Dead screen on Galaxy S4

[Dougmeister]

A few weeks ago, I started getting these strange vertical lines through the entire display. It would usually go away within a few minutes.

Today, I hit the power button to bring it out of "sleep" mode, and the screen flickered a few times... and died. I tried to power it back on; no dice. I pulled the battery and tried powering it on; no luck.

I plugged it into an AC charger and at least I saw the battery icon. I powered it on, and the screen flickered and died again.

Any ideas?

 

[SpookDroid]

Is the phone entirely off or just the screen? Flickering usually means that either a connector is loose or the display driver is faulty. Either way sounds like a hardware issue (which would need you to take it in for repair) rather than software.

Have you tried going into recovery mode? Do you see the screen CLEARLY without flickering?

 

[Dougmeister]

Thanks for the quick response and the info.

I can boot into Philz recovery, and the screen blinks about 2x/second, but at least I can read it and do things in there.

I bought a different-colored faceplate a while back, so it came with tools to replace it (take the old glass off, etc.)

I read some posts suggesting that taking the S4 apart and heating it up with a heat gun might fix it? That's hard to believe...

 

[SpookDroid]

It does sound like there's something not connecting properly, and it depends on what the issue is the heat gun might actually help, but again, it depends on what the problem REALLY is. If you took the screen apart before, I'm guessing a cable might be loose or was damaged during disassembly/reassembly .

 

[Dougmeister]

I never did attempt to replace the faceplate, so I didn't take it apart until today.

Do you think it's worth trying to fix? I'm going to try to get an estimate tomorrow, but most places will probably want >$100 to fix it and I only paid $200 for the phone about a year ago...

 

[SpookDroid]

If the estimate comes back as 100, yeah, I'd rather go for a new phone for a little bit of extra cash.