is my tamagotchi smart broken? :(

[nyxasphyxia]

some of you may have seen my post on reddit but since I still haven't found any solution that works as of now I might as well try to put it here.



so a few months ago i decided to turn my smart off cause i wanted to take a break, and a few weeks after that it accidentally got turned on by my sister and i was surprised to see that there were stripes on the screen (as you can see on the video). then i decided to turn it off again til i could open the case and see if everything is still in tact

when i did open the case i didn't see anything weird/unusual so i put everything back together and turned my tama on. then the starting screen appeared the stripes disappeared, and it stayed that way until i tapped the "continue" option. when i got to my tama unfortunately they appeared again and i don't know what i should do cause the touch screen still works and the battery's not low

does anyone have any idea to what possibly caused this and if there's anything that i can do to fix it? I've also tried charging it until it was full but it didn't fix it.

 

[Tamacass]

Hey! Welcome to Tamatalk, first off! Apologies it had to be under these circumstances - as a Smart owner I might be able to help you out!

Reading your explanation, it seems that by all means you haven't done anything to it to warrant this sort of damage, which is great to hear! Hate how Bandai made it difficult to fully power off these things - seeing a debug screen on a tamagotchi just so you can preserve the battery,, ngl it freaks me out jkvbsdkjv!! Just wanna ask, how have you been charging your Smart? (whether now or in the past, that is skjvbfk) The english-translated manual (hosted on Gotchi Garden!) for the Smart specifies that if you don't live in Japan, you should only be charging your Smart via a micro-USB cable/the cable it comes with in-box connected to a computer or laptop's USB port. I've explained it here before on a different post, but Japan has a different voltage rate (basically the transferral of electricity, how fast things work/charge, etc - i barely know about it myself LOL) compared to most other countries, and Bandai themselves recommend you don't plug your Smart into a wall outlet or anything like that as our voltage rates are way way wayyyy higher than Japan-standard voltage (don't remember the specific number, I'll have to search it up later) and it may end up frying or damaging your device!!! Usually that does manifest in the Smart straight-up not turning on though, so I'm thinking that might not be the case.

Charging it likely won't help it now as this issue seemingly doesn't have anything to do with the battery on the Smart - it's likely a screen or capacitor issue. Possibly even something to do with the motherboard, as those lines and stripes on the screen aren't surface-level (meaning it's not the actual glass screen nor display that's damaged) - they're moving with the tamagotchi sprite and screen fade-ins in-game, almost as if the data itself is corrupted. Capacitor issues usually result in screen flickering and poor contrast, which don't seem to be the issue here (thank goodness), though it could've leaked onto the board it was soldiered onto - but capacitors don't usually wear out that fast, either... a mystery to be sure. I'm sure the other members here can explain it better than me.

Additionally - by "opening the case", did you mean taking the tamagotchi apart, unscrewing it fully etc? Usually these faults (including scary lines on a screen! ) don't have a visible wear on any of the internal parts, unfortunately, not unless you took _those_ parts apart and by then I'd be hopelessly lost in a sea of screws and what-not!! I haven't seen this sort of issue before, but I hope you'll be able to solve it somehow! Interesting how you noted turning it off and back on again removed those stripes until you touched the screen - pressing down on something internal that's not working right...? If you got it from a place that accepts refunds, I do recommend sending a message along to the seller if you can't solve this. Good luck, keep us updated if you can!