over the USB C port, and that I’d done a similar wash under lukewarm water a number of times before, as you’re supposed to be able to do.).
Anyway, going to try to take it in tomorrow for warranty repair at a local place. Fingers crossed. This really bites. I haven’t dropped it that many times*, and certainly not this morning before it started misbehaving.
The interface is basically non-functional, neither gestures nor old school buttons.
*plus it’s had a protective case the whole time.
Idle question, but just in case the repair can’t be completed tomorrow, would it work to put my Google Fi sim in my old 3a XL until I could get the repair/replacement done, or am I missing something obvious? I mean, of course I wouldn’t have the latest security etc.but could it be a stopgap phone?
Physically they both appear to be nano sim so that checks out. If you got the 3a sim locked to a particular service provider, and the sim you have in the 5a is for a different provider, it probably won’t work. However, it’s safe to revert regardless so won’t harm either phone for you to give it a go.
Wash phones with a paper towel + some alcohol. Or give them a little wipe with the eyeglass microfiber. I wouldn’t risk water. Okay let’s say some water infiltrated the layer between screen + digitizer. put it by a sunny window for a week. Or in front of fan? It was plain water, no soap? Drying it out should work but probably takes a long time.
My pixel 6 Pro is IP68 rated. Can be submerged for 30’. So I’m not worried about washing the screen under running water.
I don’t know the specific rating of my 5a* but, unlike my previous 3a XL, is supposed to be able to be rinsed off with water.
*Looked it up: 67
Ugh, just talked to the guy at the repair shop–he says it’s likely the motherboard, and that’ll take a week to get here. :-(
Thanks for the reply–another question for you or others in the know about these things: will the backup of stuff like contacts, phone call records and messages from the 5a come to the 3a if I factory reset it? Is some of that stuff stored on the SIM card with Google Fi, or in internal storage?
Another general question: it doesn’t hurt the phone to slow charge it, right, say, off a computer’s USB port or something? I thought slow charging was better for lithium ion batteries anyway, since it didn’t raise their temp so much.
Oh, for some reason my old 3a XL is downloading a security update-- I thought it wasn’t eligible for more of those. It is taking forever during the “Optimizing your device” phase though, so who knows.
Contacts in particular can be saved on the SIM, on the phone, and/or in the cloud – that’s something that is generally configured by the user as a default and kept that way. But I think the default has been cloud for a long time, so hopefully that’s kept. Calls and messages can theoretically be transferred pretty easily, but I don’t have as much direct experiences with Pixels or doing so with a mostly non-operative device, sorry :(
Canuck
3747
I think all of that data is backed up by Google. Is keeping your contacts on your SIM still a thing these days?
I need to keep a copy “local” on the phone or SIM card for anyone I routinely text; the “see-and-respond-to-texts-and-MMS-via-any-PC-with-real-actual-popup-not-just-crappy-Win10-style-notifications” software I use can’t read the cloud-only ones. It’s mildly annoying.
Correct. I don’t keep anything on SIM these days. My contacts were restored when I first booted up the Pixel 6.
Well, happy to report that putting the 5a’s Google Fi SIM into the 3a XL worked like a charm. Call history and texts didn’t come over, but contacts did, so that’s good enough for a week. Now I can go drop off the 5a and they can diagnose it and do their thing.
Rimbo
3751
It died. Battery went on the fritz during a Girl Scout thing.
And I was finally able to pursue my lifelong dream of owning a phablet. Have a Galaxy S22 Ultra. It is wonderful. The pen and pen UI are amazing.
When I dropped off the phone at the shop the guy warned me that if the repair tech finds certain things in the phone meant to detect water intrusion, there will be no warranty repair, so I should never expose the device to water deliberately. It rather chaps my hide that even the Google store makes a big deal of the water resistance of the phone with a pic of the phone being splashed with water.
If the message they want to convey is “just in case it happens to get wet by accident blah blah” then freaking say so. So I’ll find out tomorrow what the skinny is, and I might need to buy a new phone after all. Recommendations for a mid-priced phone? The 5a wasn’t bad, but if it died from a few accidental falls to the floor (always in a case) over less than a year I’m not impressed with the durability.
The 6a is going on sale in 2 days, IIRC. You can also get a 6 second hand at pretty good prices these days. And the cameras are a thing of beauty.
If you want to go out of the Google lines, there are quite a few mid range choices:
Though not sure whether that’s what you consider mid range. There are many budget ranges to pick from these days.
Thanks! I just called the shop, though, and apparently it was just the screen the one with the problem, not the motherboard, from what they can tell, and they should have it ready for me later today.
Again though, not impressed with the durability compared with the 3a XL.
