Having touch screen issues on your Sony Xperia 10/10 Plus? You're not alone

Sony’s Xperia line of smartphones has been around since the early days of Android. True, Sony lost its position as one of the dominant players in the market, just like HTC. But while they are down, they are not out of the game by any means.

The Japanese OEM recently rebooted their naming scheme. Besides Xperia 1, Xperia 10 and Xperia 10 Plus were launched back in February 2019, but in an industry with the likes of Samsung Galaxy S10, the devices kinda flew under the radar.

The mid-range devices are powered by Snapdragon 636 SoC and spot an unusually tall 21:9 aspect ratio. A unique take on a smartphone display in 2019, yes but that is where the devices’ woes start.

A quick stroll through Sony forums and you will come across countless users who are complaining about the Xperia 10 display.

I have a touchscreen issue with my device, and could not find a solution in forums yet.
The phone works generally fine, everything is fast and apps dont crash. But the phone does have its 5 minutes every few hours, which make it unusable.

The touch input freezes randomly, but all the buttons, including double press for camera still work. Even youtube and Netflix videos keep playing without any restrictions.

The touchscreen is usually back after turning the screen off and on again at least once (no device restart required)

The issue usually appears in bulk, meaning that it freezes multiple times within minutes but can also not appear for hour.

Is this issue known to anyone ?
(Source)

The issue seems to be affecting many Xperia 10 (Plus) owners since the inception. Restarting the device often fixes the freezing according to the users. However, the glitch often persists across reboots.

For some, the touch does recover but after a bunch of frustrating tries. Judging from the user reports, some legacy Xperia models also experienced similar anomalies.

I have this too on my XZ1C, it happens when I prevent the screen from turning off (and the phone from locking) during that second that it fades to black. Afterwards, I cant use any touch except the menu buttons. I just smash the multitask button 4x to switch to the next app and back to the one I was using, but it’s really annoying. Im not sure whether it started after the pie update or the first security update after that.

As of the time of writing, Sony had not issued a statement on the same. They have neither confirmed/acknowledged the issue nor issued a fix.

Some users have had the issue get fixed by a software update version 53.0.A.8.69, i.e. the August patch for Xperia 10 Plus.

An update was pushed out yesterday for my phone, the torture is finally over. Check your firmware updates!!!! Version 53.0.A.8.69

(Source)

Contrary to the single positive feedback, the irksome freezing thing is bugging the owners of Xperia 10/10 Plus till date. As such, we are led to believe that this could be a hardware issue as opposed to a software bug that can be solved with a simple OTA update.

Recently we saw the the phone duo receiving a new security patch update. Both the Xperia 10 and Xperia 10 Plus are also on the Android 10 roadmap shared by Sony.

We hope that Sony will finally issue a proper firmware update of the touch screen controller (or at least acknowledge the issue) before the major update.

NOTE: For further update on this Xperia 10 issue, Android 10 for Sony devices and many other SOny related stories, check out our dedicated Sony Section.

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