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iPhone 4 made after Sept 30th differences, found one.

G

globol

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 27, 2009
52
3
Not sure if anyone had noticed but the new iPhone 4 (after sept 30th) the LED FLASH color temperature is more of a yellowish color compared to the early batches of iPhone 4.

I bought mine back in July. My friend picked up his last week. We both used a flashlight app. Compared both side by side. Compared it also with 5 other iPhones. Same results. 3 phones pre-August LED's were super white. 2 phones (1 Oct 9th the other Sept 28th) LED's were yellowish.

The difference was like how the original iPhone 2g color temperature of the screen was compared to the IPhone 3G screen.


Question: would the difference in color temperature of the LED FLASH affect the outcome of a photo?
 
Intell said:
The colour difference of the screen should not effect the pictures taken with the affected iDevice.
Click to expand...

Way to read, Intell

Interesting difference, OP. I'd like to see some comparison pics with the new warm toned LED vs older whiter version.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

Pics or it didn't happen!!!!!!
 
LIVEFRMNYC said:
Mines is week 40 and I don't experience that. My flash is bright white.
Click to expand...

They're all bright white when you look at them alone. But when compared side by side you can see the difference like night and day.
 
OP, you sir, are absolutely correct.

My iPhone 4 was made after Sep 30, and sure enough, it has a yellow-ish tone.

My bro, on the other hand, has a launch iPhone 4, the flash is white as white can be!

I'll try and post some pics...
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Interesting. Maybe I'll actually have to start using the LED flash!
 
globol said:
Not sure if anyone had noticed but the new iPhone 4 (after sept 30th) the LED FLASH color temperature is more of a yellowish color compared to the early batches of iPhone 4.

I bought mine back in July. My friend picked up his last week. We both used a flashlight app. Compared both side by side. Compared it also with 5 other iPhones. Same results. 3 phones pre-August LED's were super white. 2 phones (1 Oct 9th the other Sept 28th) LED's were yellowish.
Click to expand...


White LEDs can vary widely in color temperature, even from the same vendor in the same factory. In fact getting two LEDs that closely match each other in color often requires manual sorting and picking. The most consistent ones (or at least ones where sets have been matched) end up bound for making the LED backlights on modern LCD screens in laptops and cell phones, and are the most expensive to buy. Meanwhile, in places where a customer is less picky about color consistency, a supplier will give a vendor less consistently-colored white LEDs at lower prices. And these end up in things like LED flashlights and cell phone camera flashes.

It's possible in Apple's case, they've done SOME sorting, but certain batches of phones are going to have slightly-different tints in their camera flashes than others. Much like the screens. That's just what happens with white LEDs.

It could also be that Apple (as is common with them) has more than one supplier for camera flash LEDs. In that case, even if they pay top dollar to have perfectly consistent, hand-picked white LEDs from each supplier, it would still be a miracle for the two suppliers to manage to match their color temperatures with each other exactly.

By the way: this is the same reason why some iPhones have "yellower" screens than others. It's hard enough to get consistency on white LEDs from a single factory, let alone across different, competing suppliers.

Question: would the difference in color temperature of the LED FLASH affect the outcome of a photo?
Click to expand...


In theory, no. Digital cameras can adjust white balances without any trouble, so a difference in the white point of an LED camera flash can be adjusted for in the camera's white balance, or even after the fact with an image editing program.
 
I have a launch day iPhone with a yellowish tone on the LED flash.

Your results prove inconclusive, there are different tolerances due to many variable conditions which would affect this.

No iPhones made in different batches will be perfectly comparable. There will be differences.
 
I disagree. I just tried it out on another new iPhone. Apple must have switch suppliers or decided to go with a yellower led bulb
 
globol said:
I disagree. I just tried it out on another new iPhone. Apple must have switch suppliers or decided to go with a yellower led bulb
Click to expand...

It might be that all the devices in your particular area just got yellowish LED lights and other areas are getting white.
 
Are you talking about when the flash is in use or just to look at it? because mine looks slightly yellow(golden) but i believe this is the reflective stuff to fire the flash forward?
 
There you have it!

One more reason for apple to drop flash support once and for all.
:p
 
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