Don’t discount the lighting and viewing experience in the store.
What you are implying is that Apple either has a different manufacturing process for in store phones, or that they have a more stringent quality control threshold for in store phones.
The former seems highly unlikely and the latter seems expensive and laborious. To sift through millions of phones to find a few thousand for store display units seems ludicrous.
Also keep in mind that the vast majority of people can’t even see, or don’t care about, the screen color and brightness shifts that macrumors users regularly complain about.
When you’re in an Apple store you are seeing their products in a controlled environment. The lighting is prescribed. The distance you view the products at is prescribed. The content you see is predetermined...you won’t be seeing your iCloud photos for example.
I’ve actually tried to show a Genius Bar employee a screen discoloration on my iPad and not only could he not see it, neither could I. Only when I convinced him to let me show him in a darkened area of the store could we both see the issue.
We’d all love to have a tidy explanation and solution for screen issues. For years, people have tried to pinpoint the serial number range, the week of production, the specific factory. Some have even posited that one storage size or color vs another is a way to get a good screen.
It’s all a waste of effort and brainpower. It’s a lottery. Always has been. Probably always will be. And I’m pretty sure Apple is playing the lottery just like us.
I’m sure at some store, at some launch, some employee has swapped out a phone or iPad or two with a funky screen color, but the idea that they get a specially manufactured or vetted batch for display units defies reason. There are simply not enough bad screens, or people that scrutinize screens, to warrant either scenario.
