[Q] Graphical glitching and static - Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

My friend smashed the screen on his nexus 5 and gave it to some shady repair shop. They replaced his screen (with a white one, on a black phone btw, now it has a white dot on top) and he paid a lot of money for it, but now his display won't work, so he gave it to me to fix, as I have some experience with fixing phones and he has no money left. The repair shop refused to take it back and he doesn't want to start a legal battle. As far as I've tested, the phone shows three behaviours. The first is that the phone boots normally, but without displaying anything. I can still hear it getting notifications and can connect it to a computer, it's just not displaying anything. The second behaviour is identical to the first, except instead of a black screen the phone shows colorful static which seems to correspond to screen-on time (when I lock the phone it goes black and vice versa). The third behaviour, which is the weirdest, is that the display works, but everything displayed is glitching. The google logo maybe has the top 20% moved down a bit, the boot animation may be choppy or distorted, the recovery menu may be divided into blocks which are moved around a bit. In this 'mode', I have never gotten it past the boot animation. The reason I wrote 'may' is because it's different every time, but eventually it always just goes black and stops responding until i disconnect and reconnect the battery.
I opened the phone and fiddled with the connectors a bit and found out that pressing the usb board connector to the mainboard seems to cause the phone to switch between these behaviours. I took a small piece of paper, folded it over a few times and put it on top of the connector and then screwed the cover back on to hold the connector firmly in place. That seemed to put the phone into constant behaviour 3 (graphical glitching).
What could be the problem? I know that the static indicates that the usb board or more probably its connector is faulty, but I'm more concerned about the glitching. It seems to me that the graphical processor is malfunctioning, but I have very little knowledge about graphical processing and displaying so I really don't know. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: the phone just did something weird, when I turned it on it displayed static, but then it started drawing the boot animation slowly from top to bottom. And then proceeded with behaviour 3 as usual, the animation ran at about 3fps and just went blank after 10s.

Okay, I have located the exact location of the fault, the USB board ribbon cable that goes over the battery was bent at a sharp angle and then apparently straightened again. If I press it in that point, the screen switches between static and nothing. I have not been able to recreate the glitching since I cleaned all the parts of the phone with isopropyl alcohol. Still, I'm interested in an explanation to avoid further problems with glitching

now it's behaving even more strangely. When I turn it on, it slowly fades from grey to bright white screen and then goes black and starts blinking a red light. What does this mean? Please help

anyone?

Related

Screen problem (video included)

Hi guys, hope someone can tell what is exactly with my phone/display.
Long story short – phone fell directly on display, absolutely perfect landing without any rebound, display went nut. Dropped it on back, fixed the problem.
4 days later, display went crazy again and remains broken.
Symptoms: black, grey, coloured lines.
What I can say from usage – they react more on dark colours. If I’m in white background, everything is absolutely fine, sometimes some line appear. As soon as it comes to grey or black, they go wild. They like move for second or two, and then settle, as you can see in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqhtWIOAAGU
LONG STORY LONG
Seven days ago, it dropped from 1 meter height, and it landed on it’s display, so directly it didn’t bounce not a tiny bit, it just got like glued to the surface. The same moment I knew it’s not good, and I was right.
Display couldn’t get out of sleep mode, when I presed power button I only got a bit of visibility, I could see start button, but if turned it on/off (sleep/wake up) couple of times, display would have normal brightnes… BUT, there were some dark dynamic lines over the screen, as soon as pic moved, they would appear, on static pic, only few would remain. Numerous resets didn’t bring any results, keeping it off without battery, no results either…
Frustrated (It has been like month or two since I’ve got this device), I decided to give a try to traditional Serbian method – hit the electronic device to get it working. I included some brains, so I dropped phone, on the other side (on the back), from some 30 cm height. It worked like a charm! Everything worked absolutely fine!
I could only think of situation that some display contacts must have pulled out a bit, so hitting it back, made them get back into their slots.
And everything was like before… at least for 4 days 
Then, without any trigger event, lines came back, and they’re here to stay!
Hard reset, nope. Reset, nope. Dropping it on the back, nope.
What I can say from usage – they react more on dark colors. If I’m in white background, everything is absolutely fine, sometimes some line appear. As soon as it comes to gray or black, they go wild. They like move for second or two, and then settle, as you can see in the video.
There is no one here to make good diagnostics, HTC is like white raven in my country, so can anyone suggest what to do, get new flex cable, get new display?
I am considering opttion to open it up myself, and check are all connectors firmly in place.
Your suggestions?
If anyone experiences anything similar - just reset the flex (flat) cable, everything will be like new

Need help identifing reason for strange and frequent freezes

Hi guys
I have this strange behavior going on in my Sentation.
Out of nowhere my phone started to have strange screen behavior... Didn't light up after pressing the power button (had to phone my self in order to get screen on).
The next thing was that suddenly the screen goes to maximum brightness or goes to minimum without any explanation (tried both auto brightness or manual).
After that I noticed that the screen went off when I was using it but when I pressed the left side of it it lighted up and off again... making me think of some kind of bad contact underneath. As I already had changed a broken touch screen for t3 times, and let the phone fall for several times I thought it had to do with some plug out of line...
I disassembled the phone completely and mounted up back again. The thing is that the phone started to freeze every 5 minutes (screen on but completely freezed. I have to pul out battery). Sometimes it freezes even in the recovery menu. I've tried several rom's with full wipe and not installing anything and its all the same.
Some times I still not that the screen goes off during the freeze but when I touch the left side it goes on again, but that doesn't change the freezed state even that I let down the phone for several minutes.
I disassemble the phone again, tried different back cover and different battery (one stock and other extra strength) I tried also all the suggestion related to the small pin in the back not connecting well with the back cover (adding an aluminium foil, pulling the pin out, etc..)
Nothing seams to resolve anything so I have clearly an hardware problem... but I don't know what to replace or where to look the damage!!!
Can anybody help me please?!
Update
I have an update on my problem:
I noticed that when I leave the phone on top of some kind of metal part and don't touch it it works all day without any problem but, as soon as I start to touch the phone, it freezes within minutes!
Could it be some kind of static electrical problem? How to resolve it?
I would apreciate any help
Thanks

[Q] Screen Died - Can I resurrect?

So my phone screen will no longer display anything. No boot screen, no nothing. The software is running back there just fine, but I can't see it. Could this be a software problem (display driver got corrupted or something)? If so, would someone be willing to tell me the best way to reset? Is it more likely hardware failure since I see nothing during the boot?
My set-up is as follows:
Recovery: CWM v14.4.6
ROM: EMBRYO 6.10
Rooted, debugging on, titanium backup installed
Any help would be much appreciated.
I think I may have found my answer. The screen has been working intermittently today and sometimes appears tinted red, green or blue. Looks like it's time for a new piece of hardware :-/
For anyone else having a similar issue: screen stops working completely, works intermittently, displays with red, green or blue tint, or displays an inverted screen, my problem seems to be a loose connection with a simple fix.
I followed these instructions: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1540425 through prying off the back shroud (the one held on by 7 screws). I believe the screen connector is the one on the left in the picture, just below the power button (visible in the picture between steps 4 and 5). I disconnected this (gently pry up), blew off the contacts to try to remove any dust and pressed it back on. I then put a small rectangle of masking tape in the corresponding location on the plastic shroud (mine already had a rectangle of black tape in this position) in hopes that this would help keep the connector securely pressed against its mate on the board. Finally, I snapped and screwed it all back, and so far so good.
My guess is that this problem/fix probably applies to more than the galaxy s II skyrocket - possibly it will be useful to someone someday...or maybe not.

Screen showing colourful static, not flex cable.

My screen is showing the static that is symbolic of a broken flex cable, so naturally after a quick google i realised thatd be the part to buy.
I bought it and its been fitted and the phone is still not working. It shows colourful static still.
Whats unique about my problem that i havent been able to find elsewhere is that
a) if i bang the phone on the back the screen will flicker to the boot up (swirly pattern thing) and freeze and after a couple of bangs i can eventually get it to stick on a working screen, hence why i think this is a hardware issue.
b) not sure if this is a coincidence or not but when the phone was opened up and the back was off, pressing on the front facing camera and around that area appeared to help sometimes, could simply be coincidental though.
thanks

Green Screen?

Hey,
I was replacing my screen, when I went to test it instead of the google logo I got a fully green screen, the phone booted, but continued to be green. The always on display looks exactly as it should. Once it was fully on, I managed to put my pin in blind and the phone all works fine (it seems), and some black gets through, I assume the screen turns off those pixels which is why maybe that shows up correctly(ish).
The interesting thing is, I did at one point have to working fully, full colour, this was between reconnecting the ribbon cable and restarting, but I pressed the power button to sleep it and then hit it again and if I remember correctly was green again. So that made me think "poor connection" of come kind. What's even more strange is that when it is green and I press the power button to sleep and wake, the screen appears at least to display the full colours at the end and begging of their animations respectively. Maybe its not full colour, but at least it's more visible.
The final thing is when I go into the bootloader, sometimes it's full colour, and others it's got the solid green effect where black isn't displayed. What's odd is, even when the bootloader is showing correctly as soon as start is click it goes to a full green screen again and we don't see the logo at all. Also I managed to get into safe mode and it made no difference. It's just odd that it seems to decide to green, rather than due to any cable tussle
Basically has to a cable issue, but I'm not sure how to troubleshoot it, and advice on how to proceed would be much appreciated. Like if the screen arrived faulty, if the connector is damaged in the phone so it can't be used, and the motherboard would need replacing.
Thanks,
Dillon
In recovery mode, there's full colour as well, I factory reset the phone, but it made no impact. However entering into recovery mode did flash the google logo and some of the screen whit, and the same thing happened on reboot from recovery mode.
It seems so odd to have these kind of consistent moments of colour and not colour if it's the ribbon
I should have also mentioned, that the clamp is broken, could that be the issue, does the connection need to be screwed in?
Also Here are some images of both the phones connection and the screens
I'd say jb weld your broken clamp before buying parts. Could be as simple as that it's not a tight enough connection

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