iPhone 3Gs/3G: Yellow Gradient Issue

[_Refurbished_]

PLEASE READ FIRST PARAGRAPH BEFORE VOTING

Before voting, please open a blank page of Safari, put it into landscape mode and examine the left and right edges of the screen. Each side of the screen should be the same color. If they are not consistent, then your phone has the issue. Posts that state their screen is "OK", without stating that they performed the test, will be disregarded.

Example Post:

#1 - Did Safari Check: Screen OK

#2 - Did Safari Check: Yellow Fade Present


Apple claims their newer screens have a warmer tint. Even though I don't like the warmer temperature, that's not what I'm trying to address here. This thread is being created to address a defect in the actual consistency of the screen color, not the calibration. So unless you're posting about screen consistency, please do not post.


Yesterday, I tried to replace my ugly, half yellow tinted screen at the Apple store. Unsuccessfully, the Genius went to the back and replaced my display (I don't think he did anything, he just went to the back for 10 minutes). My screen was exactly the same as it was before. White towards the top, yellow towards the bottom. Everyone who I show the screen to agrees that there is a difference between the left and right of the screen, in terms of whiteness. Apple claims my screen is within their "specifications", or in other words, they don't want to do anything about it.

Looking deeper, I went to look at the other 3Gs units in the Apple store. Shockingly, all of the other units had a white top, and a yellow bottom. I looked at my friend's newly replaced iPhone 3G...and sure enough his replacement phone had the issue (although not nearly as bad). My previous phone, the iPhone 3G, does not have this issue, which leads me to believe newer screens are defective, in both the 3G and 3Gs.

I then moved on to the iPod touches. No screen issues. 100% color consistency across the entire screen. I would be completely satisfied with ANY of the iPod touches viewed at this store.

I'm interested in hearing your stories, please respond.

 

[-aggie-]

I have done the check and my colors are consistent.

 

[savior1974]

Well, I've probably went through about 7-8 iPhone 3gs replacements for a number of different reasons (Yellow gradient issue, dust under screen, silent switch didn't work at all, row of dead pixels, etc)

Now this last one I have is complete perfect with a perfect bluish color screen.

I don't do the safari check though, a better test is to download the free Flashlight. app and then put the screen to all white, and view it in landscape mode.

 

[_Refurbished_]

I don't do the safari check though, a better test is to download the free Flashlight. app and then put the screen to all white, and view it in landscape mode.

True, but this method is easier for the majority. Everyone has Safari installed, and it's an easy way to test for this issue. But any white screen will show this flaw obviously.

I want to see numbers. I think a lot of people out there have never realized the gradient issue exists, and instead, focus on the warmer temp. This is a HUGE issue for Apple and I'm hoping for a recall. Changing the temp of a device is acceptable, having defective screens and telling customers that it's "within specifications", is not. I got treated as if I was a crazy person walking into the Apple store off the street. Who's the Genius now?

If you bought a brand new Sony LCD TV from Best Buy and it was yellow on the right side of the screen and white on the left, would you accept the answer "it's within specifications"? No, you would return the TV for a new one.

BTW, I have been through about 6 phones since the 3G came out last year, I feel your pain .

 

[GeneralP]

I did the same and Mine is consistant as well... hey OP Do me and others a favor.... Post a screen shot or better yet take a picture with another camera and SHOW me what you are talking about. SHOW me how bad it is. Its not that I dont believe you, I just want to see how bad it really is. I have not met ANYONE with these issues... its always.. "a guy I know...."

 

[_Refurbished_]

I did the same and Mine is consistant as well... hey OP Do me and others a favor.... Post a screen shot or better yet take a picture with another camera and SHOW me what you are talking about. SHOW me how bad it is. Its not that I dont believe you, I just want to see how bad it really is. I have not met ANYONE with these issues... its always.. "a guy I know...."

So far, 50% of the people have stated they have this issue. Obviously, it's not just me.

Like I said, go into an Apple store. Look at the 3Gs screen, then compare it to the iPod Touch screen. The screen almost looks dirty on the 3Gs (on half of the screen). It has a slightly darker shade to it.

My camera is dead and I don't have the battery, otherwise I'd love to show you the issue. If someone else who is experiencing the issue has a camera, I would love to see a picture demonstrating what I'm talking about.

This example picture isn't in landscape mode, but compare "Airplane Mode" to "General" and you'll see that "General" is more yellow than "Airplane Mode". That's not a camera issue or lighting issue, that's how the screen actually looks like when you're using it. The yellow tint is at the bottom of the screen. I have yet to see a scenario where the yellow is at the top of the screen.

 

[GeneralP]

Thanks for the pics... Maybe i am not seeing it or maybe it is just so slight or maybe I am color blind to that shade of yellow....

I just don't see it... I would have to agree with Apple that it is within tolerance....


Just for fun I took the picture copied and pasted a part of one of the screens around the other... there are so many shades you cant tell anything from it.

Personally I think this is a lot to do about nothing. If your not happy get a different phone.. if that doesnt please you get a BlackBerry

Oh and as far as the Big Screen Plasma and taking it back?? If I got it home and it was that bad I would swap BRANDS...

 

[savior1974]

found this in another thread talking about the same thing.

See how the top right corner is more white than the rest of the phone. This is what the op is talking about. but usually its the other way around (most of the phone being white with like part of it being yellow.)

 

[_Refurbished_]

Thanks for the pics... Maybe i am not seeing it or maybe it is just so slight or maybe I am color blind to that shade of yellow....

I just don't see it... I would have to agree with Apple that it is within tolerance....


Just for fun I took the picture copied and pasted a part of one of the screens around the other... there are so many shades you cant tell anything from it.

Personally I think this is a lot to do about nothing. If your not happy get a different phone.. if that doesnt please you get a BlackBerry

Oh and as far as the Big Screen Plasma and taking it back?? If I got it home and it was that bad I would swap BRANDS...

You know, and everyone else knows, the iPhone's interface is far superior to Blackberry or anything else on the market. I understand I am a consumer and I have a choice. That is a lame, overused defense against a company that is selling a bunch of defective products. I have 30 days to return my purchase, I am well aware I can get a new phone that's not the iPhone. BTW, will you pay my 10% restocking fee at ATT for me?

I just showed the pic to my roomates and they ALL can EASILY see the issue in the photo I posted. In fact, one of them pointed out that the General font looks a bit fuzzy. Sure enough, text on my phone is a bit fuzzier too, now that he pointed that out to me.

As for the LCD TV comment: I would if I could, but I can't so I won't .

I don't want to get in an argument, so I won't. But please refrain from telling me my consumer rights, I'm well aware of them. This thread is demonstrating that there is an issue and something needs to be done about it. Should everyone who has this issue return their iPhones? Or should Apple do something to fix this. I'd prefer the latter.

 

[GeneralP]

Don't give me the "change phones blah blah blah". You know, and everyone else know, the iPhone is far superior to Blackberry or anything else on the market. I understand I am a consumer and I have a choice. Again, that is a lame, overused defense against a company that is selling a bunch of defective products. I have 30 days to return my purchase, I am well aware I can get a new phone that's not the iPhone. BTW, will you pay my 10% restocking fee at ATT for me?

You are colorblind in that shade or your monitor isn't very good, one of the two. I just showed the pic to my roomates and they ALL can EASILY see the issue in the photo I posted. In fact, one of them pointed out that the General font looks a bit fuzzy. Sure enough, text on my phone is a bit fuzzier too, now that he pointed that out to me.

THEN TAKE IT BACK!! I said that in my post. I will consider myself lucky that mine is perfect. I use it. It works great and at the end of the day .... ITS JUST A PHONE! Calm down walk your self to the Apple store and get your replacement. oh and btw... YOU took delivery of the phone. YOU looked at it prior to purchase and accepted its condition. If you are this concerned about it why didn't YOU tell them about it and swap it out before YOU left the store?

As far as the iPhone being superior? Maybe... but obviously mine is MORE superior than yours cause mines not yellow at the bottom

AGAIN... If your not Happy take it back... I highly doubt that posting a poll like this on MacRumors is going to add to your defense when you walk into the Apple store and say that "4% of people on the website say so... and so do my roommates!"

AND YES anyone who has a defective product SHOULD take it back. Taking it to an Apple Store or AT&T will get the message to them alot faster than posting on the web. When the bean counters start seein A LOT of phones coming back for the same issue that catches their attention more than anything else.. Face it Apple is not your friend they are a business to amke money and if they can save a dime they WILL.

AGAIN... TAKE IT BACK

 

[Roessnakhan]

There's a difference in tint on the screens you posted, but it seems within spec. If you want to kick up a fuss about it you can probably get a new phone - but it looks fine to me.

 

[_Refurbished_]

There's a difference in tint on the screens you posted, but it seems within spec. If you want to kick up a fuss about it you can probably get a new phone - but it looks fine to me.

It has nothing to do about tint. It has to do with consistency. The screen itself, from top to bottom is not consistent. The "tone" is not being discussed. And I already did try to replace it, which I posted in the original post as well. They "fixed" my screen, instead of giving me a new phone.

 

[_Refurbished_]

What's interesting is that no one has yet reported the issue on the 3G. Obviously it's a very small test sample so far, but still.

 

[GeneralP]

What's interesting is that no one has yet reported the issue on the 3G. Obviously it's a very small test sample so far, but still.

people with 3g may have already swapped theirs out.

3g adn 3gs have different screens

 

[_Refurbished_]

people with 3g may have already swapped theirs out.

3g adn 3gs have different screens

My roommate recently swapped his 3G for cracking issue. His phone shows a slight discoloration from top to bottom, but nothing like the 3Gs phones I've seen. His batch was created after the 3Gs was launched, so there is a possibility that newer 3G phones have this issue and the older ones do not. My old 3G looks fine.

 

[-aggie-]

people with 3g may have already swapped theirs out.

3g adn 3gs have different screens

This 3G user wouldn't have cared. I kind of see his issue, but it wouldn't bother me, even if I had it (and I might, but I'm not that discerning....someone had a smudge on their screen the other day, and I couldn't see it until they really pointed it out to me). I'm not one to worry about bezels, pixel count, or stuff like that.

 

[iphones4evry1]

My iPhone 3G (August 2008) definitely has white white on the side towards the ear speaker and yellow white towards the home button. In landscape mode, I flipped my phone 180 degrees to confirm, and the same result. Since I have had my phone for almost 12 months now and I didn't notice this until you just pointed it out, I'm probably not going to worry about it though.

Let me know if you find a way to get it replaced with a 3GS though.


September 7, 2009:
Steve Jobs Keynote... "Oh, and one more thing..." audience: "The Tablet?" ... Steve: "The new iPhone 3GS screen has been upgraded to a screen that is consistent throughout." audience: silence.


-

 

[Gurtz]

The yellow on my screen is very hard to notice because it is quite faint but I am able to tell that it does not fade but instead the bottom 40% is yellow-hued and the top 60% is correctly colored. When I look quite closely I can see pretty much see the exact row of pixels where the yellow hue starts.

 

[_Refurbished_]

September 7, 2009:
Steve Jobs Keynote... "Oh, and one more thing..." audience: "The Tablet?" ... Steve: "The new iPhone 3GS screen has been upgraded to a screen that is consistent throughout." audience: silence.


-

I personally think the next iPhone will go Green. The screen will have a green hue, instead of a yellow hue. It will become the most Green phone on the planet.

Oh, it will also make Safari snappier.

 

[NathanA]

You should check out this thread on the Apple.com Discussions Board:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2048495

Going strong at 880 replies/59 pages so far. So, yes, you are definitely not the only person to have noticed.

I haven't really posted anywhere about this issue myself (except in passing one or twice here), and have been kind of just sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what will happen (if anything); there are probably others like me, so I would not be surprised to find that, even if they are not in the majority, there are several who suffer this flaw silently.

I have a 3G, and I love its screen. It's beautiful. Great contrast, good saturation, blacks are blacks and whites are whites.

And if I could transplant my 3G screen into my 3GS, I would. Too bad they are electrically-incompatible.

I just recently upgraded to the 3GS. I myself noticed the problem with the screen IMMEDIATELY upon starting up my 3GS for the first time. However, not only did I have the weird yellow gradient from top to bottom, I also had extremely poor contrast and the colors were really off (compared to 3G screen, grays were tinted purple-red-ish). Black was extremely washed-out (as were all the other colors) and the screen looked like one giant LCD backlight leak. The one thing I will give it is that you could really crank up the brightness on it!

A co-worker and I went out and bought 3GSes together from the same store on the same day, and his LCD looked identical to mine.

I have had the phone replaced twice now through the AppleCare advanced replacement shipping service (nearest Apple store is 300 miles away). First replacement phone had, yet again, the exact same washed-out, yellow-gradient LCD. When I received it, I was about to give up, having seen 3 phones in a row (my original phone, my co-worker's, and my replacement) all with the same inexcusably-poor display quality.

But then, someone down the hall from where I work brought over his new 3GS phone, and it had a beautiful screen! Looked just like my 3G. So, I KNEW at that point that there ARE 3GS phones out there with good screens.

Called up Apple again, got another replacement on the way, and this one is way better. It is still not as good as my 3G: there is still a noticeable yellowing at the bottom, and it IS distracting, but it is way less noticeable than on the other 3 aforementioned 3GS phones. More importantly, though, black is black again, and color rendering is much closer to my 3G's.

I am going to go out on a limb and say this yellow gradient is a backlight issue. And I don't know if it is related, but I have also noticed that unlike every 3G I have ever used, every single 3GS phone that I have seen (my "good" one included) seems to have a backlight that appears to "fade" on when you first boot up the phone, as if it is struggling to warm up or something, whereas 3G backlights just click on instantly. And maybe it's not the backlight's fault; maybe it is the power inverter that is of a poor design and is "warming up" when the phone is turned on.

Although color saturation could still be improved, my new 3GS screen is good except for the yellowing, which although is less noticeable, still starts and ends in about the same places as on the other 3GSes I had dealings with. The fact that I have seen 2 (maybe 3 by now) different versions of how colors should be rendered leads me to believe that there are multiple vendors that Apple is getting the LCDs from, and some are better-quality than others, but from my own experience and from what I have been reading in that thread on apple.com, any of the various screen types are susceptible to the yellow gradient issue, which is another reason why I suspect backlighting.

Several people on that apple.com thread have gone through 8, 9, even 10 phones before they got one with an acceptable display, which is outrageous if true. All I can say is that I admire their perseverance.

And on the flip side of the coin, as I pointed out earlier, my co-worker's 3GS screen is identical to the one my original 3GS had. He can see it when I point it out and when we do side-by-sides between my new 3GS and both his old 3G and my old 3G, but it doesn't really bother him; his eye isn't drawn to it during normal use so he hasn't felt compelled to pursue resolution from Apple (not that it would necessarily do much good). I suspect that this is really the case for a lot of people: these display issues are probably more widespread than anyone knows or cares to admit, but it just simply doesn't matter to a lot of people.

Anyway, I may go on to give Apple a piece of my mind about this issue as it is upsetting and frustrating, and may opt to try to get the screen itself swapped out the next time I'm near an area with an Apple store (if the issue sounds like it has been mostly resolved by the time I think to try it), but I can definitely live with the screen I have now for now. The yellowing is annoying, but is faint enough that I can use it, and is definitely not as bad a problem as the one I started out with: poor contrast.

-- Nathan

 

[_Refurbished_]

Very good read Nathan. Glad you got one that was somewhat working. I REALLY feel like this deserves a recall. As you stated, many people don't notice / haven't had an iPhone, so they don't have anything to compare to. It's a very widespread issue, that's for sure.

As for the Apple thread, most people complain about yellow screen hues, and not the gradient issue. That's why I started this thread, so that people can see that there's a difference and it's something that should NOT be happening. Apple stating it's "within specifications" is BS. There is something much bigger going on here....

 

[NathanA]

As for the Apple thread, most people complain about yellow screen hues, and not the gradient issue.

At first glance, I would agree that it seems that way, and I also agree that people get the two issues conflated. I have yet to run into the so-called "piss-yellow" screens myself, but there are enough reports out there that I don't doubt they exist.

However, if you read through all 59 pages of that thread , I think you will see that it really does eventually gravitate towards talking more and more about the gradient issue specifically, and I think this is because the yellow-gradient issue, whatever is causing it, is much, much more widespread than the uniformly-extreme-yellow screen issue.

There were also a number of people in there who commented on the poor contrast screens, like the first two phones I had, and I do wonder if they are more likely to have the yellow-gradient issue, again based on my experience and how the flow of the posts on that thread has developed.

So it sounds to me like there are a number of different screen quality issues and concerns, and all of them are troubling, but that the "yellow-gradient" is easily the most-widespread one.

-- Nathan

 

[GeneralP]

NathanA Well writen. That is how you trouble shoot and resolve the issue. Hope you end up with a good phone

 

[-aggie-]

I personally think the next iPhone will go Green. The screen will have a green hue, instead of a yellow hue. It will become the most Green phone on the planet.

Oh, it will also make Safari snappier.

I hope you were being sarcastic. Who cares about green, just make it work better and do more.

 

[_Refurbished_]

I hope you were being sarcastic. Who cares about green, just make it work better and do more.

Oh that was sarcasm ....