iPad Pro screen unresponsive

BTW: It is usually not the temperature that unearthes weaknesses, it is a temperature change, because that tends to cause mechanical strain.

I know of a case where a GPU chip was destroyed just by load cycles and I did it with a PCB in just a few hours.

So the question would be: Does it tend to appear after traveling? When you move indoor? When you unpack it? When you put it on a hotter/colder surface or remove it from there?

Does it happen between phases of heavy and light use (say video vs email)?

I remember that I was typing when it hit usually, but if I watched video before I am not sure.

In my case, the iPads have tended to work best in the morning after sitting on a charger all night. The problem gets worse during the day and then settles into an annoying pattern of irregular problems at shorter and shorter intervals over several weeks.

Also, the iPad they gave me a few months ago, which is now starting to exhibit the same problem as the first two, gets very hot during use -- similar to a Macbook Pro. I had not experienced that with any other iPad. But the touchscreen problem is the same (or is getting there again).

I use the iPad mostly at home and I use it a lot. It has the same problem whether at home on my network or at other locations on other networks. The screen doesn't ever freeze, IMO, it just doesn't respond to touch; so it doesn't affect playback or streaming.

Here’s my hypothesis H4: Its the touchscreen controller chip!

I looked up a teardown:

https://de.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad+Pro+11-Inch+Teardown/115457

And it says an interesting detail:

2x Broadcom BCM15900B0KWFBG Touchscreen-Controller

There are two of them!

In my mind that makes a correlation with the observation that usually halve the screen is affected.

The two chips are fighting or so.

We are homing in ...

Working assumption:

The driver for the chip could be not from Apple, but from Broadcom.

Concurrency issues like to hide in low-level drivers, in my experience.

Maybe initially it was not designed for this situation, then got hacked.

People who are able to write good low-level drivers are a very rare species.

Corner cases can be triggered unpredictably by usage patterns or timing (i.e. temperature).

At least now I really know where I would like to take a closer look.

Your theories sound laudible, but this does not explain how the issue is happening across all three years of iPad Pro models.

No one here was having touch screen issues until iOS 12.

My own 2015 iPad Pro is having no hardware/touchscreen issues still running on iOS 10.3.3.

So, how do you explain this condition happening across 3-years of iPad Pro models that were all fine prior to iOS 12?

This all happened to many iPad Pro models across all the years of models AFTER iOS 12 was installed.

This appears to be an iOS 12 code issue, not hardware.

Given that there were so many dead ends apparently, we at least have a new _working_ assumption that largely fits the picture.

It’s an educated guess, but there are many things we do not know

I did not yet check, which iPads have two touchscreen controllers.

Maybe there is a historic relationship with increased resolution for pencil usage.

As before I am using past experience and concurrency issues in low-level drivers do look like that.

I do know of a case with a similar pattern where the root cause in the end was a faulty locking logic in a memory controller ASIC. We are not yet at the bottom of this, but it points at a location where maybe no one looked yet.

This is the kind of problem that does remain unsolved for a long time, because it does not hurt enough and it is confusing.

My hypothesis now is that it is SW, but outside IOS, that may nevertheless be correlated with IOS12.

And, yes, I may be wrong, so what?

Troubleshooting is like hunting. You decide what to hunt and then introduce fences.

I’d really like to know if someone already hunted in that corner.

I have a 2017 12.9 and that started with the unresponsive screen at seemingly random times, it started after 6 months and was happening every few days and. now is happening whenever I use it, it can be minutes, it can sometimes be hours, but it always happens and gets worse and has to be reset. Apple did not acknowledge the problem at all and would only suggest an itunes reset, even though I was only 1 day outside my 12 month warranty. This ipad was used with an Apple pencil for a short time. It is in a UAG case, no screen protector. Never been in a bag or out of the house, other than to pick it up from the Apple store.

Foolishly, I bought the newest 2018 12.9 version in the hope that it would have been fixed, and I have had an identical experience. It worked fine for 6 months or so, and then one day, out of the blue, it started to not scroll when scrolling on the facebook app and then in Safari and then in pretty much everything. It has become worse as time goes on. I have tried all the usual stuff, including itunes reset, normal factory reset etc. It works fine after a reset, but then over time it starts the cycle of unresponsiveness all over again. This ipad has never seen an Apple pencil. This ipad has never been in a case or had a screen protector fitted. Never been in a bag or out of the house.

I have a theory.

My first 2017 12.9 had a weird issue where it felt like the inside of it had not been stuck together properly. If you very gently, with the palms of your hands push the screen and back cover, it expels air from the speakers and charging port. You can also feel that there is some kind of adhesive inside the ipad that makes contact when you push together and you can feel/hear it release when you let go. I returned my original 12.9 2017 model and the Apple store obviously said they had never heard of it and gave me another which was the same, I questioned this and they reassured me that this is how they are supposed to be so I accepted it and it was fine for 6 months and then the unresponsive screen started.

My 2018 model has the exact same weird thing happening with the screen and the delaminated feel inside, along with the expelling of air through the charging port. I beleive that as air is expelled, it must pull air, dust and debris back into the inside of the ipad and this results in the unresponsive screen over time.

Just my theory.

Consequently, I have almost 2k worth of junk that doesnt work.

True.

Your theories on this have been a new direction for sure and better thought out and might very well be part of the overall causation, but even if you are successful in finding the probable culprit, how to you intend to get this “eureka” info to the proper cognizant Apple product teams/employee?

Your only options are the Apple iPad feedback pages or a phone call directly to Apple customer support in Cupertino, CA and no guarantee the support personnel will pass this discovered info to those employee/teams responsible.

Kinda a conundrum there.

I think the levels of user annoyance, impact on overall sales, media interest are all considered too low compared to the cost of both an investigation or a general recall of affected ipads especially since it is hard to reproduce reliably meaning people would replace their ipads even when not having the issue. also the recall announcement would have a bigger impact on reputation than the issue itself since it would be very widely reported. If you saw earlier posts some people replaced their ipads 3 times in 1 year. So apple already has ipads with the issue.

This is definitely NOT normal.

How long have you had this 2018 iPad Pro?

Did you pay for extended, two-yesr AppleCare+?

Does it have any of the original 1-year AppleCare left on it?

If you can, I would just go back to your nearest, “local” Apple Store and try to get another new replacement iPad Pro.

Open the new replacement in the store and test everything before you leave until you get a device that is perfectly acceptable to you.

If that replacement has issue, ask for another until you get an iPad Pro that does not have these issues.

Not everyone is having major issues with their 2018 iPad Pro.

[Edited by Moderator]

This does need to reported more widely by the media, so Apple will just admit this iPad Pro touch screen issue exists and FINALLY will just fix this issue already!

Some users have had this issue since day one introduction of iOS 12.

By the time this gets REAL attention and gets fixed, in will be a full year iOS version cycle.

Apple never admits faults or issues until it becomes WIDELY publicised by the media/tech media!

Well, they are editing and deleting my posts, so maybe someone is listening...

And they ought to be interested, because if I am right then the issue will pop up again and again.

And basically I do believe that they are committed to quality and good user experience.

Anyway, at least it makes me and you feel better, doesn’t it?

It’s complicated. What if indeed the driver is from Broadcom, which itself outsourced it from a small programmer hut, where the programmmer used a template and has long since left? Imagine all the fingerpointing and denial!

That’s the way things tend to be and you do not want to be the manager of it (Trust me, I was!)

With all that it’s probably necessary to get the attention of an engineering manager, not the poor support guy.

Still: All of this is guesswork, but not worse than the guesswork we have read so far.

If I only had statistically reliable material about the distribution of this specific issue!

On the other hand: My goal is only to solve my problem ...

Dual touchscreen controllers are used by multiple iPads (not only pro) such as iPad 2018, iPad Air 3, ...

In older devices a different chip was used.

It seems to be correlated with pencil support.

The iPad mini 5 apparently has only one of the Broadcom chips.

That looks like a testable hypothesis: Ever seen this touchscreen issue on an iPad mini 5?

Grrr, wonderfully ambiguous.

mini has one controller, Air 3 has two.

So it’s not that simple.

Both support only first generation pencil, different from pros. Unclear if relevant.

iPhones have a different chip.

Two controllers have been common for iPads for many years it seems, but iPad 5 had the same chips as iPhone 5.

Now which iPads do actually have this halve-screen issue? Only the pros?

Other iPads may have other touchscreen issues, but what about this specific one?

Yes.

As I have stated over and over and over...

This unresponsive touch screen issue, so far, in 9-months has ONLY affected the three model years of iPad Pros, with the exception of the 2016, 9.7 inch screen iPad Pro models and any of the newest 2018/2019 iPad models.

FredFoox - have you noticed any correlation in the occurence of edits/deletions of your posts - and the contributor(s) to whom your replies were addressed? Some “contributors” get touchy - and just love their “report post button” that causes moderators to react to your content.

Be aware that some contributors here assume “high ground” in understanding this problem - but themselves have neither experienced the issue itself or the frustration, when the fault manifests, caused to affected users.

As for the suposedly small number of reports that we do see here, these are likely only the tip of the iceberg. Only a relatively small minority of those affected will find these Community forums - and of those, even fewer will be incenced enough to engage in voicing their displeasure; most readers are simply passive. Other technical forums also see their share of similar observations - but again, only a minority will join the conversation. This is simply normal human behaviour. Similarly, many suffers who actively engage eventually cease to constructively contribute after their contributions and observations are belittled by others - or they simply tire of bickering herein.

Anyway, all of us that have been suffering from this infernal defect would welcome [at least] some official acknowledgement, by Apple, of a problem. I fear, however, that the issue affecting several generations of devices may either be an architectural or a generic hardware fault that cannot be fixed by a software patch alone. If this is the case, Apple are very unlikely to fess-up as the reputational damage would negatively impact both sales and reputaion.

I too, an an Engineer/Technologist, have conducted extensive structured tests in an attempt to identify triggers and/or potential causes of the fault that we are experiencing. Observations, by others, that many users do not see the fault is, of itself, potentially significant. Generally, based upon my own experience and in reading many of contributions across multiple sources, it is perhaps likely that only those users using their iPad Pro intensively with frequent touch-input see the issue - whereas others usage may be significanly less demanding upon the hardware - such as simply streaming video.

I personally experience greatest occurence of this sporadic issue after intensive use - or when the iPad has been connected to power for some time - both possibly suggesting a thermal problem. There are multiple sources of point-heat within the iPad casing, of which the CPU and GPU are only two sources on the logic board. When experiencing the problem - and on occassion of being connected to external power - I’ve noted that slight upward presssure on the Lightning plug often resolves the touch insnsitivity whilst slight pressure is maintained. Flexing the connector could be an indicator of a PCB or flex fracture - cause of both could become apparent over time.

Your contributions are indeed welcomed by those of us diligently monitoring this (and other) places for news of a either a “fix” or reliable workaround. Please stay engaged - regardless of “edits” 🙂