FIXED! Lumia 920 screen dark during call

[Slaador]

UPDATE:
The solution is simple, hilarious yet kinda sad. Just pucker your lips and blow the dust off the top edge of the screen. That's it.

It's so very disappointing to have such an issue on such a top-notch device... And the design seems to be so mature, what with it traced all the way from N9... But there you go.



Hey guys,

I have this strangest problem where during a call, the screen on my Lumia 920 is always black. It will turn on for the slightest second if you press power button, but then it always goes dark again. This only happens during a phone call or a Skype call.

It seems to go together with being unable to activate the camera from lockscreen when 'prevent accidental camera launch' is turned on. However, once I wipe my screen near the sensor and set this option off and back on, it works alright. But the phone still turns its screen off during calls.

It seems like it's a popular problem - Nokia Support Discussions - Proximity sensor doesn't switch off - Lumia 920 - Nokia Support Discussions - and it's pretty horrible so I thought I'd start the thread so we could all report it in here.

 

[tebugg]

havent come across this problem with mine. i know when you hold the phone to your face during a call it turns off from the sensor but if i move it away from my face the screen comes back on.

 

[Slaador]

havent come across this problem with mine. i know when you hold the phone to your face during a call it turns off from the sensor but if i move it away from my face the screen comes back on.

Yeah, that's how it is supposed to go. By the way, have you installed Skype on your phone? I'm thinking this thing started to happen around the time I installed it...

 

[tebugg]

Yeah, that's how it is supposed to go. By the way, have you installed Skype on your phone? I'm thinking this thing started to happen around the time I installed it...

nope i dont have skype. i read where it messes up facebook chat so i didnt install it. i have my facebook chat set up nicely through windows live so i dont want to lose it.

 

[Slaador]

nope i dont have skype. i read where it messes up facebook chat so i didnt install it. i have my facebook chat set up nicely through windows live so i dont want to lose it.

Thanks for the response man. Fortunately (or not), I've found the reason and the fix to this problem. I've edited the first post to include the solution.

I bet it'll make you smile at the very least.

 

[Coreldan]

Well.. I dont think it's the phones fault if you have dust/whatever blocking proximity sensor. There's no foolproof way to do it so that the proximity sensor knows when it's your head and when it's some other particles.

Or then chances are your unit is more or less defective leading the proximity sensor to be overly sensitive, but this is hardly some common issue on this device.

 

[tebugg]

slaador, do you have a case for your 920? i have seen some cases on amazon that have a lip that goes over the proximity sensor on the 920. that would make it so the screen is always turned off during a call.

 

[Slaador]

Well.. I dont think it's the phones fault if you have dust/whatever blocking proximity sensor. There's no foolproof way to do it so that the proximity sensor knows when it's your head and when it's some other particles.

Or then chances are your unit is more or less defective leading the proximity sensor to be overly sensitive, but this is hardly some common issue on this device.

Well, yes and no. My phone's been used in some pretty average conditions (jeans/jacket pocket, not much lint at all, rainy and non-dusty weather etc). And my Lumia 710 never exhibited this issue.

I think the problem might be with the sensor being a bit too close to the curved part of the glass on top. It's probably zeroed with the glass being clean all around, so when the curved part gets dusty (and it happens fast), it just thinks it's being occluded all the time.

I really do hope this is one problem that can be fixed in software. As much as it evokes the nostalgic feelings of blowing on Genesis/NES cartridges to get them to work, I think this shouldn't be a SOP for such a high-end gadget.

 

[Victor van Hagen]

Hi,

I've had the same issue and it was driving me nuts. I got it fixed by shining a very bright light into the proximity sensor (just above the nokia logo next to the front facing camera). Weird fix, I know, but it seemed to have helped me. Things that didn't work for me were: blowing out all the dust and cleaning the screen multiple times.

[Update] After a few days it's acting weird again. And now it's as broken as before ... very annoying. If only there was a way to recalibrate it. Does anyone know the code for the diagnostics tool?

-- Victor

 

[Danny Fung]

Blowing dust does not work!

my screen is still turning dark during calls.. What I did notice is that the front camera lens is full of dust.. just had the phone for 4 days.. I used my iphone LED light to confirm, sure enough it looks like dust.. The nokia phones back in the analog days was notorious with dust problems on the scree..


Can anyone else confirm this issue? ?

 

[Slaador]

my screen is still turning dark during calls.. What I did notice is that the front camera lens is full of dust.. just had the phone for 4 days.. I used my iphone LED light to confirm, sure enough it looks like dust.. The nokia phones back in the analog days was notorious with dust problems on the scree..


Can anyone else confirm this issue? ?

Yeah, I confirm, my frontal camera is full of dust, too. No dust under the screen itself yet, though.

 

[gedmurphy]

I'm now seeing this on my Lumia 920 phone from //BUILD.
No amount of blowing seems to be fixing it...

 

[dacarter77]

Got all excited when I saw your thread on my problem with FIXED in the subject, but I don't have any dust. Blew on it just in case, no help. I started a thread on this a couple of days go.

 

[gedmurphy]

I finally managed to get it working again. Spend about 5 minutes blowing air as hard as possible and it eventually worked.
I doubt it's a permanent fix though.

 

[CapnPauly]

Same thing happened to me like, the third day I had the phone. I looked online and found Nokia's FAQ/KB page and they mentioned putting your hand over the sensor and removing it, but that didn't help, so I played around with the phone and I noticed that if I squeezed the area where the AT&T logo is (in the US, anyway; upper-left corner of the screen) the display came back on. If I let it go, it would turn back off. If I clicked the wake/power button the display would come up for a split-second. I then noticed there was a little dust in the ear-piece, so I grabbed a can of compressed air and blew it into the ear-piece/area and *BAM. Problem solved.

 

[JammyGitz]

This is caused by screen protectors. Oh well, I'll just have to trust that gorilla glass is as good as they claim. If you hold your phone so that light reflects along where the camera is, you can see the proximity sensor, above the Nokia logo and right of the camera

 

[Dave Christensen]

Thanks. I just noticed this problem today (I rarely get calls). I had installed a screen protector over the weekend. Using a pair of scissors, I trimmed the screen protector away from the area above the Nokia logo and it was fixed.

 

[CapnPauly]

FYI, I didn't have protectors on my screen when I had this issue...

 

[dacarter77]

Ok, I have to eat crow on this one... I didn't believe the fix above, and blowing on it didn't fix it for me, but I just went out to the garage and put some serious compressed air on the ear piece and the screen now works normally when I make a call. Annoying but if there's a simple fix like this, I guess I won't bother swapping out the phone.

 

[avazee]

Same thing for me - it kept happening until I blew compressed air into the ear-piece and now it works again. Let's see how long it takes before it acts up again.

I swear.. with all the battery issues, the heat issues, and now this, why do I like this phone so much?!?! I truly am a sucker for punishment