Red/Blue color palate reversed

I have an unusual issue that's driving me insane. The red and blue color palate of my Iphone 3GS has switched. What should display as blue shows red, and vice versa. Oddly, green is normal, as is white and black. I'd thought initially that I'd accidently turned on some kind of accesability feature, but when I checked it was off and, when turned on, reversed the white and black, not the blue and red.

I've tried restoring my phone but that didn't work. The oddest part, it's intermittent. At first it would happen once in a while, but now it's usually reversed. Turning the screen on and off will eventually get me to a normal color scheme, but if it turns off I'm back to square one. Anyone have any idea what's going on here?

Iphone 3GS, iOS 4

Posted on Dec 14, 2010 11:02 AM

Reply
16 replies

Dec 17, 2010 3:24 PM in response to Dr_Eirik

Hi,

There have been a few threads describing the issue in the past.

Some of these users find that hitting the sleep button twice resolves the issue temporarily as it resets the display by turning it off and on, others find that this does nothing.

Some users even find that the display then runs opposite to the W-B setting in Accessibility.

It sounds to me like a failed display driver chip or possibly a loose connection as it tends to start intermittently and gets worse over time.

It doesn't appear to be iOS version related as the threads carry over from v3.x.x to 4.x.x

Here is one other thread as an example
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2305114

If out of warranty, maybe take it to a repair shop for them to open it and make sure it not just a loose connection.

Dec 14, 2010 11:25 AM in response to Sam M.

I went in and turned on triple clicking so that it would ask what I wanted to do, then tried it again. I got the menu, and hit the white/black option. It changed the white and black just fine.

But that's not the problem I'm having. It's the red/blue that reversing.

If I turn the white/black reversal on, I get an even uglier mess on my screen than I have now.

If this is some kind of color blindness feature, it turned itself on without my input, only turns off if I turn the screen off and back on (and then only at random, I just tried 10 times to reset the screen and it didn't do it this time) and it makes no sense anyway because green is left alone.

Dec 14, 2010 11:29 AM in response to Dr_Eirik

i will put my 0.02$ that it fell(or something similar happened), and a connection cable got loose. Try to bring it to an Apple store, if they can open it and see if it's something of this genre the problem would be solved. the suggestion that it was intermittent was the key, a loose cable can do the connection and pass data but somethimes things get weird. Plus restoring didn't help, so it's probably a hardware issue. I'm not sure tho, this is what i'll think if happened to me. Have a nice day

Dec 14, 2010 11:36 AM in response to Dr_Eirik

The only vision assistance feature is the white/black reversal. Keep in mind that the colors that this affects are not only white and black.... it changes every color to the exact opposite. This would cause red to go to blue and blue to go to red.

Does this only appear on the screen, or does it also show up on a screenshot if you were to take it?
It seems like this may be an intermittent hardware failure and something you'll want to get checked out.

-SM

Dec 14, 2010 11:59 AM in response to Sam M.

I just took a screenshot and emailed it to myself and the screenshot showed completely normal.

I guess I'll have to take it to an Apple store and get it looked at. Joy of joys. Makes me miss my old Treo. I dropped it several times so hard that the SD card popped out and the corners were gouged, but it still worked without a hitch. I've got this thing in an Otterbox, and the last couple drops I can recall were on carpet. If that's all it takes, I can't wait for my contract to end.

Dec 14, 2010 12:42 PM in response to Sam M.

I've checked, turned it both on and off, both from the setting screen and by using the home button clicked three times. It switches back and forth, but the colors are still off in both modes, and never come back to normal.

I was hoping it was a software glitch, but that doesn't appear to be the case. If it's hardware, I'm screwed until I can replace it.

Dec 17, 2010 8:25 AM in response to Dr_Eirik

And now it's completely hosed. I haven't seen a normal color distribution in two days now. If it's a bad hardware connection, it's pretty **** specific, because the screen is otherwise normal, just the wrong colors. And only a couple times have I noticed that the colors switch back to normal while it's on, both times during a phone call. Otherwise, as long as I leave the screen on, it was fine.

No one else has any idea what this might be, or seen this in action before?

Dec 23, 2010 3:43 PM in response to actionmarker

I keep pointing out that this doesn't seem to be related to an accesability issue. The red and blue have reversed (I actually was able to check this for certain on a flashlight app that allows the screen to be pure colors. Red and blue are flipped, green, white and black are not).

At this point, the phone hasn't had normal colors for three days, at all. I've already removed my video content from the thing because its useless to watch. I have hit the buttons many times in every suggested sequence. I've gone through every menu on every app to see if there is some kind of global setting that got tripped.

I've even looked for apps that might allow me to adjust the color settings of the phone itself, so I can manually re-switch them, but no luck.

About the only thing that I haven't tried is to restore it completely to factory settings and see what it's like before a restore of the data. I've already done a restore with no luck.

I have to think this is either a software or a chip failure. I can't imagine a loose wire causing two colors to flip like this. Losing a color I could see, but flipping?

Apr 14, 2011 9:26 PM in response to butie

Not sure how to describe this so here it goes. The normal color scheme on my iphone home screen keeps changing. I find that at times the green icons turn blue, the red icons turn blue. When i hard reset, it goes back to normal. But it will change colors schemes again. Any one know what the heck this problem is? And how to fix it?

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Red/Blue color palate reversed

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.