How to fix unresponsive touch screen on Samsung Galaxy Note 9

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Having an unresponsive touch screen on a premium phone like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 would be nightmare especially if the phone suffered a drop before the problem started because it’s very much possible that the cause of the problem is a physical damage. However, not all touch screen issues are caused by physical damage as there are already instances wherein it’s just a result of a minor issue with the firmware or apps.

As the owner of the phone, you must do some troubleshooting procedures to determine what the problem is and what you need to do to fix it. In this post, I will walk you through in practically troubleshooting your Note 9 with an unresponsive display or screen. We will try to exhaust all possible solutions until we can pinpoint what the issue is all about. So, continue reading as we may be able to help you through this post.

Before we move on to our troubleshooting, if you are looking for a solution to a different issue, make sure you drop by our troubleshooting page as we’ve already addressed some of the most common problems reported by our readers. Find issues that are similar with yours and use the solutions we suggested. If you still need our help after that, then feel free to contact us by filling up our Android issues questionnaire.

How to troubleshoot Galaxy Note 9 with unresponsive touch screen?

Here are the most practical ways you can do if your Note 9’s touch screen isn’t as responsive as it should be or one responding at all. Try to see what works for you…

Clean the screen – as the owner, you should be the first one to know or sense if the problem is serious or not. If your phone is powered on and everything is working properly except for the touch screen, then you can almost immediately conclude that the issue is minor and you may be able to fix it just by wiping it off with a dry, clean cloth. Aside from that, you must also make sure your hands and fingers are clean. Just washing your hands with clean water is enough and if the touch screen is still not responding after this, then move on to the next procedure.

Remove screen protector – if you’ve installed a screen protector before this problem started, then that could be the culprit and the best way to address that is to remove it. However, if there’s already an existing protector even way before the problem started, don’t remove it especially if it doesn’t have any scratches at all. Protectors nowadays are made for hardened glass and are tailored to conduct capacitive touches and it’s unlikely that they will cause a problem like this especially if it’s already installed even before the problem started.

Soft reboot your Note 9 – another possibility we need to look into is a chance that this problem could be due to a minor firmware issue or a problem caused by applications especially CPU-intensive game apps like Fortnite. More often than not if this is the case, a forced restart would be enough to fix the problem and this is how you do it: press and hold the volume down button and power key at the same time for 10 seconds or until the phone reboots. After this, observe your phone closely to know if the touch screen still malfunctions and if so, then try the next solution.

Run your phone in safe mode – this is to rule out the possibility that the problem is caused by some third-party apps and services. By doing this, you’re temporarily disabling all third-party elements in your phone and if the touch screen works perfectly while it’s in this mode, then it’s confirmed that the cause of the issue is a third-party. Find out which app it is and uninstall it to fix the problem.

Perform the master reset – you need to do this procedure if the touch screen is still unresponsive after doing the abovementioned procedures or while the phone is in safe mode. The master reset will delete all your personal files and data so if possible do your best to make a backup of your important files. If the problem continues to bug you after this procedure, then you must bring it back to the store or shop so that a technician can check it for you.

This is how you reset your Galaxy Note 9 after you backup your files:

  1. Back up data on the internal memory. If you have signed into a Samsung account on the device, you have activated Anti-theft and will need your Samsung credentials to finish the master reset.
  2. Turn off the device.
  3. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Bixby key, then press and hold the Power key.
  4. When the green Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
  5. Press the Volume down key several times to highlight ‘wipe data / factory reset’.
  6. Press Power button to select.
  7. Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
  8. Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
  9. When the master reset is complete, ‘Reboot system now’ is highlighted.
  10. Press the Power key to restart the device.

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