Database Users

Video of Hermes problems... please watch and let me know your opinion?

Hey all,
I've read these forums, and am 90% sure I have a defective Hermes. However, I'm unsure, as these forum posts were just text, and therefore can't really accurately describe the problems being seen. So, I made a YouTube video showing a couple of my issues, especially the screen fading to white. Like I say, I'd just like confirmation, and I'd like this post and video to serve as a help to others who are wondering if they have the same problem. You know what they say, a picture is worth a 1000 words .
Here are more details of my problems, in no particular order:
o The buttons reset after a quick power off and on (not a reset).
o The screen fade problem resets itself after a quick power off and on (not a reset).
o The screen calibration issue (not shown in video) seems to last a little longer sometimes. The issue is that calibration gets a little off. It seems to be by 10-20 pixels, but I can't repeat this as readily as the screen fade.
o This has happened with and without a memory card inserted.
o I've tried two different batteries, with the same results.
o I've tried three different firmwares (original, WM5 update, WM6 Black 2.0).
o The battery quick powerdown issue has only happened to me once (battery drains 10% every minute).
Here's the link to the video. It's only 84 seconds, so take a peek!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQWqTkoMX_4
Let me (and others) know your thoughts. It'd be appreciated.

PS... about the screen calibration...
FYI, I know about the screen calibration issues some have had wth the Hermes. However, I don't think this is that problem, since I never, ever have to recalibrate my phone. It always corrects itself eventually.

The screen calibration issue (not shown in video) seems to last a little longer sometimes. The issue is that calibration gets a little off. It seems to be by 10-20 pixels, but I can't repeat this as readily as the screen fade.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has been documented HEAVILY in the wiki and the forums so I wont answer that.
The rest seems VERY weird indeed especially the screen going white?!?!
Is it still in warranty because I would so send it to be repaired.

Not seen anything like that on any forum. Are you keeping it somewhere hot or near an e.m. field just before use?

What additional apps have you installed? Do these problems still occur with an "empty" phone (i.e. right after a hard reset before installing third party apps)? If so then that should rule out software and firmware (ROM).

Fade to white issue: hardware problem IMO
Buttons stop working issue: looks like software IMO

Sleuth255 said:
Fade to white issue: hardware problem IMO
Buttons stop working issue: looks like software IMO
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Click to collapse
I agree, the screen going white is similar to when I had my O2 XDA EXEC (HTC Universal) in which whenever I moved the lcd into the mini laptop mode the screen would fade to pure white. When I sent it into PPC Tech they notified me saying in which the lcd cable was damaged itself. Im not sure if thats the case with you necesarily, since it seems the screen goes back to normal after powering the device to standby and back.
The keys are most likely software/rom issues. Perhaps maybe you should reflash to a recent rom and see what happens. Although if that doesnt work I suggest you send in for replacement or warranty. I neeever in the 6 months I had my phone did I ever have problems like the one you've listed.
::EDIT::
I just realized I saw that you tried multiple roms, if thats the case I realllly believe you have a defective phone. It does happen that one in a hundred tend to go bad..

Had similar occurance when mine had gotten damp.

fading screen and hardware buttons
Hi,
I've reported some time ago these issues, they started with LVSW Edition (2007-03-20) and after that Pro - BLACK 2.0, 2.5, 3.0 and still with 3.01.
I don't think is hardware related. i happens in random way. No specific apps or time or connection.

I've had similar issues with the buttons not working on my 8525. It seems to have to do with changing in and out of landscape mode. For example, I'll always have problems if I reset the phone and leave it in landscape mode and I always have to push the keyboard in and pull it back out to get everything working right.
If the buttons DO work, they are usually wrong, like up and down will instead move left to right. Again, pushing in and pulling out the keyboard fixes it for me. I recently upgraded to a new ROM and couldn't say if the problem persists or not.
As for the white screen issue - I'd say it's FUBAR'd.

Touch HD/Blackstone Backlight Auto Adjust Problem

Firstly let me say this:...... I have a phone that has had to go back once because of a weird problem - so it might be "one of those phones " (the prob WAS fixed by a new board from HTC but thats another story !)
Here's the prob. Today when I was typing a text the back light kept adjusting up and down. This has NOT happened before So I did some tests:
1) Its to do with the autoadjust feature (not a prob when its OFF)
2) All is OK UNTIL you start to type this is how I spotted it typing a text. The backlight was going up and down - I thought my eyes were going!!!
ATTEMPTED RESOLUTION:
Fristly I did a soft reset......(prob still the same)
I down loaded LUMOS, which shows actual numbers for the light sensor,
Here's what I found......
It moves up and down a bit then settles, in a dark area its on say 3 or 0 but when I type on the screen it goes up and down like a yoyo ! ie 3,79,120,3,0 if I stop typing it settles on 3 or 0. AND THAT IN A NUT SHELL IS I "THINK" THE PROB !
"The light sensor seems to be affected by typing."
I never noticed this before so this may be a fault.
LUMOS seems to cope slightly better than win software with this and I can get around this by turning the sensor off, but if its faulty BACK it GOES....(AGAIN)
The last prob did my head in. I love this phone but I'm not sure if I got a touchy one !(pardon the pun)!
ANY HELP/THOUGHTS VERY GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED

Further update - CAUSE !
I have found out the cause !
It happens when screen taps (sound) is turned on and is FINEwhen it is off. I only tuned this on last week !
SO what they heck this is some software bug perhaps - any thoughts ?
Thanks so much !

First my touch hd died suddenly two months before one year is over. So I sent in for repair and paid $20 for some sort of fee on the top of shipping in. When I get it back, I thought everything is doing fine. Then suddenly the screen started acting weir. It turns on sometimes but sometimes it won't. I tried master reset. I tried to contact Htc. And I even try to hit it since I was pretty upset getting this lemon.
I happen to have to travel to Taiwan and I took it to a cell phone store hoping they can fix it since it is a Taiwan phone. I got it back today and they said it will cost $170 to fix. And they said that I got liquid in. I have never let it get close to any water or liquid. Obviously they said the sensor was activated. (I don't even know there is a sensor for water).
Anyway, my phone now can call in but screen turns on when it likes to. While I am now playing with it. I turn all the auto backlight off, including with battery or power connected. And I also turn off the auto backlight sensor. Somehow for almost two hours, I can turn on anytime I want to and off any time. I do not how long it will last. If this is the problem, that means the software of auto backlight off has bugs. I hope this helps those who are like me lost some sleep over this HTC nightmare. I do not expect it is fixed at this point. May be I am just lucky that it stays controllable for the past two hours. Good luch y'all.

For those who have a perfect display! (but also for others)

Hello everyone,
I would like who claims to have a perfect display (as well as all the others) to Try this test:
- Completely dark room and eyes accustomed to the darkness for a few minutes
- Completely black screen (like the one in the test screen by typing * # * # 0, but also any settings menu screen that has not written)
- Minimum brightness (but can be seen even at maximum brightness).
If there are, you should see black spots darker than the background black.
I have them and at night are quite annoying.
I need to figure out if it is a problem of all devices or only of some (in this case tomorrow i will apply for replacement).
Please, you who are reading now, don't leave without doing this little test, it only takes 5 minutes
Thanks: D

Are you nuts? While this may be new to you, there's a 200+ thread already going on this that was started in May. We don't need another 200 pages of "yes it is," "no it isn't." The short answer is yes, there's banding on the 1/4 left side of the display but for most people it can only be seen in a dark room, at 10% brightness, on a grey background, and by taking a pic of the phone. It's been that way since the phone launched and at this point choices are: 1) live with it, 2) return or sell the phone.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1079444

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1310602
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1197743
Apparently some don't have this issue, as you can see in the first listed thread. Difficult to confirm or not of course, I know mine does have smears/smudges/lines and no it is not grease.
@Barry don't think he is talking about the yellowish tint.

You read this on another thread and started a new one?
I saw the exact same thing on a post yesterday..
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

Dude, If I may :
before asking us to show the perfect screen (which does not exist actually), please consults an eye specialist and then, come back to XDA.
Regards.

derek88 said:
Hello everyone,
I would like who claims to have a perfect display (as well as all the others) to Try this test:
- Completely dark room and eyes accustomed to the darkness for a few minutes
- Completely black screen (like the one in the test screen by typing * # * # 0, but also any settings menu screen that has not written)
- Minimum brightness (but can be seen even at maximum brightness).
If there are, you should see black spots darker than the background black.
I have them and at night are quite annoying.
I need to figure out if it is a problem of all devices or only of some (in this case tomorrow i will apply for replacement).
Please, you who are reading now, don't leave without doing this little test, it only takes 5 minutes
Thanks: D
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you can ever see what you describe under normal use then it is a problem. If you can't see it under normal conditions then you are simply looking for problems and it's nothing to worry about. It's just what SAMOLED screens look like when they're "off", but not off.

I see this every day when I go to bed as my phone is also used as a night clock.
I have the font set to a very low brightness font, except for me I see lighter splotches on an otherwise black background.
I went through 4 SGS2's trying to find one that didn't have it. They all did. Bad batch I guess.
It wasn't a major deal for me so I just live with it.
It's a shame but meh. otherwise this phone is fantastic.

DEV Request

I have a request if someone could make such a program (or point me to one that already exists)
I "think" what I want is pretty simple (I hope)
all I want is a black on white or white on black (toggleable day/night automatically) landscape
so daytime would be MAX screen brightness white with black letters. night time would be minimum screen brightness black with white letters (all on its own use approximate night/day times or use light sensor if available)
I would like live lat and long coords and my speed and direction of travel. (from gps not compass)
large letters fill the screen.
No internet (phone won't even be active) and one last thing.
when external power applied turn on and stay on (auto load on boot if phone off) it should run as service and keep itself running restarting if its not running.
when external power is removed put phone to deepest sleep state.
So you have context here is why I wish for this.
I run a "dash cam" its fun I like camera's and I get some "neat stuff" every now and then.
I really like the new ones that embed lat long and speed right in the video with the time and date.
alas the prices goes from $74 to $125 for a nice high def unit to over $300 if you want that last feature ouch.
so I got to thinking. what if I placed a droid phone on my dash so the camera could "SEE" it (its 720p and the new one will be 1080p so it will be readable)
the trick is making it transparent in use. IE automatic.
turn on when I start the car turn off when I stop the car (engine off ie no power) to preserve battery. most droids screen off with no radio's active can go several days between charges)
any chance this is something that could be made pretty easily? or maybe already exists?

Yotaphone 2 ereader screen problem

I have yotaphone 2 from tinydeal germany. (I think they flash the ROM to change the language.)
The phone worked fine at first but now the e screen on the back is doing strange things, leaving images of previous pages showing through the current page. This means, for example, on the clock face the clock is faint on a grey background and as the fingers move they leave a black after-image. Pages that should be black look speckled grey. Any suggestions for cause and a fix?

Unfortunately this is how (older) EPD screens work. When updated they somtimes leave a ghost image behind. To eliminate this the screen needs to be flashed white/black/white before redrawing and with the low refresh frequency of EPD this results in a very flickering image. So there is nothing wrong with your screen, this is just how EPD screens work. See also here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper#Disadvantages

Thanks, but this ghosting or layered imaging is much more severe. I know someone else with the same phone where black is black and whilst there is very slight ghosting of things like clock fingers it is nothing like this current phone. The phone was fine when we got it, and the layered/grey imaging has started without me doing anything. I only mentioned flashing of the ROM because Tinydeal have told me that that is what they do to change the language on these phones.

So from the Wikipedia entry and your comments I now assume that the phone should automatically flash black/white between page changes but it isn't doing it.
The ghost images don't appear if you load something like chess or sudoko onto the rear display but appear again as soon as the regular Yotapanel or Yotacover is used.

I have the same problem, but only when the white theme in the Yotahub is turned off (so the dark theme is active) or when I use the Yota Mirror. The ghosting is terrible. When I use the white theme, it looks like it should look. I am not aware of any changes I made to my phone yesterday, but in the afternoon this problem started.
Does someone know how to check if the screen is flashing/refreshing correctly and if not, how to repair this?
Update: when I put a completely black screen on the back, it is spotty. The black is not black, but dark grey, and there are many lighter spots on the screen.
Update 2: the white theme has this problem too, but less visible. The white starts as real white, but because of ghosting becomes slightly grey. With black it is much more noticeable, because black does start as dark grey.

Well this may only turn out to be a temporary fix but I went through the Yotapanel pages repeatedly and very rapidly using the bottom of the page buttons.
I got all sorts of shades of grey and multiple overlying images but then the phone suddenly showed a clear black and white page with clock.
Ringing the phone from another phone produced a clear missed call message on the back of the phone and then after a minute the clear black and white clock page came back. I am leavng the phone without looking at all the othe Yotapanels or the Yotacover for the moment in the hope that something just got out of phase in the software and the phone might now settle down to correct operation again.

I have the same problem. It has started a few days ago and it gets worse every day.

Unfrtunately the problem has returned on my phone although I was able to get back to a black screen with the clock after three page changes using the bottom left arrow. This time a missed call message came up very clearly on the back of the phone but after the missed call message cleared the whole of the back of the phone was speckled grey with a very faint clock image. One question though: is this just the phones from Tinydeal where they have apparently flashed the ROM, or is it all phones?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lggfc.nookclearscreen
That's the app for Nook ereader to refresh its screen and get rid of ghosting. Works also on Yotaphone.

What always works for me to clear the screen when the ghosting annoys me is to switch to Android on the EPD screen (by holding the circle button and choosing the left option) and switch back right away using the same procedure. This always leaves me with a clean black back.

Thanks Keeper and VirtualL.
Tinydeal asked me to upload a video to demonstrate the fault, and no sooner than they did that the phone started behaving normally again!
So if it goes again the first thing I will try is that page sequence, and if it fails the App.
I have to say that these are really fantastic phones. I think that a lot of original reviewers completely overlooked the basic issue of not being able to see a phone screen in bright sunlight, but that the yotaphone overcomes this problem.

Resolved by switching the back to front screen views a couple of times. Getting the front screen to mirror on the back seems to give that hard black and white interscreen flash that clears previous images.

Lothor said:
Resolved by switching the back to front screen views a couple of times. Getting the front screen to mirror on the back seems to give that hard black and white interscreen flash that clears previous images.
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Click to collapse
I don't know if you already use it but this widget makes it very easy to switch between mirror and back. Just one click on the widget.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/yotaphone-one/development/widget-yota-toolbelt-t3145462

Last week, I got a chinese version (YD206) through GearBest. I had the same problem what you mentioned. (Black was always Grey and was never black and lot of ghosting). Until yesterday, I used to think that's how the e-Ink display works so I was using White theme all the time.
After seeing your post, I tried using Nook cleaner software and it did not help. Then, I removed the screen protector which the phone came with. For the next 1 hour, I did not see any difference. I left it thinking it could be ROM issue.
But, after few hours, I noticed everything became normal. Now, the e-ink screen looks goergeous in BLACK.

VirtuaLeech said:
What always works for me to clear the screen when the ghosting annoys me is to switch to Android on the EPD screen (by holding the circle button and choosing the left option) and switch back right away using the same procedure. This always leaves me with a clean black back.
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Click to collapse
This issue keeps coming back and I am not able to find a guaranteed solution to this.
Like you described, activating and deactivating Yota Mirror in quick succession clears the ghosting and makes the screen BLACK. At other times, it does not work at all.
I even try swapping to different Yota Panels, but it is a hit and miss. Is this issue specific to Chinese version of YD206?
How to solve this issue permanently?
If not possible, is there any known step which I can do to clear the ghosting?

prasathvishnu said:
This issue keeps coming back and I am not able to find a guaranteed solution to this.
Like you described, activating and deactivating Yota Mirror in quick succession clears the ghosting and makes the screen BLACK. At other times, it does not work at all.
I even try swapping to different Yota Panels, but it is a hit and miss. Is this issue specific to Chinese version of YD206?
How to solve this issue permanently?
If not possible, is there any known step which I can do to clear the ghosting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem with a GearBest YD206 running Android 4.4.3. Would updating the firmware change anything?

Hey Yotaphone Users!
I finally have a solution for this problem, that I received from the Yota Phone Support:
"If you see that ghosting is amplified, try to do some steps. Try to discharge the phone completely. Then leave it discharged for long periods of time, f.e. overnight. Then charge the phone to 100%."
For me that worked perfectly!

For me the discharge-recharge didn't work at all.
Discharged untill it switched off. Turned it on again untill switched off, untill phone wouldn't start up again. So: battery was flat.
What happened was: EPD turned black. Yohoo! Happy!
But: after one night discharged, i put it on charger again. Screen switched on, and ghosting was immediately back.
Disappointed. Very disappointed.
Anyone has a different solution?

stoerebink said:
For me the discharge-recharge didn't work at all.
Discharged untill it switched off. Turned it on again untill switched off, untill phone wouldn't start up again. So: battery was flat.
What happened was: EPD turned black. Yohoo! Happy!
But: after one night discharged, i put it on charger again. Screen switched on, and ghosting was immediately back.
Disappointed. Very disappointed.
Anyone has a different solution?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sad to hear that.
Did you remove the screen protector from the back side as in the post #14 the user said that after removing the epd screen became normal black again?

Has anyone heard and try heating with hairdryer the EPD screen for 2 minutes (not too hot) to eliminate ghosting?