Dead screen

[camplejo]

This morning I put my Optimus V in my pocket as I got out of bed and then stumbled a little and hit into the bed post right on my pocket where the phone was. When I pulled it out, and tried to turn it on, the screen was all white. I removed the battery and rebooted it and it boots fine and seems to be working except the screen is all black now.

Have I ruined the phone? Is there anything I can do about it?

 

[cammykool]

if it initially shows "LG" your fine

 

[camplejo]

Nope...displays nothing. The haptic feedback works, so the phone is functional, just nothing on the display.
Found out from VM that they will send me a reconditioned one for $24.99, so that's a pretty good deal. All the work to get it back to where my current one is (rooted, apps, data, etc.) won't be pleasant, though.

 

[cole2kb]

Do you have one with the newer screen, or the older one? You could use Screencast, make a nandroid, and restore it on the new one.

 

[camplejo]

How do I know if it is newer screen or not? Can you point to any reference about screencast & nandroid?

 

[cole2kb]

You would be able to tell by the Android version your phone shipped with.

Judging by your questions, am I to assume you were not rooted, or running a custom ROM?

 

[camplejo]

Bought the phone about 18months ago. Pretty sure it is Android 2.2. Phone is rooted, but no custom ROM.

 

[cole2kb]

I'm going to guess you have the older screen then. A nandroid is basically a full system backup that is stored on your SD card. However, that won't do you any good if the new Optimus you're going to get has the new screen, they require different drivers to operate.

You can still use Screencast to recover some of your data, like downloading SMS Backup & Restore from Play and saving the back-up to your SD card, and maybe using Titanium Backup to save app data, although I have little experience with that app.

So, if you want to give it a shot, you can. A few questions to start though, do you remember if you enabled USB Debugging ever? If you didn't, then none of this will work, and you're pretty much out of luck, as you need to be able to see the phone to enable it.

If you did have it enabled, do you have ADB installed on your PC?

 

[camplejo]

I did have usb debugging on at one point, but not sure if still... I used to have adb available when I rooted, just need to refresh my memory, since that was 18 months ago...

 

[cole2kb]

Well, if you never actively disabled it, then it should, in theory, still be on, unless you have to re-enable it on the stock ROM each time you plug in.

Anyway, here goes, hopefully it works. Turn the phone on, plug into your PC.

Go here: androidscreencast - Desktop app to control an android device remotely - Google Project Hosting

Follow the installation instructions. They are VERY simple. You should be able to run this program, and see your screen on the PC, control it with your mouse / keyboard, etc...

If that works, go into About Phone under your settings, and tell me the exact version of Android you are running. That will tell us if you have a new or an old screen. 99% sure you have the old one, but I could be wrong, I don't know exactly when the switch happened.

If you're running 2.2.2, you'll now want to go through and back up anything you want to keep to your SD card. You can use SMS Backup & Restore in Play to backup your texts, and Titanium Backup to backup app data that you'd like to keep.

If you're running 2.2.3, we can go through installing a custom recovery and making a nandroid backup for you to just restore on the new device.