UPDATE 10/10: Going on 26 days now without hearing ANYTHING back from official support regarding our defective Playdates. And I have had mine for over a month now period, this is seriously concerning...
UPDATE 10/2: The Playdate is defective as it turns out.
But I have been waiting 18 days for a response from Panic and have heard nothing back.
The last message they left me was attempting to apply a firmware update. It did not work. The support agent said to respond if didn't, and they would RMA it. I responded 4 times over 18 days and they have not. My Playdate is still broken just as it arrived, and I cannot get a response from Panic's official support anymore to address it. I don't know what to do...
Original Post:
I'm not sure if I received a lemon or not. But upon unboxing and powering it up for the first time, it brought me straight to the settings menu instead of the first-time boot experience.
And if I try to do anything (open any setting or connect it to wifi), the device crashes error e1 and restarts. But it's just stuck in a loop.
Also when I press more information I am left with this:
First try a paperclip reset for 10 seconds (the reset button is in the crank slot). If that doesn't work, try installing the recovery firmware, steps are listed here: Recovery Mode - Playdate Help
Sadly after attempting the steps it listed, it still doesn't seem to fix it.
The Recovery steps seem to be for when you have a E2 level crash. It seems I have a very very rare E1 crash. I believe my only options now are to wait for a flash image from support or the device may just be a defective one.
They did give a firmware image, but from what they say, they are all generated specifically for each playdates serial number so you can't share them.
Even with the fresh firmware flash, it did not fix the issue. I believe it's a hardware defect and needs to be RMA'd.
But I haven't heard back from support since they gave me the image last Thursday which is a little worrying.
Dang, that's not reassuring to hear. Any update since? I reached out to https://help.play.date/ 14 days ago going over the issue and included a video / the full error message, didn't hear back, so reached out again 7 days ago and still nothing.
@matt not sure what moderator powers you have, but is there anyway I can get support here? Staring at my broken playdate after waiting over a year for it to ship is very painful.
Quick follow-up. We do have your information, support was investigating possible solutions to the E1 issue before reaching out. We should be in contact shortly.
