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There are many forums posts and videos on the "lighter trick" which fixes touch screens dead zones (at least temporarily) such as The YouTube video Nokia Lumia Touchscreen Dead Zone Fix With Igniter (Lighter) purports to show a phone with a large "dead zone" in the middle of the screen where it is unresponsive to touch. Then a cigarette lighter is sparked, and the dead zone is working again.

This is just one of several sites to make such a claim: e.g. [1], [2], [3]

I cannot understand how this might work.

Can a cigarette lighter ignition be used this way to fix dead zones on capacitive touch screens?

Oddthinking
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Symmetry
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  • Ok, I fixed the title a little bit. It's not just windows phone though, there's many videos claiming this across many devices. Granted, most I see are android. The video in the post is just the most concise one I can find. – Symmetry Oct 28 '21 at 22:11
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    Frankly all the swapping between apps in that vid make it hard to see that it's not a software problem. Somewhat more convincing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VERfODYHX3g – Fizz Oct 29 '21 at 00:55
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    The why question is probably better on https://electronics.stackexchange.com/ – Fizz Oct 29 '21 at 01:15
  • I focussed the question. – Oddthinking Oct 29 '21 at 06:11
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    I think physics tag is not much relevant here. Although heat is involved but charging and discharging of capacitors is concerned field of electrical and electronics engineering. – SwiftPushkar Oct 29 '21 at 17:14
  • That is interesting. Most touch screens are capacitive sensing these days. It might be possible that a there is a calibration issue where part of the sensor grid has fallen out of spec, causing a dead zone, and a electromagnetic pulse (small) from a piezoelectric lighter might temporarily fool the software into being more sensitive in that area. But I’m not confident this is the case. – Jarrod Christman Nov 07 '21 at 15:30

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