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Help Capacitive Buttons: Occasional misses anyone?

Don S

Don S

Android Enthusiast
I occasionally am having issues with my capacitive buttons in that it sometimes takes several attempts for them to engage upon touching them. It's only occasional, but still annoying.

Anyone else seeing this?
 
Yes, I do have this issue. It looks like it's very sensitive when they are lit up, but much less sensitive when they are not.
 
avhokie said:
Yes, I do have this issue. It looks like it's very sensitive when they are lit up, but much less sensitive when they are not.
Click to expand...

Yes, actually. That is it exactly. I hadn't noticed until you posted this, but this is how mine behaves.
 
I love that they don't stay lit very long, it helps when I'm playing with my phone in the dark and don't want to be blinded by them (HTC Incredible was terrible about this).

Mine are just as responsive lit or not, what I do notice is that on my HTC Incredible I can slide over the buttons and have them click.

On the Samsung Fascinate it appears if your initial touch is close to but not ON the button, that sliding over the button doesn't work. I think this may be contributing to the lack of responsiveness, if your skin makes contact outside of the "hit" zone, stays in contact, then contacts the hit zone, it does not register.

You can see a similar effect on the home screen by touching and quickly sliding from the top to the bottom, then moving your finger all over the screen (without lifting). You'll notice nothing registers anymore. This was an issue on the HTC Incredible home screen too (though it would respond if you returned to the original touch axis). I feel like a similar thing is happening with these capacitive touch buttons.
 
The AT&T Captivate had the same exact issue for me.

You had to touch multiple times when the lights where out to get a response.

.....wait are we talking about phones here?!? :eek: :D
 
I almost wanna say this was a problem the first day for me. And at first I was bothered by the lack of staying lit. However, now 3-4 days into usage I know exactly where the buttons are lit or not and I cannot say they "miss" per se. I think at first I was missing them moreso than the device missing my signal
 
saps said:
I almost wanna say this was a problem the first day for me. And at first I was bothered by the lack of staying lit. However, now 3-4 days into usage I know exactly where the buttons are lit or not and I cannot say they "miss" per se. I think at first I was missing them moreso than the device missing my signal
Click to expand...

Maybe this is it (me missing some). I still get occasional non-responses when I am quite sure I hit the key. It is infrequent though, but annoying.
 
Don S said:
Maybe this is it (me missing some). I still get occasional non-responses when I am quite sure I hit the key. It is infrequent though, but annoying.
Click to expand...
You got me thinking so I ran a little test of my own. I tried hitting the soft key buttons with and without the haptic feedback. It is true to say if you have the haptic on and feel the little buzz than you hit it right and proper. Equally true, you barely have to touch it for it to engage. I so I was trying to see if you aimed for the corners or edges of the icon if it would take. If I was too far off center I could feel I was missing. Turning haptic off which I tried myself for awhile the other day to try and prolong battery life sometimes I would think I was in the zone but perhaps I was too far off. Now I have returned to having the haptic on even if it is slightly more draining on the battery. Not sure that really adds anything to your query but I figured I'd share
 
saps said:
You got me thinking so I ran a little test of my own. I tried hitting the soft key buttons with and without the haptic feedback. It is true to say if you have the haptic on and feel the little buzz than you hit it right and proper. Equally true, you barely have to touch it for it to engage. I so I was trying to see if you aimed for the corners or edges of the icon if it would take. If I was too far off center I could feel I was missing. Turning haptic off which I tried myself for awhile the other day to try and prolong battery life sometimes I would think I was in the zone but perhaps I was too far off. Now I have returned to having the haptic on even if it is slightly more draining on the battery. Not sure that really adds anything to your query but I figured I'd share
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input. I'll have to report back after I get better at hitting dead center to see if I still get "misses".

Thanks
 
What ive noticed is not that my buttons miss a click but that sometimes my haptic feedback is somewhat dulled with certain applications or while on certain menus. mostly when I hit the back button. it occassionally feels like it only did a half strength "click".
 
Don S said:
I occasionally am having issues with my capacitive buttons in that it sometimes takes several attempts for them to engage upon touching them. It's only occasional, but still annoying.

Anyone else seeing this?
Click to expand...

H.i I was having this problem, and what I noticed if that if the back or search button didn't work I would press the home key and then they would respond. I was about to go to return the phone but called sprint and they had me do a factory reset and now the buttons work perfectly, as I have not reinstalled any of the apps, except for app brain. Sprint rep suggested that if the buttons work at all, if they are not responding only sometimes, then it is likelya software issue, and most likely stems from one of the android market apps that have been downloaded. My solution is to operate with a "clean"phone for 24 hours and add an app lill by lill. I love 3rd party apps and admittedly went a little crazy and down loadeda a bunch within the first day. I don't know if there is a easy to isolate the problem any other way. Lesson is that adding stuff might mess up phone....
 
tromano said:
H.i I was having this problem, and what I noticed if that if the back or search button didn't work I would press the home key and then they would respond. I was about to go to return the phone but called sprint and they had me do a factory reset and now the buttons work perfectly, as I have not reinstalled any of the apps, except for app brain. Sprint rep suggested that if the buttons work at all, if they are not responding only sometimes, then it is likelya software issue, and most likely stems from one of the android market apps that have been downloaded. My solution is to operate with a "clean"phone for 24 hours and add an app lill by lill. I love 3rd party apps and admittedly went a little crazy and down loadeda a bunch within the first day. I don't know if there is a easy to isolate the problem any other way. Lesson is that adding stuff might mess up phone....
Click to expand...

This is the VZW Fascinate forum, not the Sprint Epic forum. I don't think this is going to help with the Fascinate. I don't see apps making capacitive buttons unresponsive - especially when I don't see any slowdown elsewhere. Thanks though.
 
Not to get too far off topic anymore but I was under the impression the Epic actually had the option to dictate how long the soft keys were lit??
 
saps said:
Not to get too far off topic anymore but I was under the impression the Epic actually had the option to dictate how long the soft keys were lit??
Click to expand...

In a roundabout way, I understand. Updating the hard keyboard lighting option also resulted in updating the capacitive button lights on the Epic.

Back to this thread though, I am still seeing the occasional delays on the Fascinate. I am getting a bit better at hitting the spots correctly - although I must admit a capacitive back-light fix would assist my aim. But even so, I see some delay or non-response when I hit a capacitive key.
 
Mine was fine for the first week. I also didn't experience any lag or issues for the first week i had it. Anything I've put on the phone I did within the first couple days so it shouldn't be from me bogging it down over time.

However after the first week, or maybe a little less, my capacitive buttons have some non-responsive times. Also there have been a few times where i noticed my phone was being laggy. A couple of the times it was being laggy what i also noticed was that the task manager would say there was 1 program running but whenever you open the task manager there would never be any programs shown. A reboot seemed to fix the issue each time.

Other than that the phone really hasn't given me any issues. Initial lock of the GPS can take a minute or two but once it locks it works really well.
 
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