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Yellow Screen, does it really fade away? (with pictures)

A

arkon

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 17, 2010
68
0
Hi everyone,

I`m on iOS since version 1.1.3. Got my iPhone 4S yesterday and know these stories every year, of yellow tinted screens. Never had any issue with it. Until today. Compared to my iPhone 4 (got it right the first day it was released in switzerland) the screen from the iPhone 4 looks blueish and the one from my iPhone 4S looks something like yellow.

So most of us, know all these reports, it fading away with time, maybe its some glue thats not dry, maybe its about the background leds. I just dont know what the reality is. Some users just get used to it is also possible. So the problem is, were getting no real evidence that the yellow is going away. So I will start with some evidence, if there is some!
Got my iPhone 4S yesterday restored it from my iCloud Backup, everything is fine. Battery seems to be fine cant say much about it now.

So I made some Pictures with my Canon DSLR. The iPhone`s were at full brightness with auto brightness off. Both devices running iOS 5 and have the same apps installed and the same data on it.

Always on the left side, the iPhone 4S with the more yellow tone and on the right the iPhone 4 with more blue tone.

I will update these pictures every three days, at least. (iPhone 4 vs iPhone 4S) And I will let the iPhone 4S with a white screen over the night on to speed up the progress of loosing the yellow tint, if there is some progress.
At the end were going to have some real evidence.

Day 1 (28. Oct)









click on the picture the see it in full size

I will update this thread on 31. oct next time
 
One of them is warm, the other cold. Neither are very attractive. The ideal screen colour would be somewhere in the middle.
 
I compare it today with another iPhone 4, but I think youre right, something in the middle would be perfect. I really want to know if there is some shift in the screen colour over 1-2 weeks as some have reported.
 
arkon said:
I compare it today with another iPhone 4, but I think youre right, something in the middle would be perfect. I really want to know if there is some shift in the screen colour over 1-2 weeks as some have reported.
Click to expand...

I think it's a great idea, I've always wondered if it really does go away or if it's just people getting used to the yellow. I look forward to your follow-ups.
 
The colour on the left is what my first replacement was. The second replacement is cooler...maybe even too cool.
 
Would be great to have some sort of hue/ gamma calibration, like TVs and PC displays often have.
 
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I don't think It's a problem with being to yellow but rather the gamma is set to low.

The 4S seems to be set too 1.8 making every thing look washed out and blacks to light, where as the 4 seems to have a gamma of 2.2
 
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There seems to be a lot of variation between iPhone 4 and 4S units, probably depending on the LCD manufacturer.

My iPhone 4 and 4S were pretty much the opposite of what you've photographed; my 4S has a much cooler colour temperature than my 4 did and it pretty much matches my MacBook Pro's temperature now.

My 4S display is also considerably clearer-looking (for some reason), more vibrant and a touch brighter. It looks great.
 
arkon said:
Compared to my iPhone 4 (got it right the first day it was released in switzerland) the screen from the iPhone 4 looks blueish and the one from my iPhone 4S looks something like yellow.
Click to expand...

I think this might be part of the problem. People are comparing their screen with the screen of another phone. Of course, you're going to prefer one over the other. The bottom line is, if you just look at the screen on your new phone and don't compare to anything else, does it look "bad" or "off"?
It just seems that sometimes people are overly critical of their new purchase. I could buy a new iPhone and use it for a month and be totally ecstatic with it. Then, come on these forums, and I would think I had any one of numerous "problems".
 
So I made some pictures with another iPhone 4 from my girlfriend, she got it at start day too its a 32gb model, my iphone 4 is a 16gb.

From left to right:
iPhone 4S (little bit yellow, iPhone 4 16GB (little bit blueish), iPhone 4 32GB (between these two colours)





The point is, is there any changing at the screen colours. And why does apple provide so different screen colours, no QC and recalibration of the screens?
 
It just disgusts me that a company like Apple that's so seemingly obsessed with "quality" uses different LCD panel manufacturers in a lot of their products and the iPhone 4S seems to be no exception. Not all the iPhone 4S displays are yellow in fact some of them are blue and some are more neutral which alludes to the fact that they're using different suppliers.

I just purchased a brand-new MacBook air for a few days ago that I had to immediately return due to washed out low quality screen. It's very annoying that we pay a premium for their products yet we still have to go through the luck of the draw to get quality displays.

Using different manufacturers for LCD panels is not necessarily a bad thing as long as they do the QC to make sure that the quality among the different suppliers is consistent.

Having a crappy screen really takes the enjoyment out of using any of these products because staring at the screen is what you're doing the entire time! For the most part...
 
I'd be interesting to see the results of this. I had an iPhone 4 which was very blueish and when I compared to my iPhone4s, which seems to be more yellowish, i was annoyed, since i like more bright colors. Yellow makes it to mellow.
 
arkon said:
So I made some pictures with another iPhone 4 from my girlfriend, she got it at start day too its a 32gb model, my iphone 4 is a 16gb.

From left to right:
iPhone 4S (little bit yellow, iPhone 4 16GB (little bit blueish), iPhone 4 32GB (between these two colours)

[url=http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/7674/3iphones.th.jpg]Image[/URL]

[url=http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/1830/3iphoneswhite.th.jpg]Image[/URL]

The point is, is there any changing at the screen colours. And why does apple provide so different screen colours, no QC and recalibration of the screens?
Click to expand...

My 2nd replacement 4S, which is what i use now, has the same calibration as the one on the far right. My iPhone 4 had the calibration of the one in the middle which is the perfect calibration IMHO. I've not seen any 4S with this calibration.

cababah said:
It just disgusts me that a company like Apple that's so seemingly obsessed with "quality" uses different LCD panel manufacturers.

Using different manufacturers for LCD panels is not necessarily a bad thing as long as they do the QC to make sure that the quality among the different suppliers is consistent.
Click to expand...

Apple ships 10s of millions of these devices, expecting one component manufacturer to make enough a component for ALL of the millions of units is unrealistic...unless you're maybe Samsung. They simply can't can churn them out fast enough. So you have to use multiple suppliers.

As for QC its impossible to evaluate every single unit of the millions of units so they simply take a sample (which unfortunately doesn't always represent well) and call it a day.

i'm not defending them, i'm just saying this is par for course in mass manufacturing.
 
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I will upload pictures this evening. But it seems nothing has changed. And the eye`s get used to it when you not compare it to another one. There is no sign for fading away so far.
 
That's a shame. I'm on my 3rd white 32Gb iPhone 4S, and all of them have had the washed out yellowy screen. I am really not too happy, some consolation that the genius at the Cambridge UK store sympathised (he was fantastic but ran out of phones to open and look at).

I'm going to give it a week or two and try to swap again. Colour temp on my current one is around 8500k, my iPhone 4 was 5200 (a bit blue), and I need between 5200 and 7200 for my photography. Shame on Apple for not having a bit better QC on these new phones :mad:
 
Day 3:



I dont see any real difference...

I think I have to post this(the screen problem of different qualitys at the apple forum)
 
I guess I'm lucky that I'm not that concerned with the color temperature of my screen. I don't have the time, nor the energy, to keep returning phones, looking for that "perfect" one. :rolleyes: There's bigger things in my life to worry about.
 
arkon said:
I really want to know if there is some shift in the screen colour over 1-2 weeks as some have reported.
Click to expand...

No. The 1-2 week 'fading' is talking about the glue that needs to dry, which looks like yellow splotches.

The yellow-screens and yellow-splotches are two totally different things. But because they're both yellow you read things online where people lump them all together and assume they're the same.

That's probably what you read somewhere.
 
arkon said:
So I made some Pictures with my Canon DSLR. The iPhone`s were at full brightness with auto brightness off.
Click to expand...

Without a color wheel in the frame, or at least some bright white paper as a background, it's not possible to say which looks "better" - they definitely look different though.
 
Small White Car said:
No. The 1-2 week 'fading' is talking about the glue that needs to dry, which looks like yellow splotches.

The yellow-screens and yellow-splotches are two totally different things. But because they're both yellow you read things online where people lump them all together and assume they're the same.

That's probably what you read somewhere.
Click to expand...

No, serveral people here, did say the yellow screen and not the spots will fade away!! Thats why I`m testing this!
 
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