Why is my LCD panel moving and touching erratically on its own?

Hey Sean,

I repaired my iPad 7 earlier today and I also verified by turning it on without the digitizer connected, I also had the ghost touch and eventually just decided to reconnect the digitizer. After I did it stopped and the touch works perfect now. I think it may just be the way apple has designed the iPad 7 Logic Board in which when it doesnt detect a digitizer it just does weird things. Wouldn’t be surprised seeing as Apple is well Apple and how they software lock so many of their devices. As i’ve only repaired my iPad today I cant tell if it is a long term problem that will get worse over time but as for now and the past 16 or so hours my touch has been working fine.

I hope this helped in any way.

I've seen this sort of thing happen when digital signals are allowed to "float" - that is, they're not connected to either a high or a low voltage. What happens is other parts of the circuit leak voltage to where the level is close to the threshold point so any slight variation caused by transistors switching or electromagnetic interference can cause the circuit to think it's been activated on and off.

If indeed it's being caused by an open circuit - which it sounds like it is, since it happens even with the digitizer disconnected, that would indicate that the new digitizer is bad; the motherboard is still seeing that signal in an indeterminate state whether it's connected or not. If it stops when you plug in the old digitizer, that would pretty much prove that the new one's no good.

Restore it? I’ve had a lot of problems caused by software updates then fixed with a restore (best example: I updated my iPad mini 3 to iOS 9, and the App Store got deleted. I had to restore, lest I loose the App Store)

I managed to fix this on an ipad 7th gen by:

Disconnecting the battery,

cleaning the connectors with isopropyl alcohol

fitting a &new* digitiser to the ipad(not the same old one).

Maybe I got lucky… the ipad in question has had some frame damage and seems to have intermittent issues (according to the owner FWIW) with charging and screen staying on. today was the first time it had been ghost touching with no digitiser connected, but appears to be fine now.

Did anyone manage to fix this?

I have the same problem on my iPad 9. It has ghost touch even without the digitizer connected. I got this from someone who smashed the screen of the iPad. She didn't have the receipt as well. So I tried repairing it on my own. I have repaired a number of ipads before. First time experiencing this. Anybody has a solution to this?

As a professional iPad refurbisher I can tell you that ghost typing on a 9th Gen. (or 7th or 8th) in my experience has caused by digitizers that are not properly seated on the motherboard FPC connectors, (more likely on the one in the left).

The other causes can be bent or missing pins on either of those FPC connectors which can be caused by pressing too hard when trying to seat one or both connectors,

The third possibility is a defect in the digitizer itself other than either of the connectors.