Palm Support

When you turn on your device for the very first time after charging or inserting fresh batteries, your device prompts you to calibrate your digitizer (i.e. the LCD touchscreen) by tapping in the center of targets.

With use over time, calibration of the touch-sensitive LCD screen can be less accurate, making your taps on the screen less accurate.

To correct the inaccuracy of the LCD screen, you will need to calibrate the digitizer periodically.

1. Go to Applications .

2. Launch the Prefs application.

3. Depending on your device, launch the Digitizer application:
   • Centro smartphone: Under the General list, choose Touchscreen
   • Treo smartphone: Tap on the pick list at the top right of the screen. Choose Touchscreen or Digitizer.
   • Tungsten, Zire: Under the General list, choose Digitizer.
   • pre-Palm OS 5 devices: Tap on the pick list at the top right of the screen. Choose Digitizer.

4. A target appears on the screen. Tap the center of the target with your stylus. This aligns the screen digitizer. The more accurately you tap the center of the targets, the more accurately your screen is set. If you miss the target(s), the process will repeat until calibration is successful.

    
   Your targets may look different, depending on your device.
    

5. Continue tapping these targets until you receive a "Digitizer successfully calibrated" or "Your touchscreen is now calibrated for pen input" message.

   

6. Tap Done.

Catch-22: What if you can't launch the touchscreen calibrator?
If the screen is so far off-balance that you can't accurately tap on the screen to launch the Prefs application, how can you fix the issue?

• With Palm OS 5 and above devices, you can use the 5-way navigation control to launch the Prefs application and select the Touchscreen preference; you don't need to use the stylus.
• With pre-Palm OS 5 devices, you may have a Welcome application in the Applications launcher that's easier to tap on. The Welcome application includes an opportunity to calibrate your touchscreen.
• In a worst-case scenario, you can perform a HotSync operation to back up your data (if possible) and then perform a hard reset, which will automatically run the calibrator. Warning: a hard reset will delete all data and applictions from your device; if the hard reset fails to restore functionality to the touchscreen, you may become locked out of your handheld. Try the other methods first, using the hard reset only as a last resort.

Does the calibrator keep looping or not seem to work?
If you can access the calibrator, but it loops through the target sequence (repeatedly asking you to tap the targets), there may be a physical problem that's causing your touchscreen to be confused:

• Do you use an adhesive screen protector? A screen protector which is trapped under the screen edge may interfere with touchscreen calibration. Occasionally, just having the screen protector on the screen can cause the issue. Try removing the screen protector.
• You may have debris trapped under the edge of the screen. Use the corner of a piece of thin, stiff paper (copier paper works well) to very gently slide all around the edge of the screen. Don't let the corner of the paper travel more than an eighth of an inch under the screen edge frame. By doing this, you may be able to dislodge small particles of debris trapped under the frame.
• A heavy impact or scrape to the touchscreen can cause permanent damage. If your touchscreen is damaged, you may need a repair (repair info).