iPad Pro touch screen intermittent unresponsive

FWIW I bought two iPad Pro 11 LTE recently. Out of the box both were having small issues with the ‘a’ key in the keyboard. Sometimes missing it. 

Not major issues, but annoying. 

I bought magnetic cases for both, third party, Apple style. 

And I started charging both using the iPad 12W Type A charger (instead of 18W) with an AmazonBasics USB Type C to Type C cable. 

In just a few days both iPads are much better now. Not 100% perfect, but 90% perfect. Much better.

Send feedback to Apple and call them.

I already posted all of this info, once again, on this very page of this post.

Use the feedback page and make a call to Apple.

After over a year, Apple still has no fixes or solutions for this touch screen issue.

Everyone with this issue needs to hammer the Apple iPad feedback page and put in a call to Apple.

Ironically, I just *added* a Spigen Tempered Glass Screen Protector, and so far... after using it for a few hours... it’s been working fine again. No touch issues. We’ll see if it lasts, but I normally experienced problems every few minutes before.

I tried the suggested Accessibility Settings changes before this, and none of them had any effect.

Using a mouse worked fine, no issues.

Using the Apple Pencil also worked fine.

This is a strange issue and might be App/iOS/Hardware related. On my old iPad (4th gen) I would sometimes get long lags between a touch and a response. It maybe the Pro is significantly faster but this lag never happens on it. Instead of lags, you get dropouts where it it just drops touches. What makes this even stranger is that sometimes you’ll get an audible and visible feedback when typing, but nothing happens on the screen.

It is certainly a software issue otherwise there would be no audible or visible feedback. It could be a background process stealing events such as an app or network process. Most likely, however, it is probably Apple engineers tweaking the process scheduler to improve its performance. Given how many people suspect the pencil maybe involved, the tweak maybe a performance optimization for the Apple pencil. It is common for programmers to drop events from input devices to make the drawing smoother and more responsive. This is just pure conjecture, but deserves some investigation.

Update: about a week in and my iPad is still responsive and I have not had any issues with it not recognizing touches. In addition, the back of my iPad has never gotten hot like it did over the past year while I was having touch issues. At least for me, the system reset seems to have done the trick. I will update again or if anything changes and the issue reoccurs.

I'm wondering if this really is a hardware/software problem or just an iPadOS 13 problem. I say this because, up until recently, had a five-year-old iPad Air 2 that was a total delight to use. Then I upgraded to iPadOS 13 and things were never the same. Safari went nuts, constantly zooming in and constant instability. The touchscreen would freeze or stop responding. I'd have to try MULTIPLE times to click on something and get it to respond. Finally, probably unrelated to the new issues, the screen just went bad. Everything was high contrast. Every photo looked like it had been "posterized" in Photoshop.

So...I order a refurbished iPad Air 3, expecting everything to be back to normal and even better than ever because of upgraded processor and graphics. Well, I'm afraid it hasn't turned out that way. Still getting Safari zoom, though not quite so unstable. Still getting the random touchscreen unresponsiveness and/or freezes. Still, on occasion, have to click multiple times to get a response.

I REALLY do not look forward to having to resolve this issue with Apple. It's going to be so hard to keep my cool when they ask me if I've tried restarting the device.

Anyway, as I said, this issue started on my iPad Air 2 when I installed iPadOS 13. There's no question in my mind that this is not just an iPad Pro/iPad Air 3 issue.

I wouldn't waste time with all of the various fixes. I just worked with Apple support on my iPad Air 3 (slightly modified version of the original Pro) and they confirmed that this is a hardware issue.

I complained again to Apple last week and got this response

”I’ve checked in my end if there’s any official update for the issue we’re experiencing on the iPad, I’m afraid engineers are still working on it.

At this point I can only suggest to make sure the software version is alway up-to-date.”

so they have acknowledged to me that the problem exists, they are working on it, but don’t have a fix!

yep it’s more than frustrating, it’s how you’d expect some cheap clone from ebay to behave!

Also download the airport utility app an enable it to scan WiFi so you can see your neighbors WiFi channels. You need to be able to set your WiFi channel to the best one for you, the least congested. It’s easy to access you router. Change channels until you find the best. This is constantly evolving in a clogged living environment.

Actually not entirely true. Software can cause hardware to overheat and throttle. This is a feature of all computers and heat management algorithms . Apple is certainly partially at fault since they sacrifice cooling in favor of thinness. But there’s nothing that says tablets must have cases and by nature cases that have any insulating properties can reduce heat dissipation. I can do the same thing to my dell tower if I run a video render and my air conditioning is off on a hot day.

I own two original 2015/2016, 12.9 inch screen, 256 GBs, WiFi/Cellular iPad Pro models that I had been scared for many years to upgrade and get any of three main issue with the newer 64-bit iOS/iPadOS versions.

Those issues, in order of severity, are the intermittent touch screen, never ending boot loop and severe battery drain.

These iPad Pros were left on iOS 10.3.3 up until very recently when I finally decided it was finally safe enough to download and install iOS 14.2 which has been running now, for awhile with no issues on one of my iPad Pros.

The other iPad Pro has come down with ONLY the severe battery drain, where literally the battery drain is around 10% for every 20-30 minutes of use.

I used to get between 6-7 hours of use from both iPad Pros, but one of them is down to around anywhere between 3-5 hours before I have to charge it up again.

Annoying, but not having any of the touch issues, yet, to date, on either iPad Pros is so far has been good.

I need to note here that I have seen the internals of both the 2015/2016 and 2017 iPad Pro models, as well as other very recent iPad models and they differ quite a bit.

The Logic board in the 2015//2016 models is a skinny, half length board the runs down the middle of the iPad, lengthwise.

The logic board is somewhat skinny and short with two Li-ion battery packs on either side of the iPad.

An flexible extension cable with Lightning port at the end is connected to the short end of the logic board and screwed in to the other end of the iPad's chassis to make the rest of the length of the iPad Pro.

So, with that design, there is some built-in chassis flexibility happening there.

In the 2017 and all later iPad models that skinny logic board runs the full length of the iPad with the lightning port connected directly to the logic board.

So, any flexion in the iPad now might have some direct consequences with flexion and electrical connection issues on the logic board now being binded on the iPad's chassis at both ends.

While this design should make the center of the iPad more rigid, since this is s somewhat narrow board runnung the length of all iPad models now, the small twists of the iPads chassis when using and holding, over time, could cause some cracking in solder joints and component connections on the iPad's logic board, now.

Causing all of these various and growing issues.

On the original iPad Pro models, the board was only attached to the middle of the iPads chassis with a long, flexible cable to which the Lightning port was connected, making up the length difference, and allowing a degree of flexion/flexibility within the iPad that may not have a direct effect an anything on the original iPad Pro's smaller logic board.

This has been my theory for quite some time after seeing the internals of the original iPad Pro models then seeing how this change in the later 2017 and later iPad Pro models, as well as other iPad models.

This can, also, explain why the original 2015/2016 iPad Pro models have been affected to a much lesser extent/degree.

My two cents, for what it is worth.

Uncheck “General-Handoff” and “General-Background App Refresh”. Then check it again in a few time.

It worked well on my iPad Pro 2015 with iOS 12.2. Freeze issue is no more.

Have you tried un-pairing/re-pairing your Apple Pencil?

Make sure the tip of the Pencil is screwed on securely.

Good Luck!

I have the 12.9 second generation iPad with the same issue.

The fix above (turning on assistive touch) worked like a charm. Did not enable anything on the assistive touch sub-options.

Please, everyone, you MUST report this to the link below. It’s the ONLY way this will get fixed.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html