Digitizer is on when screen is off

[dukla2000]

I wanted to drag this out of the big thread as it is still an issue. My PinePhone is now my daily driver, but one thing I have noticed is that all kinds of odd things are happening while the screen is off and it is in my pocket. What is odd is I couldn't replicate by leaving a keyboard open in say terminal, or even scrolling in Firefox. But in my pocket a couple of times I have restarted to my wifi password entry full of garbage and the scroll-up first mentioned below is also a problem with

Code:

$ uname -a
Linux duklaPP 5.6-pinephone #5.6.0+pinephone3 SMP PREEMPT Mon Apr 27 10:28:55 CEST 2020 aarch64 GNU/Linux

I would guess it is an upstream/phosh issue - any other thoughts/comments?

as per post 406 in the long thread

Not sure if this is an upstream issue, but I think this depends on the configuration. When the screen is turned off it will still accept touch input. You can test this by turning the screen off, swiping upwards and then turning the screen back on. You will see the pin entry instead of just the lock screen.

I guess we could save a lot of power by turning the touch input off with the screen.

[Juergen]

I think this is a very good idea. Every component not necessary has to be switched off, I guess there are some more - additional to the digitizer.

(I used a phonepad7 from Asus for a long time, of course different hardware (Atom processor from Intel) with Android. In the beginning I charged it every 5-6 days, after 4 years of usage the battery needs to be charged every 2-3 days. These values will probably never be reached with our much more powerful processor)

[heng]

Is this problem still there?

[Juergen]

Is this problem still there?

Just tested it - yes, the digitizer is still active when the screen is switched off.

[heng]

I don't think that this has been posted on the Mobian gitlab

[dukla2000]

I don't think that this has been posted on the Mobian gitlab

AFAIK its a phosh issue. Really nasty, they do have a kind of double click wake-up enabled which means if you put your phone in a pocket the backlight will come on, all kinds of screen taps will happen, your battery will plummet ...

[antiX-Dave]

yes the touch input always being on can be annoying.
I found that unbinding the driver by running
echo -n 0-005d > /sys/bus/i2c/drivers/Goodix-TS/unbind
does disable the touch screen. However I have not found a way to re-enable it. Rebinding the driver via
echo -n 0-005d > /sys/bus/i2c/drivers/Goodix-TS/bind
does seem to register the touch screen as an input again but it does not actually re-enable the function.

I was hoping to script the function and tie it to the side button

Edit:
Not sure if it is related or if it is just the last place I left my finger but leaving here as a note...
Viewing the input device using evtest --/dev/input/event3; it seems as though the values in ABS_X/Y are cleared after an unbind and bind.


Edit:
I also noticed after loading yesterdays daily image that the screen turns off and on on its own every couple of minutes.

[a-wai]

I agree this is annoying, display power management has been implemented but is clearly not perfect, meaning we can no longer rely on the power button to lock/unlock the touch panel (if the display is woken up by an incoming notification, the touch panel stays disabled, and pressing the power button will toggle both in a different way: disable the screen while enabling the touch panel).

So basically, the current situation is a bit of a mess, I hope I can find some time to look into this but it won't be an easy one to solve.

EDIT: well, maybe a nasty hack just landed in Mobian's repo
Still have to find a more elegant and upstreamable solution, but at least this shouldn't bother you anymore...

[dukla2000]

I agree this is annoying, display power management has been implemented but is clearly not perfect, meaning we can no longer rely on the power button to lock/unlock the touch panel (if the display is woken up by an incoming notification, the touch panel stays disabled, and pressing the power button will toggle both in a different way: disable the screen while enabling the touch panel).

So basically, the current situation is a bit of a mess, I hope I can find some time to look into this but it won't be an easy one to solve.

EDIT: well, maybe a nasty hack just landed in Mobian's repo
Still have to find a more elegant and upstreamable solution, but at least this shouldn't bother you anymore...

Looks like this is resolved as at yesterday mornings updates. The digitizer is off it seems, so the "scroll up" test now doesn't work. And indeed the double tap to wake has also gone. which on reflection is a good thing as it played havoc with a phone in a pocket!

Thank you

There may be an artefact with the screen waking up unexpectedly, I need to check but with the phone running on battery, screen off, after 10 or 15 minutes it is all lighting up sometimes. This may have been some kind of notification about low battery power as my battery was sinking below 20%.

[a-wai]

There may be an artefact with the screen waking up unexpectedly, I need to check but with the phone running on battery, screen off, after 10 or 15 minutes it is all lighting up sometimes. This may have been some kind of notification about low battery power as my battery was sinking below 20%.

This is probably be due to a notification yes, based on my testing this is the only case where the display wakes up "by itself".