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Repair guides for Android cell phones manufactured by ZTE.

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[ZTE ZFive 2] Factory restore, no touch, boot weirdness...

Got a ZTE ZFive 2 in very good condition. The phone has never been opened up (security stickers over the screws still in place) and there are no signs of liquid intrusion. It charges fine and powers up both on battery and AC power. There is currently no SIM card or SD card installed. The owner wants to reset the phone and give it to his kid.

The boot cycle is as follows:

Power on and the red LED at the top of the phone (to the left of the ZTE logo) turns on and the ZTE boot screen appears; it stays this way for 24 seconds. The screen goes black; the red LED at the top of the phone stays on for an additional 6 seconds before turning off. 24 seconds after that (54 seconds after pressing the power button) a musical chime is heard and the buttons at the bottom of the phone light up briefly. The screen will then remain black forever if you do nothing, but I did notice two things. First, if I press the power button for one second the phone gives a brief vibration. Also, after about three and a half minutes (about four and a half minutes after pressing the power button) if I press the power button for one second, the screen lights up and I’ll get the “draw your pattern” unlock screen. I am unable to draw the pattern because touch doesn’t work. The “draw your pattern” unlock screen stays on the phone indefinitely; the phone doesn’t go to sleep/lock.

I tried to get into the Android recovery screen to do a factory reset (hold down VOLUME UP and POWER until the boot screen appears, then release POWER while still holding down VOLUME UP) but but I’m unsuccessful. What happens is, I go through the process and eventually the screen goes black and the red LED at the top of the phone turns off; that’s when I release the VOLUME UP button. But then nothing else happens. If I wait about 30-60 seconds and press the POWER button, the phone reboots/turns on and follows the boot process defined above.

I know that VOLUME UP is indeed working because I can adjust the volume in both directions at the “draw your pattern” screen, plus I can force a reboot by holding POWER and VOLUME UP for several seconds. I can accept that touch may be damaged, but clearly the screen is working properly.

I know the boot timing for this phone is WAY off. I found a YouTube video showing how to do a reset of this phone and based on the (unedited) action in the video it takes about six seconds to get to the Android recovery screen after holding down VOLUME UP and POWER.

Why can’t I recover this?

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Chosen Solution

If anyone is having the same issue, I discovered the answer: the digitizer was bad. Weird, but that was the problem. I replaced the digitizer and the phone behaves completely normally now.

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Steve will be eternally grateful.
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