Iv'e had a look at the other threads about Dead N9's & none of them seem to quite fit my issue.
My phone is totally unresponsive. It's like it's been brain damaged "which is a bit how I feel at the moment I have the flu" . I know that things are still happening in there but I have no access to them It's like it's nervous system has been cut . It still keeps the time & date & even still reminds me to go to bed when I should.
The problem started about a year ago it sometimes wouldn't start when I tapped the screen or used the lock button. It goes to the message screen but the links aren't live. For a long time I could do a hard reboot & get it back.Slowly it became completely unresponsive. After a hard boot all of my ikons still come up but are unresponsive to touch
I took it to a tech about 6 months ago & for about a month it worked fine.Then the issue slowly started to reappear.
The phone has never been damaged has a few small scratches on the glass but nothing else for a phone from early 2012 it's in very good nick. I love it & would love to have it back in use.

My daughter gave me her old 4s & it OK but I would love to have my N9 back. My preferred way of doing this would be to find a good tech here in Melbourne. I'm not sure I have the skills to navigate my way through all the Linux stuff anymore, getting old. It does have the last update that Nokia released installed & probably a bit to much other stuff. The last time I had it working I should have cleaned it out & started from scratch but a bit late for that now. Thanks in advance for any help David

Hi,

Your description suggests it's software not hardware - which is good.

What do you mean by hard reboot? If this is "turning it off and on again" the next thing to try would be a factory reset and if that didn't help a reflash.

I sometimes have less extreme symptoms like you describe and it is usually either the CPU being overloaded or the memory.

Gabriel

I mean holding the lock/power button for 10 seconds & then holding it again until the phone pulses & then begins that lovely process of the Nokia sign , the ripple out to the edge of the screen & the sweet little piece of music. On a computer it would be hitting the reset button when all else fails, hence the hard.

You may well find Settings>Reset>Clear Device does the job. Assuming you can backup what you need to I'd recommend that first.

One possible thing to try before that would be to install Drop Cache and use Free All on that as soon as it starts getting sluggish.

I can't get into settings at all The device is totally unresponsive. It's not dead the lock screen is still there & it still keeps time but I can't even access the phone from my computer as the screen is unresponsive. the phone is still aware it knows it's connected to a usb device but I can't give the necessary permissions to allow access

To be sure it is HW or SW you would need to flash the device fully, loosing all data.

If you got something important on device consider flashing ubiboot kernel and connect to a Linux computer (or Win with extfs driver). This will allow you to connect all partitions and get what you need.

Unfortunately I would guess a faulty display but full flash is worth a try.

before flashing, you could also use T5 torx screwdriver to open this pandora box and check if all connectors (mostly the one for the screen and power supply) are firmly combined with the motherboard. instructions by le55ons here on YT

in my case it was the battery connector, which went loose