iOS 11, Touch Problems and Copy Screens

If you’re an iPhone owner, you’re probably aware that iOS 11 launched just over a week ago. Unfortunately, after upgrading, some owners are also finding that it’s apparently causing problems with their iPhones’ touch sensing.

The symptoms are straightforward- the screen stops responding properly to touch, exhibits glitchy behaviour or becomes downright unusable. We’ve had many of our own customers come in to our Dundee store with just this problem after upgrading.

Here’s the thing- investigations by ourselves and others have shown that the affected phones all had “copy” screens fitted (i.e. the original screen had been replaced with an unofficial, non-Apple display when they were repaired). To cut a long story short, it turns out that the problem isn’t iOS 11 itself.

The problem lies with many unofficial replacement displays that contain underpowered “digitizer driver” ICs (i.e. touch-processing chips). These can’t match the performance of the genuine Apple ICs, and run into trouble with the more demanding iOS 11.

This issue with digitizer ICs is just the latest in a long line of problems with copy screens. (We’ve previously covered these in our Original vs. “Copy” iPhone Screens article.) For this reason, we always advise our customers to pay a little extra and go for the original Apple screen whenever there’s a choice.

(To skip the following background details and find out how to have your faulty screen replaced, you can jump directly to the end).

How The Copy Screen Industry Works

As explained in the linked article above, third party “copy” displays are put together differently. Whereas original Apple screen units have the touch/digitizer manufactured as part of the LCD itself, the copies don’t- it’s added later by a different company as part of the glass layer.

There are only a handful of companies that produce the bare LCD displays used in copy units. However, these large Chinese manufacturers- such as Jing Dong Fang (BOE)- also manufacture laptop and television LCDs and don’t want to risk legal trouble from Apple or the Chinese government by selling them as complete units.

Instead, the LCDs are bought by much smaller companies who add the glass (with digitizer) themselves, along with all other components needed to form a complete replacement screen unit. It’s these other parts- and specifically in this case, the added-on digitizer components- that cause such major variations in touch quality between screens.

(Most repair stores using copy screens aren’t likely to care about any of this anyway, and just fit whatever their distributor shipped that week. Some don’t even know there’s a between difference original, refurbished and copy screens- they’re so ignorant that they won’t even know themselves that they’re conning you with a knock-off screen!)

History

Once upon a time, there were no third party “compatible” digitizer driver ICs. Manufacturers of copy displays simply used original Apple ones recovered from broken screens. Although the LCD quality was nowhere near as good as the Apple’s originals, the touch itself worked fine (because it still used Apple chips). This gave a misleadingly good reputation to copy units, and encouraged their use in the repair industry.

However, there was only a limited supply of recovered ICs, which- along with the increase in popularity- forced the price up and drove the development of (unofficial) compatible replacements from many other companies. It’s these unofficial replacement ICs that are now used in most screens.

Unfortunately, many of these are nowhere near as powerful as the Apple original, and fail to meet the expected level of performance when they meet up with iOS 11’s more demanding needs. This is the cause of the “iOS 11 touch problem”.

Identifying Which Screens Are Causing the Problem

We mentioned above that many of these compatible ICs are the source of the iOS 11 touch problem. Not all of them are, and not every copy screen has this issue… however, the problem is identifying which ones do! There are over a hundred manufacturers of replacement digitizer driver ICs alone- and many more companies than that buying them in for their own use! All this makes it incredibly difficult to figure out which copy screens are good and which aren’t- especially as screens are often sold as generic commodities with one or more middlemen involved.

It’s generally impossible to tie the problem down to a particular combination, but we are aware that Hancai and Tianma LCDs which use a digitizer IC made by Aichuangjia have problems. The IC isn’t powerful enough for iOS 11, which eventually causes it to shut down and all touch to be lost. You’ll tend to find this combination on the cheaper displays.

The Solution- Always Go For the Genuine Original Replacement Screen

Whether or not you followed what we wrote above, or skipped it- and to be honest, most customers probably shouldn’t need to know all that!- it doesn’t matter.

Even where copy screens seem fine at first, we’ve seen that they can cause problems like the iOS 11 touch issue later on. Most of these customers will need the screen replaced with originals or newer units anyway, so there’s a good chance you’ll save money over the long run.

If you’re having touch problems with iOS 11, pls check whether it’s due to a copy screen, and- if so- arrange a replacement.