Fixing Dead Pixels and Gray Lines on the iPhone Screen

You love your iPhone so much and one day you noticed few dead pixels appearing on the screen. I can understand how frustrated you are, like me, to see them every startup. In fact, those dead pixels are not really dead in most cases. They are just stuck pixels that won’t refresh with screen redraw. There are number of methods to fix this issue.

• The first method is using  Knox iPhone Pixel Fix application. This application uses JavaScript to cycle the colors by actual hex color at a frequency that may help to release the stuck pixels. If this method failed on your phone, let’s try the next one.
• The second method is launching NES and playing a certain game for few minutes. The game will do the suitable screen refresh that can fix the stuck pixels and restore them to normal status.  This method sounds like working for many people. However, it requires your iPhone be jailbroken to use NES emulator. Learn more about this method here
• The last method is using animated .gif to cycle various colors on stuck pixels. However, this way does not always work but it is worth a try.

In my case, the dead pixel automatically disappeared after few days and I didn’t have to do anything. So, waiting for those pixels restored is also a good way, right?

However, if your iPhone does not suffering from few dead pixels but a large gray areas instead, the solutions are totally different. These dead areas are usually caused by an accident drop, water damage or even cold weather (as many reports that I found on Google).

• If you dropped your phone accidentally and the gray lines started appearing in the following days, the screen was physically damaged and you will need a new screen. This way will cost you a bunch of $$$ but it is still cheaper than buying a brand new phone. Apple store can do this service for a very high price ($199 perhaps). My suggestion is doing the screen replacement  project yourself.  You can buy replacement kit online for $30-$50 and follow the instructions of many clips on YouTube. This way has drawbacks like time consuming or phone damage by your careless operations.
• If you spilled water on your phone unexpectedly, there is still a solution for this problem. Check out here for more details.
• In case your phone screen popped up grey lines after a skiing trip, you may fix this problem by heating your phone at 30°C – 40°C for few days. As I know, there are at least one person applying this way successfully. However, I do not encourage to do that since there is risk of damaging the phone. Instead, I think why don’t wait for few days or few weeks for grey areas automatically go away (this may be just a wish). According to Apple’s website, the safe temperature of iPhone when it is in use is  0° and 35° C (32° to 95° F).

If all above methods don’t help to fix the problems with your phone screen, it may be the time to upgrade with new cute iPhone. However, I myself believe that the gray areas on iPhone screen in many cases are caused by a soft damage. Now, let’s look at the grey lines. They are growing sometimes and shrinking the other times. What happened? It looks more like an error of display buffer by the graphic program than a physical damage. This means that the dead areas in LCD can be fixed with a right software tool. Unluckily, I haven’t found a proof for my belief yet. I don’t know if there is a similar LCD damage of other devices. So, I expect anyone who has more experiences will share with me. 

Finally, you may need to take care your iPhone very carefully to avoid any unexpected issue. I found iPhone is the most sensitive phone that I ever had.  My old Samsung one stayed in the water pail and has been thrown up and down for many times by my 3 year old daughter but it is working like a charm now. Anyway, I love this Apple’s phone so much since it gave me a feeling of a real computer with all functions that I expected.

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