I have two of these devices running with ESPHome. In both cases the display no longer works with the battery installed, even when powered from USB, although it works fine when powered solely from USB.

The most recent device is only a few days old and has worked perfectly fine up until now when I (very carefully!) removed the protective film from the display using the red tab. The screen is displaying just white, but if the battery is removed (while leaving the USB connection in), the screen refreshes entirely normally.

Because this is my second device, I have obviously been exceptionally careful with it to ensure that I did nothing to damage it, but even so, it seems that it's now in the same state as my first device and no longer working when the battery is inserted. I have tested with two different 18650 batteries and the test battery is 4.05v measured. I have been running the most recent device on battery for the last two days (to measure the expected battery lifetime) and it's been otherwise working fine.

Am I missing a trick here, or is there some specific change that I need to make after removing the protective screen?

Before:

After: