[askwhy]

I do have this issue on my Incredible. It seems that anytime it is fairly isolated from some sort of ground, that the screen will become nearly unresponsive to operation by a single finger. When it is in this unresponsive state, touching the side of the phone with as much as a single *other* finger, even from the same hand as the one operating the touchscreen, that will allow for normal touchscreen responsiveness. The presence of the silicone case, or its absence, seems to make no difference.

Nobody should let the styrofoam example in the video(s) suggest to them that this only happens in 'obscure circumstances' -- this happens (if and when it happens) on all sorts of regular, everyday surfaces. For me, it happens on the couch (microfiber), or even if it is sitting on another object that is itself sitting on the couch. It will certainly happen when it is sitting in my car dock (plastic), but *not* if it is also plugged in to the cassette adapter, or charger.

I had the phone on top of an empty 100-DVD spindle, which was on my (crowded) desk, and it wouldn't work from there. If I set the phone directly on the same desk, or even on top of other (shorter? denser?) objects on the same desk, it works fine.

Grounding is definitely a factor. Static may be another. Something else? Humidity? Planetary Alignments?

I was testing this on so many surfaces the other day, I accidentally called South Africa (011455...) while spamming buttons on the dialer. In a panic I backed out of the dialer before hanging up and it was connected long enough for me to briefly hear a woman's voice. Whoops.

Anyways, the issue is real, and if you don't seem to have experienced it, just be glad. I don't see how this could be a hardware grounding issue, but only exist in some phones. Everything is so tightly packed in there, and this isn't like a faulty chip -- this is somehow electrical, and situational.