Chosen Solution
Yesterday all of a sudden my iPhone 4S screen went completely white. I tried doing a hard reset, but still no good. The weird thing is the screen still works (e.g., I can still swipe to pick up phone calls or unlock the phone, I just can’t see anything). I’ve had the screen replaced before, so I’m thinking that a connection is loose, but I’m not sure. I also saw some people recommended restoring the phone, but I don’t think that will do anything. Am I on the right track here with my troubleshooting? I’m thinking:
- Hard reset. No good.
- Open it up to check connections.
- If none of above work, replace LCD. I’m a little hesitant to do the restore because I don’t want to lose data and I don’t feel like that’s what’s causing the white screen. I literally just pulled out my phone from my pocket and there it was. It almost looked I took a screenshot and the screen turned white. Thanks!
It sounds to me like your assessment of the situation is accurate. I think the hard reset is unlikely to help, though since there was no obvious hardware cause of the failure, it’s certainly worth a shot. If you’re worried about losing data, you could plug it into a computer to back it up, and save anything that iTunes won’t. If you do open it up, I highly recommend looking for signs of water damage. It doesn’t need to be recent to cause problems, most water damage issues don’t pop up right away, but take time to develop, and can present in weird, unexpected ways. If there’s no water damage, and the connection is flush, then a replacement LCD seems like the best attempt from there. Also worth noting, you can check the connectors, or try to replace the screen without doing a hard reset, if the work/cost is easier than the backing up of data. I’ve never had data integrity problems due to screen replacements, in est 150-200ish iPhones. Good luck! ~Des @ MRRU
