iPhone 4S screen tint

How can you say this thread is "out of hand"? Clearly people are able to compare the screens to not only past products, but almost universally everyone reports including myself that the models on display have superior screens, so they are ringers put out to mislead people at worst, or show a serious QA problem from the suppliers.

FWIW, off-color screens is a problem known to plague various apple products including the various Macbooks and the iPads, this is nothing new except for the ridiculous number and simply wide range of variances occuring in a product that made with todays technology and standards ought not to be happening. Apple's supplier's screwed up somewhere and that is all there is too it, or if you prefer, Apple screwed up something in the design, perhaps with specs for the polarized glass. Whatever the case there are multiple reports on the web and also objective testing that shows the iPhone 4S screen has lower contrast levels and is simply not as pure in terms of color as the prior phones.

I agree with you 100%. All the ones in the store are perfect. Then they go make the phones for customers and use cheaper suppliers! Maybe they needed to make them faster for the demand. Whatever the case may be. It isn't ok and it's not what I'm paying for. Especially since the change from my first one was so drastic.

Hi, my best friend and I both bought 4s's a month apart both 16 gig white. He bought his a month earlier then I did. His display is a cool blue and mine is a warmer contrast. I will say that my colors are a slight bit more vibrant then his but his whites are way better. My yellow tint has faded quite some as I have pictures proving this but I still see a noticible yellow creamy tint to the whites. I'm not sure if it is enough for me to want to trade it for a refurb, but it does bother me a little bit. I have to have the display jacked up to 100% to not really notice it but I still do. This kils my battery real fast. I am 150% sure they use different LCD manufactures. Considering I bought this phone with no contract I am a little upset. I will also say if I charge my phone to 100% and go to bed i wake up to a phone around 90% charged or less. The phone also gets warm when charging it. I have owned every iPhone to date and this one seems to have the cheapest LCD to date. I own a mbp and a iPad 2 that look great. I am sort of disappointed in apples quality control on the last two model iPhones, not enough to switch to another manufacturer but enough to let people know how I feel.

I received a white 16gb 4S from Apple online last week. I could see immediately that this one didn't have the yellow tint of my 32gb white 4s. Trouble is, the contrast is still pathetic. Brightness has to be high to enjoy darker screens or low to not burn your retinas on white backgrounds, and of course when the brightness is low text becomes hard to read. Seems like most of the non-launch 4Ss have this creamy screen problem. If you're going to stick with these rubbish screens Apple, just give us a contrast control in the next update please.

My "fix" at the minute is to switch on the triple home button click in general/accessibility settings, set it to "ask", then whenever I'm on email or texting I can have white text on black almost instantly. Ta da!

Tommy,

I too have the yellow screen (on my second 4S, first was replaced for a different reason: occasionally no audio on outbound calls) but I have also noticed that the light source does make a bit of a difference to how the screen looks. Certainly makes it more tolerable but compared to my 4 (which is still yellow, just not as yellow) its just not good.

Hello everyone . I had problems with my new 4s (black 32gb.) I bought it from a Greek online shop after the official release here in Greece wich was on November 11th. I noticed the yellow tint, and i also had very bad signal, wich made almost impossible to make calls. I was very busy, so i gave it back for inspection in one of the three opperators here in Greece, wich is not the one im using.

!!!!

I was amazed that a week after, they called me and gave me a brand new iphone. It has no problem, and im very happy, although i was very disappointed at first place.

Just to add my voice to this thread. I've now had two 4S's, the first I recieved on Saturday 19th which I exchanged on the 26th for a problem with no audio on some outbound calls. Both screens have had a strong yellow look to them, worse than my 4 which while also having a yellow look to it had better blues (say Safari UI), better purples (the Weather App showing night time weather) and basically doesn't look washed out like the 4S does.

These are my iPhones, from left to right its 2G, 3GS, 4 and 4S, as you can see they are varying shades over the years. I think the perfect screen lies somewhere between the 3GS which is too bright blue/white and the 4.

Comparing the 4S against the 4 alone is a unplesant as it really emphaises the colour differences. Some are subtle (like the level of blue in the Mail, Weather app icons), others less so like the Green on the Phone icon. The text is also harder to read, indeed it was the first thing I noticed as I couldn't read the icon text as well. The contrast isn't as good and using Safari is difficult as too high a brightness and you blast your eyeballs out and too low (and it doesn't need to be that low down) and the text is harder to read compare to the 4.

The same photo seen on both phones (thank you photostream) look different, more washed out and again certain colours are better (pink/purple).

I want to get a better looking screen, particularly one that is easier to read but from all the reports that isn't going to be easy. Some have been lucky and got one after 1 or 2 exchanges, others have 4-5 exchanges and not gotten it and indeed ended up with a phone with other problems.

I dislike the screen immensely but I'm not sure I am up for going through 4 or 5 exchanges. Kind of soul destroying to go through the process each time.

I got my iPhone 4S 16GB in the mail on the 26th of Nov. and I noticed that the screen was yellow, as if my phone was smoking 2-4 packs of cigarettes so I thought it was the glue that they used, so I did what they told me to do use it on full brightness for a week or so, and I did but nothing really changed so what I did was I took an auto-body heat gun and went over it to make the glue dry faster. the result of that was....

PROS:

- screen got much much brighter

- and battery lasting much long then it did when I had it

CONS:

- the screen on low leave of brightness still has the yellowish tint

also I notices this when I was turning my phone around on my desk, that on the lock screen ( I have a pure black background ) , when U turn it counter clockwise that the color changes from a slight yellow to really yellow and to a nice vivid color to a blue to really dark color. i have another iPhone 4S 32 GB coming in the mail hope this is better then what I have right now

( liveable yellow tint - **** yellow tint - nice cool color tint - blue tint - dark color tint ) 

Just thought I'd tell my experiance. I bought 2 4s's Black & White 16gb a week apart from the Carphone Warehouse, as soon as I opened them up I noticed they had a totally different contrast a yellow warmer tint. So I compared them to my iphone 4 and I couldnt beleive the difference! the iphone 4 has a great contrast nice blue tint great whites and blacks, but these iphone 4s's are terrible to look at.

I called Apple support who advised me to put the brightness to max for a week...to no avail. So yesterday I took my black 4s back to the Carphone Warehouse and the sales advisor said I have 28 days from date of purchase for a fault exchange. I took my iphone 4 to show him the difference and he was amazed, also instore they have a 4s demo and guess what..yep you've guessed it, it had the same screen as my iphone 4! great whites nice blue tint etc, so he exchanged my 4s and the one I have now is slighty better than the original one I had, he also said if I'm not happy with the 2nd one I can have a refund. Not sure what to do.

The connectors are the same from what read, but the location of the screws that secure the display to the frame are slightly different. The mounting tabs might need to be modified or swapped between phones. If I can locate the required screwdrivers, I'll give it a try this weekend.

I believe the problem is with color temperature. I would imagine that a firmware fix could solve the problem by allowing users to adjust the color temperature of their displays to suit their individual preferences, much like you can adjust the color temperature of your television. Same principle. Apple engineers: are you listening???

The problem with that is white balance seems to changes with screen brightness. For example, when my screens are set to full brightness, whites look better but battery life takes a big hit. As do my eyeballs.

I just got the iPhone 4S this week, already, the SIM card has to be reseated. Luckily I was at home when this happened. Who would have a paper clip (and has to be the small not the large paper clip) with you on the road? So now I am bring a clip with me, for a while at least.

My 4S screen is as the posting said here, very yellow compared with a iPhone 4. Has anyone's turned whiter over time?

The other problem I see, is the picture. I took pictures side by side using 4S and 4, the picture is noticeably sharper taken from iPhone 4 and the color is richer. Anyone has this problem? Given that 4S has 8MP camera vs. 4's 5MB, it should not be less than the iPhone 4.

simplyme87 wrote:

The other problem I see, is the picture. I took pictures side by side using 4S and 4, the picture is noticeably sharper taken from iPhone 4 and the color is richer. Anyone has this problem? Given that 4S has 8MP camera vs. 4's 5MB, it should not be less than the iPhone 4.

This I can answer, I too thought it was a problem with the camera. I agree that the colours appear to be better on the 4 over the 4S but it appears thats because the iPhone 4 "horribly" oversaturates the colours. I spent the weekend looking into this myself and came across this detailed review which really goes into the camera and the new whitebalance.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4971/apple-iphone-4s-review-att-verizon/13 - Camera Quality.

It does many tests, noteably on color represntation and such. Noteably this colour checker chart which if you use the left and right arrows you can swap between the reference shot (Nikon), a 4S, 4, then 3GS and many other camera phones. It really highlights the difference in color saturation.

Best checking the site but here are the 4S and then 4 results. The pink / purple / orange all jump out to me. Note the 4S is much closer to the reference photo where the 4 is described as having "cartoonish" colours.

The 4:

This gallery shows side by side the difference of the 4 & 4S shooting the same scene outdoors.

A different take ( http://listentotristan.blogspot.com/2011/10/iphone-4s-camera-impressions-pros-an d.html ) on the washed out look is that it is the low light capabilities of the 4S leaking into Daytime photography.

Now all that said, I think I actually prefer the results from the 4 (except the lovely greenish blob) as it can be closer to the colours you see with your own eyes, orange yellows come out orange as opposed to closer to white on the 4S. However the colours from the 4S are closer to what I actually get when I use my Fuji F30 point and shoot camera bought back in 2006.

Thank you for your research on the iPhone 4S camera. I don't doubt that the camera on the 4S produces pictures superior to those taken by the 4. I agree that pictures taken by the 4 were generally oversaturated. That oversaturation may make the picture "look better," but it is not pure. Please note that I don't expect the "yellow tint" that is seen on the 4S display to show up in pictures displayed on other media, such as a computer monitor.

The problem we are discussing in this thread is that the displays on many of the 4S's have warmer colors than those on the 4. There may also be a perceived lower contrast level on the 4S that is noticiable when reading text, such as The New York Times. The perceived yellow "tint" (a warmer white) is in the display screen, not the camera, and is across all apps as well as the home display. As opposed to a hardware fix, it will save Apple a fortune if it can come up with a settings function where one can adjust the white balance and contrast. Currently, we can only control the "brightness" level.