Is Your iPhone 16 Touchscreen Misbehaving? It’s Not Just You
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Now that early adopters have had a few days to play with Apple’s latest iPhone 16 models, we’re seeing the first reports of unusual behavior and glitches, the most prominent of which are related to the touchscreen.
The problem was first highlighted by 9to5Mac, but comments on Reddit suggest that it could be related to the new Camera Control. That’s certainly how it appeared at first, although subsequent reports have indicated that while the problem may be more common on the iPhone 16, it’s not exclusive to those models, suggesting a bug in iOS 18 instead that may be aggravated by the new design.
It’s unclear how widespread the problem is (I haven’t encountered it on my new iPhone 16 Pro Max), but some have suggested it’s related to the touch rejection algorithm, which may have been dialed up in iOS 18. This is a core feature of iOS that prevents an iPhone from responding to accidental touches, such as when someone picks up their iPhone.
The theory is that the problem may occur more frequently on the iPhone 16 due to its smaller screen bezels. Since the screen is closer to the edge, it’s more likely that someone handling an uncased iPhone might have some part of their hand near the touch-sensitive area of the screen, causing intentional touches to be ignored. This might also explain why not everyone is encountering the problem; if it’s related to accidental skin contact at the edges of the screen, then differences in people’s hands and how they hold their iPhones will cause some to experience it more than others. 9to5Mac notes that it’s more difficult to trigger this behavior with a case on the iPhone.
We’ve also seen some reports that it’s happening not only on older iPhone models but also on iPads, adding weight to the idea that this is a software issue— something that changed in both iOS 18 and iPadOS 18.
In a post on Mastodon, Khaos Tian shares a demonstration of how this can be triggered deliberately. While that’s a somewhat contrived example, it doesn’t take much contact for the touch rejection to kick in.
The issue also only occurs in specific contexts, such as scrolling through text or swiping between Home Screen pages. It doesn’t seem to manifest when the iPhone is locked. However, a 9to5Mac reader who encountered the problem was able to replicate it using iPhone Mirroring from their Mac, which suggests there may be something deeper going on here than merely the touch rejection algorithms.
While it’s common for some iPhones to experience ghost touch, this appears to be the opposite problem. Ghost touch typically refers to an iPhone receiving random inputs — as if a ghost is typing on your screen. These most often occur when you’re using your iPhone, and taps are registered in other areas of the screen. However, in rare cases, they can also activate when your iPhone is idle. Nevertheless, this problem involves touches not being registered at all.
Two years ago, many folks encountered a similar problem with iOS 15 and the iPhone 13. However, that was also a slightly different issue as it affected the ability to wake up the iPhone from the Lock Screen. This iOS 18 and iPhone 16 issue only appears to be active when the iPhone is unlocked and being used.
Still, while not everyone has run into this issue, there’s clearly something going on here, and hopefully Apple will have a fix out soon.
