I just got my iPhone 3G S today and noticed that it has a distinctly yellowish tint to the screen. Doesn't matter what app I am using, and I've tried adjusting the brightness with no success.
I made an appointment with a genius and explained my case: I believed I had an iPhone with an overly yellow and dim screen.
At the same time, I laid out on the bar my girlfriend's 3GS bought at the same time as mine, my old 3G, and my yellow 3GS in the center, so there were three iPhones lined up. All at maximum brightness, auto adjust off.
The genius immediately agreed my 3GS was very yellow, and set off to get a replacement unit. He unboxed it and gave it to me to assess. I looked at it next my girlfriend's 3GS (which has a good, pleasing screen), and it seemed very similar. Both were a little warmer than my old 3G, but that appears to be intentional with the 3GS. No uneven tinting towards the bottom, no rattles on the moving buttons.
So, I accepted it, the genius did the serial number registration thingy, gave me a warranty replacement form to sign, and that was it.
My wife has the cooler tint. My eyes hurt from squinting too much when using hers, even on medium brightness. If yours is pi$$ yellow like some are, return it. If it's just warm then I say go with it, sine it's probably not an issue and you'll likely get another replacement that's the same. I don't think any issues will get ironed out, my wife got the original 3G 1 year after it was released and it still had the light leak issue.
vivarevolution wrote:
Strangely, I am possibly coming to the conclusion now more so than ever that the more 'warmer' level we are seeing on 3GS (beyond 1st and 2nd Gen phones) might be the *_correct level_*.
The 'glaring whites' we have been used to on our monitors and 1st Gen phones, etc. is not the recommended form any longer and a move to even warmer settings is recommended for correct movie calibration on our HDTVs (Warm2 on most TVs is recommended) .. So if we have been used to web-pages and our screens with retina burning whites will force things to stand out - largely because its such a change.
As long as the fact that there are definitely too yellow screens out there isn't being confused by this observation, I think you're onto something there.
(It could even be a change of manufacturing standards amongst their part suppliers rather than a deliberate intention on the part of Apple. I would assume Apple has final say over the specs of the componentry, however.)
It's been less than a day that I've been using a "normal" 3GS (exchanged from an obviously too yellow unit), and in this short time I am not entirely convinced I like the subtle amount of added warmth and slightly lowered contrast over my previous 3G screen.
But, I have to recognize that the 3G was something I looked at constantly for over a year, and my standard of "normal" has been shaped by that. After few days, this may seem normal.
I believe there are definitely differences in these screens. My co-worker has a week 24 32GB black and when I compared my 3 day old week 27 32GB black to hers there is a marked difference. We both set ours to approximately the same brightness level with auto brightness off and hers is bright white and mine has a cloudy yellow tint.
To me the screen is perfectly readable and unless I did this comparison I wouldn't have known. I'm not sure if I want to return it as it seems to be hit and miss and although the screen is tinted it's not really that bad.
What bothers me the most is the low volume of the earpiece. At half volume I can barely hear the other person and at max volume it's still too low. You can forget using this in any noisy environment. As a comparison, my Moto Razor at half volume was way louder than my iPhone at maximum. Anyone else have a low volume issue?
After further comparisons, I'm not so sure I would call the tint yellow. It's more like hers is just brighter at the same brightness level then mine. Even at max brightness hers is still brighter where mine although bright, seems dimmed/dirty but not yellow.
In my office where I work, there are 7 of us that upgraded to the 3G[s]. They all have the exact same screen color. A bit of yellow tint. Not too bad, but you can see it if you compare against a 3G.
Not bad enough for any of us to return them.
I agree with the previous post. It seems that the brightness control is a bit off. If you turn up brightness, the yellow is way less noticeable.
I finally got the courage to go and see if I could get a replacement 3G S so that my family & friends could see my screen along side of me as mine had a dim yellow-brown polarized screen. All week the local Apple Store in Brea, CA has been fully booked for Genius appointments so as I went back to the original ATT store we bought our 3G S's from in San Dimas, CA.
The ATT store had no replacement 32GB blacks in stock - they're still waiting for new stock and have had none in since all were purchased by a flood of customers on June 19th and even the whites were still out of stock although they said they expected "some" in later today (as if I'd take a white though, sheesh). So, what to do?
I'm pleased to report that the ATT manager was very pleasant and when he saw my 3G S side by side with my wife's 3G S (both on max brightness, auto brightness turned off) he agreed that it was night and day difference and admitted he wouldn't have been satisfied either. I was SO happy to have an honest person not try to play me with that issue.
Regardless, he did say that it was policy and required to charge a 10% restocking fee. I suggested that it didn't sound fair considering the unit was defective. He countered well, explaining that could be avoided by going through the route of the Apple Store doing a repair or swap, which made sense. Since I didn't want the nightmare of going through that experience, I decided to eat the 10% fee and returned the phone.
The manager was understanding and said that if I wasn't able to find another 32GB black anywhere else, to please call back and leave my phone with them so that they could notify me of when more stock finally arrived (no estimated date, apparently Apple is cleaned out).
So there we have it - no more iPhone for the time being - just a humble old Nokia 6600 for phone & texting only until I can find another 32GB black. I could not settle for defective quality, nor would my wife had, nor would the manager himself, and as I wanted full flexibility and freedom of choice, I was willing to take a 10% loss.
I'll report on my experience(s) later as I try to find a non-defective 32GB Black 3G S somewhere in southern California, insisting that I preview any and all phones for screen defects before purchasing (I'm not going through this mess again).
If you go to your settings and accessibility and do the white to black its an easy way to tell if your screen has that yellow color but it does look pretty weird. Flashlight app works good too.
I find that I do notice a yellow tint if I'm outside in bright sunlight. It's not horribly distracting, but I can tell that some of my white backgrounds are sepia. Not bad enough that it would be detectable to anyone in the iPod store, though.
So, my experience on trying to find a new, non-defective 32GB black iPhone 3G S...
Went to local Apple Store today. Stood in line for an hour. Told retail sales guy I had just returned my former 32GB 3G S back to ATT due to dim yellow polarized screen. I wanted to check quality of screen from new stock before committing to buy. Not possible. Had to pay up front before they'd open any boxes.
Paid for a new 32GB black. Guy opens it up, says I have to pay for a new activation (ATT implied I could just re-use my old SIM card - yes I can, but not in a new iPhone - not how Apple activates new ones...).
Brand new week 26 is not dim, yellow & polarized as my old defective one, but instead it's dim, dirt brown and polarized. Horrible horrible screen. Guy compares it to my wife's proper warm yellow 3G S and agrees its bad and goes back to talk to manager to see if he can open up another one.
I get a 100% complete refund on the phone with no restocking fee (heck I touched it for only 15 seconds and never walked out with it). Sales guy comes back with another new 32GB "from a different batch". It's another week 26 and we go through the all new activation. Compare it with wife's 3G S (always comparisons are max brightness with auto brightness off).
At first I say "Ooh this has potential!" as I glance at it from a couple feet away as he lays them out next to each other. Then I get close and look careful.
2nd new phone is BRIGHT, as bright as my wife's. It's NOT polarized! But it's screen is brown-yellow, very noticeably more than my wife's, but not as bad as the former one (the sales guy described it as "better"). But the colors are all washed out. There's hardly any contrast. Details are fuzzy. There are no blacks, it's just very dark charcoal. Totally unacceptable. He agrees it's not the same quality and says he's running out of options. He goes back to manager and is told to tell me the following:
1) This is the first time that this store has heard of this yellow screen problem (wonder how many times they've used that line, sheesh - so insulting).
2) All 3G S phones will exhibit some varying degree of screen quality and all are within spec (OMG, um, sales guy had just agreed the 2 brand new phones were not the same quality for heaven's sakes).
I roll my eyes at the poor guy and he just smiles shrugging his shoulders saying if he were in my shoes, as no more boxes will be opened for me, to just take this 2nd one and come back and talk to the Genius guys to do a swap. I state I've tried for a week to get an appt and nothing's open. Of course he can make one and so I've got an appt scheduled for Monday.
He packs up my box and I leave completely depressed, frustrated, ready to just give up. I get home and prep to sync the new but defective crap screen phone. I then find out that the new retail box is missing something - he didn't give me the sync cable - he had kept it to sync the phone with his iTunes to activate it, and well, forgot it, adding insult to injury.
3 phones in a row, completely defective screens, totally unacceptable, even my wife said no way would she accept any of them, and no one, not ATT nor this Apple retail sales guy disputed the fact that the screens were different and not up to parr in comparison to my wife's 3G S, which itself is dimmer and yellower than most of the display models they have, but which is "within spec and acceptable variance" in my opinion. There's variance, and there's defective, and I have yet to see any 3G S that's to spec other than Apple Store & ATT store display models and my wifes...
And so begins the long frustrating swap routine so many of you have already gone through, and continue to go through. What a horrid frustrating mess this quality control issue is. I can certainly see how many just give up and just accept sub-standard quality to just avoid all this headache 😟
I have said previously that I was +beginning to accept+ the yellow-tint but upon further investigation of side-by-side comparisons between all iphone devices I have been able to get my hands on; two 1st Generation iPhones, one 3G and four 3GS’s (3 replacements and one from a friend) *I have come to the conclusion now that _if you have a ‘yellow tint’ you have a ‘problem too’_ ..*
Essentially I have synced around 300 photographs I have taken over the course of a year with a high-end digital camera to each of the devices I own; my PC and Macbook and HDTV, Apple iPhone/Touch units. Swiping through each image and comparing amongst all the devices showed a *worrying trend of inaccuracy on the 3Gs* that I have had (all 3 have had the same level of yellow tint) but not my friends 3Gs that is less yellow.
What I found was that anything red, like a a car for example .. that I know the colour of in real-life; was showing as almost ‘pink’ or ‘orange’ and not the red that it should have been. Faces, natural skin tone .. again, showed extra amounts of ‘red’ saturation in them as though the colour had been turned too high. White shirts showed as ‘off-white’ (expected because of the yellow tint) – but equally purple, light blue and green items of clothing that I understand the accuracy of in real-life were showing inaccurately.
Infact, the more I swiped through the images and compared against each device it was the 3GS that was coming last in every single accuracy test.
If the yellow-tint was purely a problem for ‘whites’ then this could be accepted. But to find that images are no longer ‘true to life’ makes this device a complete return item.
I really do now recommend checking your device with images taken previously with other equipment and that you know the colours of, etc; and then doing your own comparisons, because I believe you will find similar results providing you have the worrying ‘yellow tint’ that seems to be a dead giveaway of a problem unit!
It’s no good losing your 14days return only to find you have to keep this unit for its lifetime and soon discover Apple have resolved the issue. Do not just presume that the issue is the obvious 'yellow' hue but seek out colour-by-colour tests amongst your devices to see there is deep inaccuracy within.
I have a 32GB white 3GS and it has a yellow display with bad contrast and washed-out color. I have direct comparison to my old 3G which is how an iPhone should be. I wonder why Apple doesn’t care about the quality of the displays? They could at least make tests in the chinese factory from time to time?
My display is so yellow and flaw it wouldn’t have passed a simple visual test at the factory.
Over here in Germany I don’t have an Apple Store nearby so I have to send it in to Apple Service. I will most-likely receice a refurbished phone with some other flaw. Because that was my experience with the 3G. They exchanged my 3G with stuck pixels against a 3G with other stuck pixels AND scratches and dust (and what else?!).
I will not change my yellow iPhone against another one which is refurbished. Which seems most-likely to get back. I’d rather keep my bad one and be angry about it every day for the next 2 years.
The situation ***** big time. I'm still waiting (and will be for a while - maybe even a freaking YEAR at this rate) to dip back into the iPhone pool. Sheesh, I may even go for the Palm Pre.
One thing I can assure you is that Steve Jobs absolutely does not accept this kind of crap being sold and spoiling or threatening his precious brand. He stands for excellence, innovation and "the very best" in consumer electronics. As a businessman however, maybe this issue is MORE of a problem than we even realise and properly addressing it would be hugely costly and create a negative PR frenzy. Silence is the best (and most often used) defense against this and that's what we're all experiencing. It's probably down to some or a group of Apple employees either brushing this off as "whining customers" a la some of the posters here and hence the people who could actually look into this issue never hear about it, or more likely it's that the upper echelons know about this issue and are quietly and probably VERY SLOWLY dealing with it.
I looked at a few more iPhone 3GS's in an O2 store (all of them to be precise) and I noticed that all of the screens on their display models seemed almost perfect in terms of colour but interestingly had a little backlight bleed at the bottom which I've never seen before. Funny thing is, I would prefer to "live with" slight backlight bleed than slight colour issues. In any case the indicators are definitely that there are "Don't give a
**" people in the factories making these iPhones and amongst Apple employees - and given the wages paid these days, on a certain level I don't blame them.
iPhone lottery? Perfect. Let's make it an official phrase to refer to the probematically variable quality of the iPhone 3GS in particular.
