Does the Droid Incredible Suffer from A Potential Grounding Flaw Causing Touchscreen Issues?

Chris Tabor has uncovered an interesting bug with his Droid Incredible, and he isn’t stopping until everyone knows about it. His in depth coverage of this issue is the first I have ever heard of it, and that seems to be the case with most users, but still his evidence is quite compelling as he is able to succesfully demonstrate an issue involving touchscreen unresponsiveness on several Droid Incredible handsets, while the same problems do not occur with the Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Eris.

The logical conclusion is that the issue arises from poor grounding, not allowing the capacitive touchscreen to read touch input. For those not familiar, capacitive touchscreens only work when the object touching them is electrically conductive. If you try writing on one with a standard stylus or other plastic item nothing will happen. If there was a grounding issue somewhere in the phone, touching the screen wouldn’t register as accurately due to current leaking out somewhere else in the circuit.

The initial problem was discovered using a car dock:

But to prove it wasn’t the fault of the car dock alone, user error, or a single defective handset, Chris presents the following:

We haven’t been able to test this one out on our own just yet, and being as this is the first we have heard of it can’t say it is a widespread issue, but I’m presenting this for the benefit of those who may have experienced similar issues. So anyone else experience this? Or is it a singular, isolated incident? Let us know in the comments!

Exit mobile version