So here I am fiddling with my iPhone, when a rare yet not entirely uncommon problem rears itself.
Every now and again my iPhone's touchscreen exhibits a rather strange behavior. When I tap to select a specific item in various applications, the touchscreen misidentifies my tap and executes it in a completely different area code. The device can remain in that state for five or more seconds. No matter how many times you tap on a specific item, something else is selected. Example...I tap on very first new email in my inbox to open it, and the very last email is selected instead. Sound familiar to you? Thought so.
Well I think I may have found a solution, or at least the cause. My suspicion is that the iPhone's accelerometer is to blame, even in applications that do not support landscape mode. I came to that conclusion because my ill registered taps had a predictable pattern, as if the touchscreen thought the device were being held in a different orientation. I ruled out this being a simple calibration issue common to typical touchscreen Smartphones and PDAs, because...were this the case...the item above or below my taps would be selected. These spurious selections are nowhere near the location of my intended taps.
So what is the solution? Once I determined the cause I figured out that when these moments of touchscreen epilepsy afflict my iPhone, I could snap it out of this state by tilting the device forward in a near horizontal spacial orientation, as if it were lying flat on a table. Sure enough, after this change in relative position, everything worked normally.
If this happens to you, simply tilt the device forward, then back again. That should do the trick!
Got it? Good. Now stop bothering me while I'm tapping.
