[Moto Z2 Force  Questions & Answers] AFAinHD:
Hey there. I'm a bit new to this side of XDA. Honestly with how long I've been AWOL from this site nothing is familiar anymore. How time flies. Well my first post back in years couldnt be more unfortunate phone wise, I've had my Z2 for a couple of months now and as a mechanic it's been treated like all my others phones prior, rough. I've been locally recognized as the guy who has a new phone every couple of months because he can't not shatter a phone. An expensive hobby of breaking phones. Well luckily I didn't shatter my Z2. I just water logged it. Gotta change things up right? So here's where the interesting problem comes in, I let the phone sit in rice for 30 hours, switching the rice out half way through. It acted up like you would expect in the first couple of hours but then stopped. When I pulled the phone out I scraped the rice out of all the books and crannies and tried to power it on, to no avail. Dead battery I assume, so I plug it in. Charge icon pops up, a sign of life! How glorious. So I let it sit for a minute as I assume the battery probably dropped below minimum voltage when the LEDs were freaking out. Went back to the phone, held the power button and no screen, but "Hello, Moto!" So at this point I'm convinced the screen is dead, so I force it off with the volume down method and pry off the screen. To find what? More water. Good Lord. This phone is incredibly water resistant just in reverse. So I do the only thing that makes sense at this point, I remove the ribbion connector from the board for the display and put the phone back in new rice as 2 separate pieces. I then leave it in there for another 30 hours switching the rice halfway. Bringing us to now. I took the phone out, cleaned all the rice out of the 2 pieces and off the remaining adhesive and connected the ribbion back to the board. Plug the charger in, and again, charging logo. But then I hold the power button and the TMobile splash screen pops up! Then the screen goes dead and once again, "Hello, Moto!". But whats different is now when the boot sequence is finished I can interact with the phone and it works, shake for flashlight, enter my passcode (just by feel cause I'm good like that, ladies hmu), and the button responds with vibration. The phone is working but no screen. So at this point I'm sure, the display driver is done. I murdered it in cold daylight. So I shut it off and start looking around for new screens, in the midst of this I knock the phone and accidentally hit the power button, and it starts to boot up. T-Mobile spash screen, screen death, "Hello, Moto!", and nothing. Now that seems weird. Why would it work twice on the TMobile splash? So I decide I'll try putting it in fastboot for S&G's. Restart, put it in fastboot and the screen stays on. Beautiful and clear as day, all buttons work, everything reads fine, but, if I go to boot it or do anyother action than "retart bootloader", the cycle continues. T-Mobile, death, hello Moto, nothingness. Now at this point I'm okay with the phone being dead, it's fine, but I'm intrigued now. What would cause the screen to work just fine when in the bootloader and the TMobile splash screen, but die when it boots? The phone is very clearly working in the background. I logged in, used Google assistant, used the flashlight, pressed buttons on the dialer, all without the screen but with haptic feedback and audio. Could the graphical side of the main partition just be corrupt, or maybe the display driver is dead but the main board interacts with it differently during fastboot? I'm far from being knowledgeable on the hardware side of these things but I'm really genuinely interested in getting feedback here from anyone with an idea of what is going on. I'll post a video here in a half an hour or so when I finish up with dinner.