Inkpad 3 dead on battery, but fine on charger

[coco72]

Hi,

I own a Pocketbook Inkpad 3 since december 2018 (no more under warranty), that has been OK until this august 2021. It started not powering on when on battery, or freezing after 1 or 2 minutes of usage, even with the battery at more than 90% full.
Pluging it on its usb charger makes it start normally, and unpluging it lets it work during 1 or 2 min OK at beginning, but not any more 3 days after it began to bug. Now unplugging it makes it freeze immediately.

As everything works perfectly when plugged in, I suspected the LiPo battery was in bad condition, even if it shows 100% full when plugged to the charger. So I opened the back cover (very easy if done slowly with a guitar mediator for instance) to take a look at it: the LiPo battery looks fine, like new, not blown up or puffed up like a tired LiPo battery. Its volatge shows 3,88V which is fine too.

I've read about issues where the LiPo batt had puffed up inside the reader, pushing hard on the back of the e-ink screen, until it broke it, making the reader totally out of service, which is not the case at all for mine.

I've written to Pocketbook support service, that only answers to send the reader to FIXIT, a polish enterprise that would diagnose the device and eventually repair it if possible and if I pay for that, but cannot answer any question, and as you guess I don't want to send it and risk a broken screen during shipping, nor want I to pay to send it or to get it back to me if the repair cost is near to the price of a new reader...

So have any of you already seen, read or heard of something like my issue ?
To my opinion it could be a faulty component on the motherboard itself (but it looks all right under the eye), so I would like to find another Inkpad 3 with a broken screen to get another motherboard and fit it into my reader.

Anybody interested ?

Thanks in advance

[nhedgehog]

Dead battery or mainboard failure.
I would open the device and try to charge the battery in another device to be sure, it is a dead battery. Removing the battery from the device is a little tricky since it is glued to the back of the screen. There is danger to break the screen during this process. Using a thin wire to remove it helps.

[coco72]

As I wrote, I've opened the back cover and checked the batt voltage and and I managed to "unstick" the battery from the back of the screen (it was really tricky, 2 strips of a white double sided sticky tape): it looks ok and the voltage is 3.88V at 100% full (as showed in the device screen when connected to AC).

It would have been good news if the batt had been dead, cause easy to replace it. But it doesn't seem to be the case here.

[nhedgehog]

Voltage of 3,88V at 100% without getting some charges out of it tells you nothing, except that it is a little low.

[coco72]

You mean that the motherboard crashes when it tries to get some mA current from the batt? Strange but why not... I will try to use the batt through another device to see if it can decently power something.
And I'll try to power the reader with another 3,7V batt to confirm that.

[nhedgehog]

No I mean that the battery crashes under load thus forcing the mainboard to shut down. You can measure the voltage of the battery under load while booting the device up.

[coco72]

Good news today! As you suggested I did a test with another batt with similar specs, and the reader booted and worked fine with it. So you were right, the reader battery has a problem.

Then I fully read the post "inkpad 3 issue", describing same kind of battery weakness including an eventual poor/misfunctionning charging management. Finally it seems that fitting a new batteries the issue for a while, but then the issue comes again and a new batt is needed again. If it is every 2,5 years I can live with this.

Many thanks for your support, I need to order a decent LiPo approaching those specs: 3mm * 65mm * 78mm 3,7V 1900mAh
I guess I should find something on AliExpress

[bpbiszkopt]

Hello, did you find battery ?
Couple years ago there was plenty battery designed for InkPad on Ali but now I saw only dyi

[joepie]

I have the same problem as OP. Inkpad 3 works fine except for switching on. Battery is full, but it will not boot until I connect the usb for power. After booting, I can take it off the power and it works fine. As I can still charge, I didn't think the battery was broken.

I did solve this, but it is a bit flimsy IMHO.
- 1. Do a factory reset
- 2. Do a firmware update
- 3. Never let the sleepcover turn off the Inkpad 3, but do it manually until it really shuts, backlight is completely off, and I wait 3 seconds after that to close the cover.

If you skip the first step, the problem will not be solved.
If you let the sleep cover turn off the Inkpad 3 at any time after, the problem returns, and it will not boot without power. It seems that the calls for the sleep cover corrupts the database in some way.

I suspect it is a problem in the firmware. The factory shows a notification that it explicitly resets the database, whereas the firmware update doesn't do that.
This threestep does seemingly solve the problem, only it is too easy to make mistakes with the sleep cover. If I happen to close the cover too soon, I have a problem.... albeit temporary. It's a bit of a hassle, but it beats returning the Inkpad 3 for RMA.

I'm on firmware 6.1.1229, the latest version 5 firmware has the same problem. I didn't try other versions as I can live with my current solution, but I may try some later when I have spare time.

It would be interesting if we could disable the part in the cover that invokes the sleep status. Does anyone know how to do this?

[VladimirS]

Inkpad 3, in my opinion, has some battery charging (management) problem that cannot be solved by
any remedy other than physical replacement of motherboard or new device.
I bought new batteries several time of this problem, and still without solution....

[joepie]

Originally Posted by VladimirS

Inkpad 3, in my opinion, has some battery charging (management) problem that cannot be solved by
any remedy other than physical replacement of motherboard or new device.
I bought new batteries several time of this problem, and still without solution....

Hi VladimirS,
Could you try the three steps I mentioned? I does work for me, I'm curious to know if it works for you as well.
It doesn't solve the underlying problems, but it is easier and cheaper than replacing the battery.

[VladimirS]

@joepie
I did try this long time before reseting and updating, it is the thing that PocketBook support sent me in email to solve my Inkpad 3 problems. I dont understand this sleep cover thing... ? Can you explain a little bit. I put my device rarely to sleep... I did not know it hah a cover for this.

[joepie]

@VladimirS
I have a 'deluxe' faux leather cover by Pocketbook that fits the Inkpad 3 exactly. When I close the cover, it automatically puts the Inkpad in sleep mode, that is, the frontlight goes off if it was on, and the screen kind of fades out and shows ZZZZZZZZ as in sleeping. It immediately returns to normal mode when the cover is opened. Well, it should, but it does not. It seems however, that actions corrupts the boot procedure and the reader doesn't boot anymore without power plugged in.

If I interpret your previous posting correctly, Pocketbook kind of admits that there is a serious problem with the Inkpad 3? That is really too bad. I have been using Pocketbook for 3 generations now, and it was my go to brand for over 10 years, maybe 15.

Now I want to switch brands, maybe never return to Pocketbook. There are often some sloppy parts on each model. I always forgave them and wanted the dedicated ereader, but this battery problem just is a drop that overflows the bucket for me.

[rkomar]

I have a similar problem with my Inkpad 1. Every once in a while, it refuses to power up until I plug in the USB cable. I don't use a cover, so I'll see if simply going to sleep on its own causes the problem.

[nhedgehog]

It would be interesting if we could disable the part in the cover that invokes the sleep status. Does anyone know how to do this?

I'm using the same sleepcover (the burgundy one) without problems.
Firmware is the latest Beta from here:
https://4pda.to/forum/index.php?show...st&p=109315593
What you are describing sounds more like a hardware failure to me.