thomas fitzgerald.net

I recently upgraded my original iPhone to a shiny new iPhone 3G. I had procrastinated over the decision of whether to upgrade or not but in the end I liked the idea of having the GPS for use with all the new Apps that use location to do various cool things. I also liked the thought of being able to just plug headphones into it too. O2 are allowing people to upgrade for relatively little so I took the plunge. Actually I was quite lucky. I was at my local o2 store with my girlfriend who was picking up her iPhone which she had on pre-order and was enquiring about the upgrade procedure when they informed me that they had one left in stock after customer failed to collect theirs. A stoke of luck, or so I thought, but unfortunately it all went down hill from there.

After I had set up the iPhone I noticed that the screen looked a bit odd. If you looked at it off angle any way at all the blacks became a bright blue. At first I thought that it was perhaps just the result of being a brighter screen, but it was really bad, especially in the dark. When viewing photos or movies with dark scenes, tilt the phone away from you at all and blacks become bright blue, washing out the image and giving the “negative black” effect much reported when the iPod touch first launched. My original iPhone’s screen was perfect in comparison. Look at it off angle and it’s fine unless you view it at extremes.

I was a little alarmed at this stage as I thought perhaps they were using new inferior screens, but I checked my girlfriend’s phone and hers was the same as my old iPhone’s, in that it was fine. It was looking increasingly like I had a faulty screen and I checked it against two other iPhone 3G’s that some colleagues of mine had just bought, and theirs were fine too. After searching various online forums it seems others are having this problem too but it appears to be limited.

iPhone 3G (Right) Compared to iPod Touch (Middle) and original iPhone (Left)

In my limited knowledge of lcd manufacturing and the principles of light and optics, I’m guessing the screen somehow missed having it’s polarizing layer applied. I tested this theory by placing a polarizing filter off my camera over the screen and doing so solved the problem and made it look more like the other iPhones I had tested. (I was quite proud that my little science experiment had actually worked) I found some forum postings from an engineer talking about the iPod touch screen problems after that product had launched and he suggested the same culprit.

As I said though, the problem doesn’t appear to be widespread (so far). I know some people would be having a fit about this, but when you sell a million units of a product in one weekend, there’s bound to be some defective models slipping through, and given the amount of Apple products i have bought over the years and what little trouble I’ve had with them I have been pretty lucky really. Unfortunately, due to the shortage of stock getting a replacement has not been easy and I’m back on my old iPhone for now, but I’ll save that story for another day.