Chosen Solution
I found a post from when the Kindle Paperwhite 8th Gen came out that had the following description: “The 8th Generation Kindle has a six inch e-Ink Pearl display with a resolution of 800 X 600 and 167 PPI. It does not have a capacitive touchscreen, instead it employs Infrared Touch technology by Neonode. “ Then in doing a search of Neonode, I found a description along with the following picture:
So this says it all. The missing component is either an LED, but not to provide light to the screen but an integral component of the touchscreen, or it could be a light detector, and apparently if one component drops off, the entire touchscreen system goes down. Neonode appears to be an interesting technology that can turn any surface into a touchscreen.
Hi @chke , If you have a DMM (digital multimeter) you can try to measure the component with the Ohmmeter function. If it’s a resistor or an inductor you will get a reading. If it is a capacitor it will hopefully show open circuit or a reading that slowly changes as the capacitor charges to the voltage from the meter. Reverse the meter’s test leads and it should react again when tested If you measure the others on the board you may get similar readings although being connected still in their circuit path may influence it and it may be different than when it is tested in isolation. Unless there are some markings on the component (I couldn’t make any out when zoomed in) there will be no way to find out what its’ value and possibly type is, i.e. if it tests open circuit, is it a capacitor or a faulty resistor? Carefully resolder it back on so that it is mounted the same as the others and check what happens.
