New Nook touch screen stops working

[amlane52]

Update to my first post -

When the freeze happened again last night, I had been using the touchscreen exclusively, and I finally experienced the "highlighting" issue that others have mentioned.

I bought my Nook in a store about 90 minutes from my home.  Fortunately I was passing through there today, so I returned the Nook to the store.  I explained my issues, and also explained that  others on this board had experienced the same thing.  The clerk immediately offered to exchange it for a new unit.  When she returned with my replacement, she said she had experienced the screen freeze on my original as she went to deactivate it (so I felt so totally vindicated)!

Anyway, I want to give a shout out to Jaycie at the Greensboro, NC store for great customer service - both when I bought my Nook the other day, and when I returned it today to exchange.

[SingingRiver]

Mine had this same problem. Being within the 14 day I took it back for a replacement. It also has frozen twice, but in different ways. I am waiting to see if this one is as buggy as my first while I still have a few days with it. The highlighting bug I saw about once a day.

[detayls]

You misundertand the 14-day period.  You have 14 days to return the Nook for a refund.

You have 1 year to get a replacement if something is wrong with the Nook and it is not your fault.

[Vavavicki]

I returned mine and got another one, and it has the same problem. Has anybody got one that doesn't have this problem? Wondering if I should keep exchanging them every 14 days until they get it figured out or I get one that works as designed.

[keriflur]

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Vavavicki wrote:
I returned mine and got another one, and it has the same problem. Has anybody got one that doesn't have this problem? Wondering if I should keep exchanging them every 14 days until they get it figured out or I get one that works as designed.

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Mine does not have that problem.  There are actually a lot of forum members that haven't had this issue.  I know it's a pain to keep returning, but if it were me, I would keep going until I got a good one.

[bookshelfcat]

I'm having the same exact problem. Hopefully it's just a software bug and they can roll out an update to fix it.

Most of the time I touch the screen to turn the page and it's just frozen. The highlighted word bug does not always happen. I sent an email to customer service. Hopefully they get it sorted out soon. I pre-ordered and was billed for the nook on May 27th, so I don't think returning it is an option.

Does tech support ever check this blog or reply to messages?

[Larryb52]

it seems to me to be software , returned my original & the new one does it too. Has some how it seems when there is a short work on the side & you touch too close to it somehow it highlites it throws the word to the top like a dictonary function wants to work but the boottom pop up for the function does not come up so it locks up. At least that is what has happened to me so far. Seems software...

[-bookworm12-]

I just recieved my nook in the mail today and after using it for only a shortwhile, the same thing happened. I have it charging by I'm not sure what to do either! It seems a lot of people have had this happen... I hope B&N takes note of this and finds a solution soon! No matter what I do, it won't work. I've tried holding down the power button, the n button, and charging, but nothing happens! It's definitely a setback and I'm kind of dissapointed and wonder if it was worth the money...

[bklvr896]

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Vavavicki wrote:
I returned mine and got another one, and it has the same problem. Has anybody got one that doesn't have this problem? Wondering if I should keep exchanging them every 14 days until they get it figured out or I get one that works as designed.

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I have the problem on mine, my mother does not have the problem on hers, I talked to her yesterday.  I do know I saw some weird issues with hers when the magnetic clasp on her cover was touching the touch screen.  Once we locked it to the back of the cover, no more problems.

[nollchr]

Add mine to the growing list of touch screen issues.  I bought this last night for my daughter.  This morning, touch screen non responsive.  Started working again after the Nook went back to sleep and was woken up, but the touch screen works intermittantly.  Hoping this is a software problem but I'm thinking of exchanging it tonight at my local store.

[scoobiepop]

My Nook STR has both issues, the highlighting only processing halfway and then all touch functions freezing, and also the touch functions freezing by themselves without the halfway highlighting.

Has anyone from BN officially acknowledged this issue yet, I'm not sure I can return it because of the 14 day return policy, but it should stil be covered under warranty correct?

[Noncomposmentes]

Well, I got my N2E yesterday. I've read about 300 pages of a book which equals roughly 600 page turns, and I've already experienced the highlighting bug four times. Two times it happened when the battery was at 100%, and the other two times the battery was at 89%. All four times, the only way to get the screen to respond was to power off completely.

I know others have experienced other freezing issues, but I'm curious for those of us experiencing the highlighting bug when tapping the screen to turn the page, how close have the taps been to a word on the screen? I currently have the margins on my N2E turned off, so pretty much anywhere I tap on the screen is really close to a word. I'm wondering if, when we tap to turn the page, something in the software begins to register the tap as a longer word-highlighting tap, acts accordingly, but freezes up because the tap doesn't end up being long enough to qualify as a word-highlighting tap? So far, all four times that my N2E has frozen, the highlighted word right before the freeze has been the word closest to where I tap the screen.

Even if that is the case, I don't believe it should be happening, but I'm wondering if simply looking for an empty spot on the screen, i.e. at the end of a paragraph, and tapping there might resolve the highlighting issue, at least until B&N rolls out a software fix (which hopefully they will). I've yet to test this out to see if it helps, but plan on doing so tonight once I'm able to pick up my N2E again and do some reading.

[NWRogue]

I experienced this problem the 1st week I had mine.  I stopped swiping and am now just touching the bottom corners of the screen to turn pages and have not experienced the problem again.

Just a thought, YMMV...

[flash6971]

Just got mine today, charged it fully, went to read my first book.... the touchscreen locked up about 15 minuites later.  Did a hard power reset.... it locked up about 10 minutes later.  Let it go to sleep, turned it back on..... it locked up about 5 minutes later.

Thought to myself "Hey, I'll go on the website and see if this is a known problem."  BINGO!  So that makes me feel a little better.  Until I read this thread that is over 2 weeks old and people keep saying "I hope they come out with a fix soon."  That is depressing.

Human nature says that if there are 100 of us taking the time to complain, the problem is actually happening to about 10,000 users.  Seems to me that the B&N Nook Engineering folks could pull a few at random off of the shelves, read them for 10 minutes, and see the problem for themselves.  Then figure out why the hell it is doing it!

C'mon B&N.  This is B.S.  I live 10 minutes from a store.  I WILL return it.  And I'll return the next one if I have to.  And the next one.  And the next one.  Maybe after I drive the poor people in the store nuts, you will finally get the message.

[LAX_observer]

Not a single problem with mine so far, and I have had it for two weeks now. hmm, perhaps its some speedy fingers and over zealous users' ambitious intentions that are their hardwares' downfall? Not saying there's not going to be a single problem with N2E, but seeing all the negative nancies in the room brings up the question, arguing for argument sake perhaps, and voicing complaints that possibly aren't your own? hmmmm, just weird that some work perfectly fine and others have so many problems with them. Of course I am completely and utterly sorry if you are dealing with a defunct N2E, I know I would be missing literature on the go like crazy without it

[Noncomposmentes]

@LAX. Gee, that must be it -- our speedy fingers and ambitious intentions. How could we all have been so foolish to not recognize it as being our fault, rather than a fault with the device? Excepting, of course, those of us who are here simply "arguing for argument (sic) sake," and "voicing complaints that possibly aren't our own." I mean, really, thanks for clearing that up. I'm going to work on slowing down my fingers and being less zealous -- I'm sure that will take care of it.

[scoobiepop]

Please explain how speedy fingers render the touchscreen completely unresponsive. I'm not sure what the point of your post is, but it certainly helps no one, and addresses nothing brought up in this entire thread.

[flash6971]

LAX, you're way off here.  If you look at how many posts there are, how detailed they are, and how well they cover almost EVERY speculation about what is causing this (slide vs. tap, speed and accuracy of tap, etc.), you can only conclude that there is a real problem here.

And no one said it was happening on every unit.  But it sure is happening on a lot of them.

I am a very technical person, working in Electronic Engineering and medical equipment service.  I know a bit about everything - computers, sensors, software, etc.  I've tried all of the "suggestions" and "modifications" to my technique that everyone has mentioned.  It still hangs up no matter what.  It ain't me.  It's the device.

[Noncomposmentes]

I have to agree with Flash -- something is definitely wrong here. My earlier thought that it was the proximity of a page-tap to a word on the screen that was causing the highlighting bug was wrong. Yesterday, I tapped on the bottom corner of the screen to turn the page and a question mark that was at the end of the last sentence on the screen highlighted and was followed by the inevitable screen-freeze. But, the question mark was very far away from where I tapped (approximately half the width of the entire screen away). The other interesting thing is that when I tried to power the device down, before powering down, the device scrolled through every one of the dead authors screensavers. At the end of each cycle, the unlock arrows appeared at the bottom like they do when you wake the device up. So, each time I tried swiping the arrows to unlock the device, which of course didn't work, because the entire screen was unresponsive. It did finally power down, and after powering back up, everything was fine.

And, like Flash, I'm rather tech-savvy (I build gaming pc's in my spare time, troubleshoot pc's, and root people's cell phones just for the fun of it). That's why I, quite frankly, found LAX's post  ludicrous. I really like the N2E a lot, even if it is pretty quirky. What I've experienced thus far, while certainly irksome, has yet to reach the point of being a deal-breaker. But, it's starting to get close. It seems to me that the N2E is suffering from the same fate as so many technological gadgets these days, which is rushing a product through R&D while failing to do sufficient beta-testing to work out any and all bugs.

I'd lay money on this being a software rather than hardware issue which is why I'm a bit hesitant to reurn it just yet. I have no desire to keep returning Nook's until I get one that seems to be happy with its own programming. My hope is that B&N will correct the issue in a firmware update. They'd be smart to. If they're really hoping that the N2E is going to take a piece from the Kindle's inordinate chunk of the ereader market, they really should make sure they all work properly.

Sri Peruvemba, vice president of global sales and marketing at E Ink, recently said that there would be no new E Ink technology until 2012 and, right now, Amazon seems to be concentrating on their much-rumored tablets that are supposed to be coming out later this year. But, if 2012 rolls around and the general consensus about the N2E is that it's buggy (and this is a sentiment that seems to be growing), Jeff Bezos will, once again, be chuckling all the way to the bank.

[JohnMO]

Update from some of my earlier posts on the touchscreen problem...

Background is that I got my first Nook on June 4 (lucky enough to find a store that had one not already reserved).  I had also previously pre-ordered one through the website.  The one from the store had the touchscreen issues that I and others in this thread have described.  With the problems I was having, I did not cancel the pre-order; and when it arrived, I started using it (and returned the buggy one to the store).  Have had the pre-order one for two weeks now and it has not had the problem once.

So it is possible the problem is not prevalent in every Nook Simple Touch Reader.  Until B&N identifies the problem (software or hardware), I offer this suggestion: If yours is giving you fits, take it back to the store and demand a replacement.  The new one may have the same problem; or if your experience is like mine, the replacement may work fine.