Scroll/tap issue - worth persevering with?

[Green Samot]

Hi everyone,

I've recently got myself a 1520, having previously owned a 930. It was a spur of the moment thing and I just wanted a bigger screen. I think the device is great (it's basically a bigger 930 with a different case) and love using it.

However, I'm beginning to get the scroll/tap issue happen more and more frequently. I've been reading up on the forums and wanted to know is there anyone without this issue or are you all putting up with it?

At the moment I have a repair scheduled for it, but I don't know if that will do it much good and am tempted to go back to my 930 as although I much prefer the 1520, I think the scroll/tap issue might just prove too much of an annoyance.

Has anyone had their device fixed and did it stay fixed?

Thanks very much!

 

[Pete]

This mainly resolved for me with an early firmware update. Since then, I haven't had significant issues.

Be aware that the default touch sensitivity is set to "High" for some reason. Setting it back to "Normal" makes the responsiveness a lot better.

 

[Green Samot]

This mainly resolved for me with an early firmware update. Since then, I haven't had significant issues.

Be aware that the default touch sensitivity is set to "High" for some reason. Setting it back to "Normal" makes the responsiveness a lot better.

Well that's good to hear.

Does it still happen for you though?

 

[Pete]

Not to any extent, no. But then I have been using the phone for the past 18 months or so, so I guess I've got used to the way it likes to be touched.

 

[Green Samot]

Not to any extent, no. But then I have been using the phone for the past 18 months or so, so I guess I've got used to the way it likes to be touched.

Thanks Pete.

So you "handle" it differently then?

 

[jsooney]

I think how you handle your phone is a factor in all this. The phone is so big that the screen flexes under certain conditions, like sticking it in your pocket or holding it a certain way. People seem to have some success by using rigid cases, thereby reducing or eliminating flexion. My is pretty bad and sometimes I press and bend it to get it to behave somewhat normally.

 

[Pete]

I don't treat my phone any differently. I don't have any kind of case or screen protector. I carry it around (and sit/drive) with it in my front pocket and don't really have problems.

 

[Adeel 360]

I've had the issue for several months now. Some days its really bad and some days its perfect. I've put up with it but I will take it to a Nokia care point when im back from my holiday.

 

[Roderick Zijp]

I've been having these problems since I bought the phone last year. I have the scroll tap issue, sometimes the phone takes over control and randomly scrolls and presses stuff on the screen and occasionally the screen just doesn't work at all.

Recently it frustrated me so much that I finally sent my Lumia for repair (yesterday). I hope they can fix the problem.

 

[Jcmg62]

I've had my 1520 for nearly 2 years...due an upgrade in December, just in time for a new windows 10 flagship...yippee

The touch / swipe issue has been there from day one. I've tried all the fixes posted here over the past 18 months or so...nothing worked. I'm now running Windows 10 and hate to say it but the problem is still there.

To the best of my understanding it's purely a hardware flaw and essentially unfixable.

In my desire to try and find a solution I'd found an article on pocketlint back in Feb 2014 that claimed that Nokia's quality team were aware of the problem but told to overlook it as Stephen Elop was under huge pressure to ship phones as quickly as possible.

Whether there's any truth to the story is something I guess we'll never know, but the fact is that a lot of forum posts and technology articles have covered this issue, so it must be an issue that's affected a lot of 1520 owners.

 

[ordas]

I?ve noticed this problem on almost every Windows Phone 8 phones I owned: 1520, 930 and now on the Lumia 640. The 1520 was the worst, 930 came in second, the 640 is okay. Also, I owned two 1520-s (one got stolen, another one lost... :| Man, do I miss this phone despite this problem!).

As I have a backup Sony Xperia Z Ultra I can say: I never ever had the scroll/tap problem on the Sony device. My educated guess: the Lumia 1520 does have a hardware flaw yes, but Windows Phone seems to have generally a problem with scroll/tap interpretation. My Lumia 640 is now running on 10166. The problem seems to get worse if many apps are opened and the RAM gets full (especially in Readit-s comments section). If this happens, I just manually shut down every app I am not using right now and it gets immediately better. But not always. Sometimes, only a restart helps. What is you experience? Started a separate thread for this problem.

 

[Jcmg62]

Daniel Rubino (the Editor of Windows Central) ran a story, and a possible fix to the 1520 tap/scroll issue last year. Here's an excerpt of that story:

In our forums, member Hesham Fouad has posted an interesting idea. His main proposal is that this is a hardware design flaw related to the size of the display. More precisely, the digitizer contacts behind the display become misaligned. The cause of the misalignment is screen flex, like when you put the phone in your front pocket, display down, and the device flexes downward slightly causing the center contact to miss the connection.


I'm not sure how effective the fix was, I didn't try it myself. Then again I'm not an engineer and didn't fancy the idea of opening my 1520 and fiddling with the electronic guts of the machine.

One thing is certain; Microsoft will absolutely need to be sure that they've resolved this issue before the launch of any new flagship devices.

It's no secret that MS have very few opportunities left to make an impression on the smartphone market. If the rumoured 950 and 950XL are anything less than perfect it's going to be virtually impossible for Microsoft to kick start a W10 phone trend. Here's hoping that quality control at Redmond is tighter than a nuns knickers

 

[Green Samot]

Phone is on it's way back - been told they couldn't find a problem with it :-(

 

[Jas Holden]

During the first week I owned my 1520 I had problems with the screen going nutty, scrolling and changing pages.

On this site, I read that it was caused by the phone flexing slightly due to bending and squatting with the phone in my front pocket. Advise was to gently bend the phone back until the problem stopped. That worked.

To permanently solve the problem I bought a 2 piece, hard clamshell case on Ebay. That stopped the problem completely.

I still carry the phone in my front pants pocket often with no problems.

When the new flagship comes out, I will look at it, however, I am not in a hurry to trade up, the 1520 is so wonderful I don't feel much need.

 

[RedDawn]

My phone would go haywire like you were pressing buttons and what not and would become unresponsive. So I would have to hit the power button and go back in and could get it to respond. I put a screen protector on the phone and it hasnt misbehaved once since.