Resize screen for Dead touch zone

Question

I have Star N7189 (5.5") with the lower zone of touch screen dead

The menu and back buttons don't work,but the physical home button works.

I tried to press hard on the edges of the screen, I tried to apply a twist from the short sides as if it were nothing but a wet towel. I did the hard reset but it did not work.

Sometimes pressing dead area, the phone takes it as menu button

As well as replacing the screen what other methods can I try? Is there any app, launcher or trick to resize the screen usable only to the working area?

P.S. a few hours after leaving it in airplane mode suddenly the touch had this problem but I do not remember if I inadvertently placed something heavy in that area of ​​the cell.

Answer 1

A partial but possibly helpful answer, but would not work on Android 11 and above.

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Note:

• My solution is tested on Stock Android 4.4.2 and Stock CyanogenOS 12 (5.0), and should work for Android 4.3 and above (based on this answer).
• I've mentioned wherever root access is required.

The issue in this existing answer is that it reduces the screen output from both top and bottom in my devices while I need to reduce only from the bottom. To do so I used the following comment as the ground to work on:

The bottom 20% of my Nexus 4 doesn't work. I use: wm overscan 0,0,0,210 to have android WM not draw anything in that area so that I can operate all the drawn areas fully again.. – Thrustmaster

##Instructions:

1. Enable USB-debugging in your phone.

2. Install ADB tools in your PC, connect your device into it, and make sure that device is getting detected in adb devices.

3. We need to know the resolution and the display density of the device. In the terminal/cmd enter adb shell dumpsys display | grep mBaseDisplayInfo to show display related info. The output could look like:

    mBaseDisplayInfo=DisplayInfo{"Built-in Screen", app 480 x 854, real 480 x 854, largest app 480 x 854, smallest app 480 x 854, 64.29 fps, rotation 0, density 240, 240.0 x 240.0 dpi, layerStack 0, type BUILT_IN, address null, FLAG_SECURE, FLAG_SUPPORTS_PROTECTED_BUFFERS}
   

The relevant info in my case is:

• real 1080x1920
• density 480

5. The most useful commands to be used are:

• wm overscan [reset|LEFT,TOP,RIGHT,BOTTOM]

• wm density [reset|DENSITY]

  My default launcher screen without tweaks looked like:

  

2. To reduce the screen output at bottom issue the command:

       adb shell wm overscan 0,0,0,100
   

   Note the I used further reduction by upto 0,0,0,300 and the output was like this:

   [![enter image description here][3]][4]
   

   Tweak the value to your desired needs.

3. You may need to correct the density since the display could look odd. My device's default display density is 480 dpi, so I tweaked it this way:

       adb shell wm density 440
   

   and the resultant screen was like this. An app under tweaked resolution.

4. Note that you can use adb shell wm density reset and adb shell wm overscan reset to revert back to default density and resolution respectively.

5. Now that "dead touch zone" has been taken care of it's time to use virtual/soft keys (only if you need it).

   1. Izzy has it already covered in this answer. Otherwise, you can use Gravitybox LP (for Lollipop users) or Gravitybox KK (for Kitkat users). It is an Xposed module, and require root access and Xposed Framework installed.

      Install, activate and launch Gravitybox → Navigation bar tweaks → Enable Navigation bar → do a reboot, and soft-keys aka Navigation bar would be found enabled.

   2. Custom ROM like Cyanogenmod and some stock ROMs has the option to enable soft-keys(buttons) under Settings. You can use that option since it doesn't require any root access.

   3. After some further tweaks the final screen of my Android 5.0 looked like:

      

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_{Note that the aforesaid solution probably wouldn't be relevant for the OP, but it is written considering the objective of the bounty (offered by barro32). Next big update possibly would be for Android 4.2.}

Answer 2

If your device is rooted, you might want to take a look at Button Savior (Root) – if not, at Button Savior Non Root. Or at Virtual Button Bar:

^{Button Saviour and Virtual Button Bar (source: Google Play; click for larger images)}

What do all the three have in common? As the screenshots show, they enable virtual softkeys at places where you want them. So you can avoid the "dead areas", and still have them present.

Admitted, this does not resize the screen; but at least fixes the problem with the buttons.

Answer 3

I found the solution!
Requires root and android 4.3+!!!

This app can change your resolution and also add virtual buttons.
You will need to change the height about 1.5cm smaller.(can't see it very good on your picture so check it before applying!) If you have any problems with the app, check the app's description or post a comment below.

Hope my answer helps you!

Download link for app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nomone.resolution_changer

Answer 4

Firelords answer works for Android Versions above 4.2.

For Versions up to (including) Android 4.2 the command to use is am. After enabling USB-Debugging and installing ADB tools, the procedure is:

1. Detect the current display resolution: adb shell dumpsys window (or better to directly filter the output for the resolution: adb shell dumpsys window | grep cur= |tr -s " " | cut -d " " -f 4|cut -d "=" -f 2) - from here)
2. Change the resolution to e.g. 540x700 adb shell am display-size 540x700. (Can be reset with adb shell am display-size reset)
3. If neccessary to change the display density then check the current density with adb shell dumpsys display (or to get a short output: adb shell dumpsys display | grep mBaseDisplayInfo)
4. Change the density to e.g. 230: adb shell am display-density 230 (Can be reset with adb shell am display-density reset).

If neccessary to enable soft keys/on-screen buttons, this can be done by adding the line qemu.hw.mainkeys=0 to the file /system/build.prop (required root permissons). If this line already exists in the build.prop, on-screen buttons can be enabled by setting the value to 0 or disabled by setting it to 1. As far as I know, this works from Android 4.0 on.