Please note the following
- You are likely seeing the pullup on the EVKIT board because a diode-connected pin is connected to the 3.3V supply and is pulling the VL voltage up. On my board, this was the LDOEN pin. Once I cut the trace to the LDOIN pin, and opened all of the jumpers, I no longer saw VL pulled up.
- I have also measured between VL and VA, and VL and VEXT for a diode connection, in case there is an issue with the Abs Max. I measured no diode connection between any of these pins, verifying the information in the Abs Max.
Please take another look at your board and verify that there are no external signals connected to any of the following pins :
/RST, /IRQ, MOSI/A1, /CS/A0, SCLK/SCL, MISO/SDA, LDOEN, or SPI/I2C.
This will include any pullup resistors that may have been placed on these lines. After removing all pullup resistors and disconnecting these logic pins from a higher voltage, you will not see any issues with VL rising unexpectedly.