Q: iPhone 4 Black Screen But Phone Works

Well, I had the issue of having everything working with the exception of the screen. I was able to click 3 times the home button to activate voice over and iTunes communicate with the phone. The apps and screens on iTunes were OK.

The issue was that I was using the Lifeproof cover and the vibrate button was half pressed. I had to remove the Lifeproof cover and set the button to not red and it worked again.

This hapens when I update the phone to iOS 6 (After reboot). So a possible solution is to check that button upon reset.

I'm frustrated, since the phone worked for a day and now is black again.

This is what you should try to do, hold down both the home button and lock button for a while until the screen flashes slightly then goes black. Should be okay, as long as the hardware wasn't damaged or something. ITS68 is right about the vibrate button, i noticed it was halfway when it went black. Make sure that that is in a correct position like ITS said.

nemipk's solution worked on my iPhone 4. Thanks nemipk!

Temprary solution is yeah... "mime" unlocking the phone and do the lock-home restart. maybe it's a system bug.

And it's also not a good practice suddenly unplugging auxillaries (especially faulty ones) such as USB cables, earphones, etc. from the phone unit. This usually stimulates short-circuitry in the system (as much as sudden unplugging of a flash drive from a USB port commonly corrupts stored data).

Make sure USB cable components are firmly joint and earphone parts are intact. If not, better replace them immediately before anything worse than a screen blackout occurs.

I've noticed that the screen issue happens whenever I use my old USB cable (hey, I don't always remember where I put my new one OK...).

An update to our situation:

My girlfriends phone finally was replaced by a refurbished one under warranty.

There was no specified reason why but since we brought it in for repair three times in 6 months and the behaviour was consistent in it's randomness the only conclusion I have it's a hardware problem tied to the display(connector/invertor?):

- no software or firmware change helped, even after a complete 'restore' the problem occured more than once...

- a repair of the usbcable-connector (and or logicboard(?)) did not change the problem

- we were able to make screendumps of the lock or home screen showing us that the phone was working but the lcd aparently was not.

First suggestion when you run into this: - try a reboot like mentioned before

If it occurs again, run to the store for a repair it's NOT a software problem

I had the same problem. I have an iphone 4, I had the ios 6.0.1 once I updated to 6.1 everything works fine but the next day when I saw my phone there was a black screen on it. So I just read how to fix it and I did it all and the phone works fine for the next day but two days later the screen black come back and since that time the phone hasn't recovery. I have tried to do a lot of things to fix it but nothing works. Please help!

I had the same issue, it wouldn't turn even with hard reset (Power+Home button). I plugged it to the PC and hold the Power and Home button for half a minute, Apple logo aapeared and worked normally...

Try this. I tried other ways, but didn't work, just have to really wait it whilst pressing the buttons for more than 4 secs each time, but it eventually came back.

http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/f631/iphone-4-no-display-no-light-screen-1176716 /

I have an iP4s and had this problem today.

The phone alerted me to an iOS update, which I dismissed.

An hour later the screen was black-phone still functioned-took calls, received messages-I could hard re-boot and see the white Apple symbol as phone started up-but once started, black screen.

I attached phone to a computer with iTunes running and pressed sleep/wake button + home button at the same time for 10 secs and released sleep/wake button and kept home button pressed for 4 or 5 secs to set up recovery mode.

iTunes then detedcted phone was in recovery mode and recovered phone.

It worked fine for about 10 mins and then screen black again and same problems-ahhhhhhh!

I had this problem on my iphone 5 and took it too the apple store it was diagnosed as a hardware problem, which the display connector came loose. so the guy reconnected it and then there were lines at the top of the screen and he said he couldn't get those to leave so he just gave me a new iphone 5 but the funny thing is while he was setting up the new phone the i was playing with the old one and the lines had disappeared, but i still went home with a new iphone 5. BTW it was doing this for awhile and i did drop it on it face 1ston a tile bathroom floor. so it might have been my fault but there was no external damage to prove anything

Hello all

I have a similar problem too my phone screen went really hot the other day and faded so I could barely see it! But with no warning signs I turned it off left it to cool down and switched it back on and cannot see anything! I know it's on because when I press the middle button ican hear Siri if people ring it it rings but ican not see or hear anything! Please help as I am in Asia travelling and would really like to be able to sort it! It's a white I phone 4s with a pass code if that hels but I have no idea what software the latest I think... Thanks

I have tried everything in this post. DFU reset plug into computer yada yada, still no response. I can't see any backlight but can feel the vibrate when I switch to silent and can hear calls ect. Anyone have this problem and fix it? New hardware? Broken LCD? Reset? Please help... I am currently in Costa Rica and broke my phone the first day here. Any help will be useful. Thanks. Jared

This morning I took my phone off the charger (fully charged) and opened my camera app. A minute later the screen faded to black, so I read through the suggestions above.

I reset the phone by holding Power + Home buttons, and it restarted fine, but I am worried about this happening again.

So I considered these issues, which were mentioned by other posters...

- Silent trigger was half pressed: Mine was 100% on silent at the time. Phone made no sounds while it was on.

- Lock code caused problem: I do have a lock code, so I took that off. But how can this cause the problem? Also, I prefer to have the code. If I accidentally leave my phone somewhere, I don't want a stranger getting into emails/banking/other secure info.

- Internal display cable loose: This doesn't seem likely since the phone is working now. Plus I have dropped my phone maybe 3-4 times, and it hasn't been dropped recently.

Hope this info helps someone! Any thoughts about what causes this are very welcome!