the display in my pocket reform appears to be mounted a couple of millimetres too far to the left. i have to crane my neck to the right to see characters at the left edge of the screen. it quickly gets worse when looking from off-axis to the left. is this something i can maybe fix myself? it makes full-screen terminals physically uncomfortable to use
(edited to fix the attached photos)
Thankfully because these are intended to be opened and worked on, fixing this shouldn’t be too difficult. Get with MNT about it, but you should be able to realign the display by yourself. It is possible a bracket or something broke during shipment, or got loose.
I have noticed the same issue with my pocket where a slight misalignment results in the bottom left edge slightly disappearing behind the bezel to which makes reading the first character of the command line a little more difficult:
From the repair guide (iFixit), I learned that the display is glued in with double-sided tape but can be removed fairly easily.
I assume that the screen has either shifted in transport or not been exactly aligned during installation but that it is the position it has been glued into that is wrong – so not something that one fixes by adjusting screws.
I have not yet attempted a correction as the procedure seems to take >1h and I didn’t have a calm enough moment yet. Iy looks very doable though and I might attempt it at a later point, but am also somewhat worried that I might damage the display in the process…
Please share your experience going forward!
I have noticed a similar issue. Mine is not the bezel. I do not have the issue until Wayland loads then the left side of the screen is clipped slightly. I am going to look into the Wayland display properties to see if it can be adjusted.
I believe this is a zoom/scaling issue as the screen is zoomed in above native resolution due to the small size.
└─[$] <> xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 16 x 16, current 960 x 600, maximum 32767 x 32767
DSI-1 connected 960x600+0+0 left (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 95mm x 151mm
600x960 53.72*+
320x240 52.29
320x200 53.07
it’s weird that you’re seeing such a low resolution there. if you’re running a wayland-based compositor, you might want to have a look with wdisplays or something rather than xrandr
Not a full fix, but some terminals allow you to configure padding around the edges. Blackbox does for sure. Could be a workaround for now.
The panel is rotated slightly in your photo. This is definitely not something we would have shipped like that, so the tape must have come loose a bit during excessive shaking in transport. In any case, sorry that this happened. You should be able to realign it by taking off the screen’s bezel and use iFixit as a reference, yes. Be careful with the magnets behind the bezel!
Those numbers are base on the 2.0 dpi scale from wayland as per wdisplay.
Maybe this should be broken out into a separate thread, but regarding the magnets in the display: I didn’t pay attention and removed the front bezel, and the magnets stuck to the screwdriver.
When putting them back in, I tried to mimic the other side, which thankfully did not come out. (Left top 2 magnets came out, and the right top 2 stayed in.) But it just doesn’t feel like the magnets are engaging when closing the lid as much at all. Maybe it is in my head.
Anyway, the orientation of the magnets was a tricky thing, but I basically laid them in their spots in such a way that they are both repulsing each other away. I did it like this as this is what they are doing on the other side. I have tried to depict it in this crude paint drawing:
Is this correct?
i think the way to check if you’ve got the alignment right would be to put the magnets directly on top of the bottom case to see which way they prefer to settle, and then orient them that way in the top case
my pocket reform arrived in a box with essentially no padding; it was free to rattle around in the larger box it was shipped in. after looking around inside the machine, i discovered that the processor module was not inserted properly and one of the battery brackets was broken:
i assume this is related to why my display is misaligned, but i’m also having some serious issues with wifi; it spent about twenty minutes connected at one point, but the best i’ve seen outside of that is very slow connections shortly after boot that last a few minutes at best. i’ve tried to read the threads about wifi on here, but it’s not clear to me if what i’m experiencing is just what’s expected at the moment. does anyone know if it’s possible something has come loose to cause that problem, too? i think the wifi antenna is properly seated
(i’ve been sending updates about this in mnt service desk ticket #4948)
while applying tape to try to get the display cable out of the way of the wifi antenna, i discovered that my display isn’t actually taped in place like i understood it to be. i can move it a few mm in each direction with my finger. the left edge of the displayed image is still clipped off, though, even when there’s not bezel in the way. i guess my panel is incorrectly calibrated or something? it doesn’t display at least the leftmost three columns of pixels
I received my Pocket Reform on December 9th (this past Monday), and it had the same bit of battery bracket broken off and rattling around inside the case. I wonder if it’s the same part of the bracket, I’ll have to get a photo taken to share.
I haven’t noticed any other issue on my unit though, it seems like it didn’t get quite so badly handled in shipping.
I took some photos, on mine it’s the part of one of the brackets that appears to be unused, so it’s no problem that it broke off. My processor module is seated just fine also.
Same for me. I think they’re pretty brittle
They do look easy to 3d print and replace though.
Is this on the Linux console or in sway or which compositor?
that photo and screenshot are of a fullscreen foot window under sway, but the same thing happens in the non-graphical tty environment. it’s particularly noticeable during early boot when the text is really small; the leftmost character of each line is almost entirely lost
Thanks. First of all, I am sorry that you have such a bad experience with multiple combined issues. But we can fix them if you like. To address your points:
You’re already in contact with my colleague plom in a support email thread, so you can also reply with your decisions or further questions there.
Hullo!!
I just created an account in order to comment here after noticing the same issue with my pocket reform:
I opened up the computer to expose the bare screen to confirm this is not an issue with the bezel or screen placement. Clearly no damage or misalignment happening for me.
Wifi seems fine, batteries are snug. Photo of my screen edge with the issue is attached.
Should I create a support email or is there something I should try? Any advice is much appreciated!
Hi, this missing column of pixels on the Linux console is normal (for display v1, the only one sent out so far). How does it look like in sway?
