Is your OnePlus 2 suffering from an unresponsive home button?


oneplus 2 review

Only a couple of days back did I receive my OnePlus 2. I was blown away by how well the phone is put together, but then a nagging issue caught my attention, that of the home button being sporadically unresponsive.

I attributed the issue to my unit being a Chinese one (as opposed to an international one) flashed with the international ROM, which I suspected was bad.

However, before I could re-flash the ROM to double check the issue, it was already confirmed by hordes of other OnePlus 2 users.

Android Police even put up a video (right at the end of this article), identifying a pattern to the unresponsiveness. It appears as though the phone suffers from a grounding issue, which makes the home button unresponsive.

Essentially, the issue occurs when you try to ‘press’ the home button with one hand while holding the phone in another. Take a look at the video below to get a better understanding. As noted, this doesn’t affect the accuracy of the fingerprint scanner but only the number of times the home button is triggered.

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I can confirm that my unit of the phone has the issue. Are you facing something similar? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Meanwhile, an interim workaround is to use the phone in one hand (which isn’t very difficult thanks to the narrow-ish profile), which is when the button works fine.

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13 Comments

  1. pa5t1s
    August 28, 2015

    Since I got my OPT, I became really cautious about ‘what is said on forums’. Most of the time, I can’t see/reproduce the ‘problem’, or it doesn’t exist at all, in normal conditions of usage.
    Now, a ‘grounding effect’ on a ‘self-powered’ device sounds strange to me…

  2. Tim Watts
    August 28, 2015

    Just tried this and I couldn’t create an issue, works perfect every time.

    • Pez Smith
      August 28, 2015

      You must have a dud phone. 🙂

    • August 28, 2015

      I can confirm the issue is present on my unit. Going to try another ROM to see if it helps.

      • balcobomber25
        August 28, 2015

        Where is the S7 review? Dont leave a fellow Gionee fan hanging lol!

      • Xalis
        August 29, 2015

        Try with a case and report back please.

  3. Varun Varma
    August 28, 2015

    Another workaround would be to use a case that covers the metal frame

  4. Burs
    August 28, 2015

    I would also say it’s a grounding issue. What I hate the most on my Jiayu S2 is exactly the same thing. When tapping capacitive buttons with one hand, everything works perfect, but when I put the phone flat on the table, buttons don’t react at all, and that means 10 out of 10 times. As soon as I touch the phone with my other hand, everything works perfect again. I also had one tablet in the past with the same issue. But it’s funny 2016 flagships still have this same issue 🙂
    EDIT: funny enough, updating to MIUI V7 solved my grounding issue 🙂 Now working perfectly in every situation…

  5. Mike Ashunk
    August 28, 2015

    It doesn’t happen to me, thats strange, it works everytime. It fails if you use the phone while charging tho.

  6. Mesterio
    August 28, 2015

    Ok well, we will keep our ears to the ground then ?

  7. August 29, 2015

    Yep, same on my sample.

  8. Db
    October 12, 2015

    I had intermittent problem before but now nothing makes the home button work. I have a bumper case on and have tried to remove glass protectors too and all that did was crack
    the protector

  9. saulett
    November 24, 2015

    I have the same issue, and non of the mentioned solutions worked for me. For now, I will ask oneplus 2 about this issue and will try to get a replacement since since they cannot provide us any soultion. The bug fix may fix it but you have to wait for it and I’m not sure it will solve it. And as far as I know they don’t have a road map for the patches so for me the best solution would be to send back the phone, ask for a replacement and if they are refusing it I will ask PayPal for the refund, or my bankd for a charge back.