Aura HD Screen Freeze

[andrewjknox]

Hi,
Has anyone experienced the touch screen becoming unresponsive? It's happened a couple of times up until last night where it happened 3 times in the space of 5-10 minutes.

I need to turn it off and back on again in order to resolve this. Seems quite tricky to find a way to contact Kobo about this issue!

Thanks,
Andrew

[filmo]

Try holding reader with screen down above eye level and brushing screen mainly along edge of bezel with square openings for IR beams. Anything there blocking IR beams can cause problems. Yes this is a long shot try to fix problem.

[andrewjknox]

Originally Posted by filmo

Try holding reader with screen down above eye level and brushing screen mainly along edge of bezel with square openings for IR beams. Anything there blocking IR beams can cause problems. Yes this is a long shot try to fix problem.

Thanks for that suggestion filmo, I'll give that a shot when I get back from work tonight

[taming]

I have not seen other people report this, so unless you are doing something a little odd, it could be a problem with your particular reader. Has all of this happened with one particular book?

[PeterT]

This sounds much like an issue I have on an ongoing basis with my Touch. I'll be reading along quite happily and suddenly the touch freezes, often displaying the dictionary lookup screen with a word underlined. At this point no screen touches are recognized; yes I can use the button on the Touch to return to the main screen but it to is non responsive and all I can do is to power down and back on.

This is highly intermittent.

[geormes]

Originally Posted by PeterT

This sounds much like an issue I have on an ongoing basis with my Touch. I'll be reading along quite happily and suddenly the touch freezes, often displaying the dictionary lookup screen with a word underlined. At this point no screen touches are recognized; yes I can use the button on the Touch to return to the main screen but it to is non responsive and all I can do is to power down and back on.

This is highly intermittent.

Sound like the exact issue I had with my Touch, even to the intermittant nature.

The screen freeze I had on the Aura is somewhat different.
No underlining and power button does not work. Nothing works, can't even turn light off. Paperclip reset worked and Aura came up at home page.
However the Aura had no knowledge of what I was reading and the novel opened to the front cover.

[andrewjknox]

Originally Posted by taming

I have not seen other people report this, so unless you are doing something a little odd, it could be a problem with your particular reader. Has all of this happened with one particular book?

It was the first book I'd read to be honest, I've just started another book so I'll see how that goes - I've taken an air canister to it to blow away any dust that may have been blocking the IR beams as suggested earlier.

The light switch was fine, it just became completely unresponsive until I turned on and off.

Yeah, I'd not seen anyone else mention it so could well be down to my unit...

[jiminrussell]

Originally Posted by andrewjknox

It was the first book I'd read to be honest, I've just started another book so I'll see how that goes - I've taken an air canister to it to blow away any dust that may have been blocking the IR beams as suggested earlier.

The light switch was fine, it just became completely unresponsive until I turned on and off.

Yeah, I'd not seen anyone else mention it so could well be down to my unit...

I had this happen with my Aura three times within the first week or so I had it (April 19-26) but have not had the issue since then and I have done a lot of reading. I assumed it was something that was fixed in a subsequent FW upgrade but maybe I have just been lucky or perhaps it was the book I was reading (sideloaded copy of the Hunger Games Trilogy) at the time that was causing the problem.

[Ken Maltby]

Hmm... Makes me wonder, hope for my "dead" Aura HD? Perhaps my lack of touchscreen
has nothing to do with opening the case and operating it naked. (The Aura, not me.)

Luck;
Ken

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by andrewjknox

It was the first book I'd read to be honest, I've just started another book so I'll see how that goes - I've taken an air canister to it to blow away any dust that may have been blocking the IR beams as suggested earlier.

The light switch was fine, it just became completely unresponsive until I turned on and off.

Yeah, I'd not seen anyone else mention it so could well be down to my unit...

Unless you have opened the case I can't see how you could effect the IR path, in any
way. Blowing air on the outside seems an unlikely fix.

Luck;
Ken

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Unless you have opened the case I can't see how you could effect the IR path, in any
way. Blowing air on the outside seems an unlikely fix.

Luck;
Ken

That's something that can easily happen on any infrared reader, you don't need to open up the case to do it. Having it on a Sony for over 2 years, a bug crawling across the screen can flip pages, a tiny food or dust particle stuck along the frame can totally mess up the IR as well. The easiest fix is to use canned air and blow all around the frame, or use a very soft bristled brush.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Unless you have opened the case I can't see how you could effect the IR path, in any
way. Blowing air on the outside seems an unlikely fix.

Luck;
Ken

The IR senders/receivers are above the screen. If you get something into the gap between the screen and the bezel, you can block one of the IR beams. If you touch the screen elsewhere, it will be detected as if you were touching the screen in two spots simultaneously. Cat hairs work great to trigger this issue.

Regards,
David

[Ken Maltby]

Don't see how anything could be above the screen, the top piece of plastic anyway,
and allow a path for IR light (which still must travel in a straight line, I would presume)
that anything could interrupt. I was thinking that when you press with your finger it
deflects the top layer and that is what interrupts the IR beams, silly me.

Some pictures of the edge of the AuraHD are attached, if you look at them full size you
should see how there are little ICs spaced all around the edges, I guess they would be
the IR emitters.

[sucah]

@ Ken, IR light travel via black plastic layer between the screen and top case.
I have painted my Glo, after that the touch didn't response at all because the black plastic coated with paint. So I try to remove the paint with paint wax and the touch become response again.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Don't see how anything could be above the screen, the top piece of plastic anyway, and allow a path for IR light (which still must travel in a straight line, I would presume) that anything could interrupt. I was thinking that when you press with your finger it
deflects the top layer and that is what interrupts the IR beams, silly me.

Some pictures of the edge of the AuraHD are attached, if you look at them full size you should see how there are little ICs spaced all around the edges, I guess they would be the IR emitters.

When I look at my Aura, between the bezel and the screen, there is a narrow space which is set a millimeter or so back from the edge of the bezel. I had assumed that the plastic on the back of the gap was an IR filter which covers the emitters on one side and the receivers on the other side of the Aura (ditto for top and bottom of the screen). I have noticed that if anything gets into there (cat hairs, for instance), the touch screen can behave very strangely.

Regards,
David