Phantom Touches, Ghost touches, Invisible finger


Do you have problem with phantom touches?


  • Total voters
    114

Sad Phantom

Members
14 Oct 2013
4
13
Hi Guys,

I have a strange problem with my Xiaomi MI2S. From time to time my phone goes crazy and pretends as if it is being repeatedly touched by a "invisible finger". It happens several times a day and it lasts usually only several seconds but this invisible finger is very quick and presses the screen several times a second.
It is very annoying because it interferes with Apps and Games and I usually lost a game or work.
The random touches are usually on left top corner and near the center of the top edge.

I bought the phone from www.ibuygou.com. When I tried to get a solution to the issue from them they told me to check this forum. The phone is brand new. I have received it on September 25 2013.
The problem first occurred almost immediately after unboxing (without installing 3rd party app) when I was doing the initial setup. I tried to install MIUI 3.10.11 but it did not help.

I have been able to find more information about this on the internet and this phenomenon is called "phantom touches". I have managed to record it with my other phone.

You can watch the video here (watch small white circles at the top of the screen):


I enabled these settings on the device in order to record it:
Settings/Developer options/Enable development - ON
Settings/Developer options/Show touches - ON
Settings/Developer options/Pointer location- ON

I have discussed this problem in Czech MIUI forum http://www.miui.cz/index.php/topic,1142.0.html and there are at least 6 other people with the same problem.

- the phone is without antivirus
- I have tried reboot several times
- the screen is clean and without a screen protector
- I have never rooted the phone


I am able to interrupt this "Ghost touches" with sleep button on the side.

Is there a solution to this problem?
 
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Thank god I've found someone with the same problem as me.
No offence mate but I was beginning to lose hope of getting to the bottom of these phantom touches on my new Mi2s.
I also bought the phone from ibuygou.com and received it on the 28th September, like yourself, as soon as I was setting it up it began hopping from page to page without prompt from myself, it calls my contacts without prompt! This is a really difficult problem to conquer as I know so little about it. Please help if you know a solution
 
Hi Jimmy,

I have exactly the same symptoms. You are definitely not alone. I have created another thread about the problem on our national MIUI forum and there is currently 11 other people complaining about phantom touches.

You can read about it here but it is in Czech language.
http://www.miui.cz/index.php/topic,1142.0.html

Unfortunately we have no solution yet.

Please, try to record it and send it to ibuygou.com
 
Got a screen protector on it?
Hard to see because of the video quality.

If so you might have a bad one and it interferes with the digitizer.
Or the screen could just be smudged.

In both cases remove the s**t on your screen and live happily ever after.
 
this has happened to me at least two times. first time I noticed when the phone decided to call a friend of mine by itself lol I wonder if it could have something to do with the screen getting heated. if I remember correctly it happened to me when I had the phone in the car and exposed to the sun.
 
That is possible yeah. Another possibility could be battery puffing.

Is your battery physically inflated? Sometimes gas builds up inside them making them bigger, pressing against the screen from below.

Gesendet von meinem MI 2 mit Tapatalk
 
I'll chime in.

I had this problem a lot. It seemed every 1 out of 20 times I turned on my phone it would randomly touch itself in places. EX: I would open MMS and it would click a random contact and start clicking random keyboard buttons.

Sometimes it would get a sticky key and get stuck on the keyboard. The problem I doubt is iboygou related. I got my Xiaomi M2 directly from Xiaomi shipped, and mine has that as well.

I don't know enough about touch drivers, but it might be more low level than we think. I always thought it was because I got too many raindrops on my screen lol, but if enough other people have this problem. Time to investigate.
 
Got a screen protector on it?
Hard to see because of the video quality.

If so you might have a bad one and it interferes with the digitizer.
Or the screen could just be smudged.

In both cases remove the s**t on your screen and live happily ever after.

The screen is without protector. I mention this in the original post.
Touch screen is relatively clean. Of course, there is always something on the screen because we are people and people leave fingerprints. I refuse to polish a phone before each unlock.

I had iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and iPhone 4. It means that I have approximately 5 years experience with capacitive screens as a user.
It never happened to me on my iPhones and none of my friends with various Android phones complained about this.
 
Thanks for the reply Sad Phantom, yes I have already sent ibuygou.com 2 videos detailing the problem. Hopefully if enough people visit this thread we can get to the bottom of it. Doesn't seem to be software related though? As you said you've found 11 people on the Czech forum, so we're certainly not alone. Thanks again
 
Well the reason I mentioned the obvious is because when I suffered from it it was exactly that.

Dirt on screen. It didn't even feel dirty or anything but it was enough to irritate the sensors.

So ten seconds later, after some scrubbing, it was as good as me.

Gesendet von meinem MI 2 mit Tapatalk
 
I'm joining the group of "phantom touches" users,

good idea Sad Phantom to collect all of us there,
hopefully some solution can be found to this annoying trouble to an otherwise very good terminal

my problem fits the description in first post pretty well,
frequency is once every 2-3 days, more or less. it lasts maybe 10-20" then everything is normal again,
sometimes switching off and on screen by power button seems to help, but not always

I found the problem on MIUI multi language first, and now with WIUI

first I tought to some hardware/defect reason, but now I'm more and more thinking about some software issue, or at least something related between software and hardware (touch screen?)
 
Last edited:
Weird... Is only MIUI affected?

Gesendet von meinem MI 2 mit Tapatalk

I think the problem with that is without kernel source all roms truly originate from the same tree, unless some people have been hacking the libraries and what not.

Occasionally my problem is because of a random rain drop or a droplet of water from bottom of cup. Though, it happens as well when device is completely dry.
 
Well, for me it seems like it's gonna be a hardware issue... I hope I won't have this problem...

Enviado desde mi HTC Sensation usando Tapatalk now Free
 
I had this problem, too sometimes.
Maybe some commits to our touchscreen driver from codeaurora can be helpful.
Otherwise xiaomi should check if this is a firmware problem.
 
This seems to be a common problem, the phone is truly outstanding apart from this obvious defect.

I don't know what else to try, the company I bought it from have me jumping through hoops, I've sent two videos of the phone going absolutely crazy, did factory resets, wiped all data like I was told to try, I didn't flash a different rom because from what I can gather it makes no difference. Sick to death of unlocking my phone first thing in the morning and have my phone call a contact without any prompt. It's bloody ridiculous, I researched this phone for three months before I took the plunge to buy from china, well it looks like I didn't do my homework very well.
 
This seems to be a common problem, the phone is truly outstanding apart from this obvious defect.

I don't know what else to try, the company I bought it from have me jumping through hoops, I've sent two videos of the phone going absolutely crazy, did factory resets, wiped all data like I was told to try, I didn't flash a different rom because from what I can gather it makes no difference. Sick to death of unlocking my phone first thing in the morning and have my phone call a contact without any prompt. It's bloody ridiculous, I researched this phone for three months before I took the plunge to buy from china, well it looks like I didn't do my homework very well.

If its a hardware problem, then its in ALL phones. I got my MI2 right after the engineering samples which had to of been one the first batches of phones and I have the problem.

My guess, low level driver problem requiring some updates.
 
My guess, low level driver problem requiring some updates.

I agree! Hardware problem should also be always there

So hopefully it could be solved soon by firmware upgrade
Is xiaomi aware of such problem? Any news about that?