3G S polarized screen - or not? (poor color issue)

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Level 1

25 points

3G S polarized screen - or not? (poor color issue)

My wife and I both had 3Gs and upgraded to 3GSs at the same time, same store. I immediately noticed that mine had slightly less saturated colors, blacks were grey, and it was not as bright as my old 3G nor my wife's new 3GS. It also had a noticeable yellow tint. My wife's new 3GS looks much more like my old 3G (bright, richer colors, no yellow tint). After mentioning it to an Apple Store employee, and comparing it to a number of display model 3GSs, they swapped my 3GS for a new one, but it had the _same problem_ right out of the box!

On the drive home, wearing my polarized sunglasses, I noticed that my 3GS did not darken when rotated. With my previous 3G and even with my wife's 3GS, the fact that the iPhone screen is polarized causes it to look darker when rotated 90 degrees while wearing polarized sunglasses or using a polarizing lens filter. This is proof that my new 3GS's screen is not polarized like my wife's new 3GS is and my old 3G was. A polarized screen, which is also found in the iPod Touch, iMac and MacBook Pro, enhances the color saturation (vibrant colors) and contrast (deep blacks), but my new 3GS is lacking those qualities. I hope (although it stinks for Apple) that the lack of polarization is a defect causing the inferior image quality and that they will be willing to replace the affected units.

If you have similar issues with the look of your screen:
Use a pair of polarized glasses or a linear polarized lens filter to see if your iPhone is lacking the polarization. Let me know what you find!!
EVEN BETTER: if anyone has a chance, take your glasses to an Apple Store and check out the display models.

15" MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.7), 2.4GHz Core2 Duo w/4GB RAM & 3G S iPhone 3.0

Posted on Jun 21, 2009 7:06 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 21, 2009 7:28 PM in response to RyanRB

Hi Ryan,

I have a 3Gs, a 3G and a pair of Smith polarized sunglasses that I ran this test on...here are some notes...

1. Without glasses and at the identical brightness levels with auto-brightness turned off, I noticed the 3G is slightly brighter. It takes about 10% more brightness on the 3Gs to match the 3G.

2. When wearing my polarized sunglasses and the identical photograph on both phones, I can see both phones fine. When I rotate the phones (or my head...which just looks silly) the 3G turns VERY dark. The 3Gs turns darker, but still VERY readable.

So it looks like there is a change with polarized sunglasses, but there still is some slight changes that happen with polarized sunglasses.

Hope this helps!

--Clay

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Answer 2

Jun 21, 2009 8:59 PM in response to RyanRB

New 3GS, week 25, darkens when rotated and viewed through polarized glasses. Screen by default is dimmer than the 3G, and in my opinion is not quite as good as the 3G and just a bit more yellow and a bit more washed out, but it is not bad, just different.

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Answer 3

RyanRB Author

Level 1

25 points

Jun 22, 2009 7:52 AM in response to RyanRB

Thanks Clay and Jay for your comments.

So... after reader elsewhere and talking to friends, it sounds like the "yellow tint" element may be a separate but related issue. What I'm bothered by is the _washed out colors_ (low saturation) and that _blacks look grey_ (low contrast). I still think this is related to the lack of, or ineffective, polarization of the screen on some 3GS iPhones. Some have reported that their affected screen does darken, but only very slightly when viewed through polarized glasses and rotated.

I would still appreciate hearing from more people who think their screen's color is washed out - using polarized glasses / filters, does your screen darken some or a lot when rotated? I would like to have more data on this before I attempt to request a second exchange of my new 3GS.

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Answer 4

TrishaJ

Level 1

0 points

Jun 28, 2009 8:00 PM in response to RyanRB

Hi,

My husband and I are in the same situation...his new 3GS is beautiful and bright, mine still really yellow after 1 exchange. The local Apple Store is now refusing to give me a different one, saying that it's just a variant in manufacturing and maybe his nice-looking one is actually defective! I'm not sure what to do now. But I did check out both screens with polarized glasses, and they seem to dim about the same amount, so maybe you are having a different issue.

Hope you have better luck getting it fixed 🙂

Trisha

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Answer 5

Jun 29, 2009 7:01 AM in response to TrishaJ

That is ridiculous, take it to another store. I am on replacement #4. I had yellow screen and this one does too, but it is very feint on only on the bottom edge. This one also has a bright pixel...

If you are not happy with the phone take it back and don't take no for an answer. You could alternatively call apple and ask for them to ship you a replacement, but you won't be able to compare it like you were at a store.

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Answer 6

Jun 29, 2009 9:13 AM in response to RyanRB

I've seen many 3GS-es and 3Gs side by side. I'd say the ones that look nicer (like the 3G) are the oddballs. I've never seen one that matches the color saturation and contrast of the 3G. Like when I put the 3G side-by-side with the original iPhone, I was disappointed with the 3GS. Apple seems to be taking a step back in picture quality with each update. Its really a shame because these things are great for viewing photos.

I wonder how much of this has to do with the new oleophobic coating. Personally, I'd take better colors over less smudging.

Side-by-side with the Pre, the iphone 3GS looks lousy. Photos pop much more on the Pre and the pixel density is much higher.

daniel

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Answer 7

Jun 29, 2009 10:07 AM in response to Shaun Rosenberg

Just come upon this thread. I too have this problem, I have had a series of iPhones (we've got 3 in our family) and I instantly noticed poor contrast on my 3GS compared with my previous 3G. Went back to the shop and typically the demonstration model was somewhere in between my two making the difference less noticeable. Although they are willing to change it they think I am being incredibly picky, and I don't want to be out of the frying pan into the fire with another similar one, so I am waiting in the hope that it will become a well documented and known problem, I have 28 days to exchange it.

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Answer 8

Jun 29, 2009 4:54 PM in response to RyanRB

All LCDs are polarized. There are polarizing films on the front and back of the panel. The rear film polarizes the light from the backlight. The liquid crystal between the layers rotates the polarization, depending on the video signal. How well the resulting polarization matches the front polarizer determines how much light comes through for each pixel. To get a good black, it must be exactly 90º from the front polarizer.

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Answer 9

msampson

Level 1

0 points

Jun 29, 2009 5:13 PM in response to Malcolm Rayfield

My 2G phone gets dark with my sunglasses when I turn it. My 3GS does not - there is no difference regardless of orientation. My 3GS is more yellow than the 2G but not unbearable and not as bad as some pictures I've seen. It is a week 24 build.
I don't want to trade it in because I might get one with worse issues. I hope for a software/firmware update to fix it.

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Answer 10

Jul 1, 2009 11:33 PM in response to Malcolm Rayfield

I thought this was the case as well, but I thought I'd test it out. I've got a circular polarizer (which is a linear polarizer + quarter wave plate). It takes incoming light and turns it into circularly polarized light. If the incoming light has a linear polarization, rotating the filter to a particular orientation will block the light entirely.

I took the filter and put it in front of my MacBook Pro's screen. When I rotated it just so, I was able to block out nearly all the light. So now I've just verified that the laptop display emits linearly polarized light.

I took the same filter and put it in front of my iPhone 3GS. No matter how I rotated it, light was still able to pass through. Regardless of orientation, there wasn't any noticeable overall loss of brightness; however, I did notice that the color of light passing through the filter did change very slightly (bluish-to-yellowish) as I rotated the filter. Certain colors would darken and others would lighten, but the effect was nowhere near as dramatic as with the laptop screen.

From these results, I can only conclude that my particular iPhone 3GS screen is not linearly polarized. It may emit light of a variety of polarizations (it could be circular or something more complex), but it is definitely not the same as the MacBook Pro's screen. My impression is that they applied some kind of filter to the iPhone to increase its viewing angle--this may "undo" the polarization that is inherent in LCD display technology.

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Answer 11

Jul 1, 2009 11:36 PM in response to atomic wedgie

More on-topic, I just wanted to add that I am perfectly happy with my iPhone 3GS screen. Since I don't have my old iPhone 3G any more, I can't make any direct comparisons, but I didn't notice that the 3GS screen was any worse (or better) than the 3G one.

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Answer 12

J-a-x

Level 3

745 points

Jul 2, 2009 5:37 AM in response to atomic wedgie

I haven't read the entire thread yet but I wanted to chime in on the polarization issue.

I got a 3GS last week and the screen scratched within the first hour of using it (or it came scratched not sure which). So I returned it yesterday to the Apple store and got a new one.

The original phone which scratched had a screen which was polarized. The brightness of the screen decreased by maybe 75% at landscape orientation when viewed through a polarized sunglasses lens.

The new replacement iPhone screen appears to not be polarized in the same way. I can rotate the phone to any direction and the brightness does not change through a polarized lens (however there is some minor color distortion while wearing polarized sunglasses).

I just got out a circularly polarized lens from my SLR camera and when I rotate it and look at my MacBook, the brightness disappears at a certain angle. The image on the iPhone screen however does not disappear regardless of how I rotate it, although there is some "rainbow" looking distortion when viewed through this particular polarizer (less so with my sunglasses).

It appears that maybe Apple is using two different LCD screens in these new 3GS phones!

Message was edited by: J-a-x

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Answer 13

Arima

Level 1

0 points

Jul 3, 2009 8:29 AM in response to RyanRB

Well I don't have an 3GS but I noticed the same effect (and believed it was my imagination) on my old 2G ipod touch and I actually loved that 'cause I use polarized sunglasses almost all the time when outside and have to take them off when rotating the screen of my 3G iphone now, but putting that aside I believe is caused by a different type of ordering in polarization: each pixel is polarized differently, say, green 0° blue 45° and red 90°, or maybe its random and each pixel's polarization has to be calibrated separately by software, but this hard to do trough simple top polarization layer so it is probably due to different manufacturer using different manufacturing technique, may be cheaper like this, may be not. O_ô?

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Answer 14

Jul 7, 2009 10:20 AM in response to RyanRB

I don't have any complaints about yellow tint or color problems, but I did notice today as I was rotating my iPhone wearing my polarized sunglasses that it never got darker. It seemed like my 2G iPhone it was polarized such that at a 45 degree angle it'd be very dark.

I don't know if they oleophobic coating is changing the polarization properties ... or as has been suggested it's circularly polarized, but I find it very interesting that some 3GSs seemed to be linearly polarized and some don't.

In any case, my screen tint and quality seem just fine to me - but the whole polarization issue intrigues me.

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Answer 15

J-a-x

Level 3

745 points

Jul 7, 2009 10:49 AM in response to Marcos Huerta

It seems that some 3GS iPhones are polarized such that they disappear while rotating them with polarized sunglasses on, and some are not polarized the same way. What I am guessing is that Apple manufactures them with LCD screens that come from at least two different sources who manufacture their displays slightly differently. I am lucky enough to now have one that does not disappear while rotating.

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