Update (6/3/19 @ 1:52 PM ET): OnePlus mentioned that they were working on a fix for the ghost touch issue. Now they have confirmed it will be released in the "upcoming weeks."

The OnePlus 7 Pro is the company's latest and greatest smartphone. It features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, up to 12GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. It's an absolute beast, but the best feature is most certainly its display. A 1440p 90Hz panel, DisplayMate rated it as one of the best smartphone panels ever by giving it an A+ rating. Sadly, not everything about the display appears to be A+ as some users are reporting that their devices are suffering from "ghost touch" issues. The issue does not appear to affect every unit.

OnePlus 7 Pro XDA Forum

OnePlus 7 Pro Ghost Touches

So what is a "ghost touch"? In short, it's a tap on the screen that the user never input themselves. It can range from harmless to annoying, and both myself and XDA TV's Daniel Marchena have been affected by it. I first noticed the issue on my review unit a couple of days before launch, as it made typing extremely difficult at times. I didn't quite realize the cause until Daniel Marchena pointed out that, on his unit, he was getting ghost touching up top. I turned on the "show touches" in developer options, and found that yes, that was the reason why my typing became slow and inconsistent at times. The issue has persisted on and off again, NFC on, NFC off, it comes and goes regardless, but never too annoying.

And then I tried to scan my NFC travel pass. Take a look at the video below. To stop the ghost touches happening I had to reboot my phone entirely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc14OAlHkJc

Mine is an extreme case. You can see what happens to Daniel Marchena in the CPU-Z application in the video below, a pretty surefire way to replicate the issue if your device is affected.

Is NFC the cause?

The truth is, nobody knows what the cause is. While OnePlus has acknowledged the bug on their forums and suggested OnePlus 7 Pro users switch off NFC as a temporary workaround, that's both an inconvenience and not really a fix. Many users, myself included, have reported the issue even when NFC is switched off. One user on Reddit even discovered that when they had their phone on their wireless mouse charging pad, regardless of whether NFC is on or not, the device would go crazy.

It's possible that the underlying problem is exacerbated by the NFC chip in some way, but it seems that not even OnePlus knows the exact cause right now. There really isn't a whole lot that can be done at the moment if your device is affected, apart from switching off NFC and hoping for the best.

Other Display Issues

Not only that, but there are a number of other display-related issues that seem to be plaguing the OnePlus 7 Pro. XDA TV's Max Weinbach and I have both had the top right of our displays cease to function randomly, and we've had to switch off and on the display to fix it. Other users on the OnePlus subreddit reported similar, with some saying that it happened to them on the left of their display instead of the right. It's a minor issue though, especially in comparison with the ghost touching issue.

OnePlus is Working on a Fix

This is another question that nobody knows the answer to yet. Not even OnePlus seems to know the exact cause, as the given "fix" to disable NFC doesn't fix the problem for everyone. In a "Share your feedback" post on the OnePlus forums, global product operations manager Manu J. mentioned that it is being looked into and the company is trying to solve it ASAP, asking users affected to "please report and share logs if you are facing this issue.​" No timeframe was given for when to expect the fix to roll out.

We'll be keeping a close eye on this one for sure. If it is indeed a hardware issue, that could prove extremely problematic for OnePlus to rectify and may result in devices having to be recalled and replaced. That would be a big blow to a component that was supposed to be the key feature of the OnePlus 7 Pro. Fingers crossed that a future update can fix the issue soon.


Update: Fix coming soon

David Y., a Global Community Manager at OnePlus, has shared a statement on a thread over on the OnePlus forums:

Our software team has worked hard to identify the case, and we will release a firmware update in the upcoming weeks.

Of course, "upcoming weeks" can mean any length of time, but we would expect this update to roll out relatively soon. A lot of OnePlus 7 Pro users have reported issues with "phantom taps" and more.