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iPhone 3G Yellow Screen Issue

Please read this post again, some have a slight tint and others have terrible screens!!!

Don't judge by pictures posted, you've got to experience a bad screen for yourself to know what we are on about!

dustinl4m3 said:
Started this morning with two 2G iphones (4gb with 7 series, 8gb with 5 series).

Went today and upgraded both to black 16gb iphone 3Gs at the Apple store.

One of the iphone 3Gs looks good, warmer colors than the 2G iphones and what seems to be (to me) better color reproduction.

The other iphone 3G looks *terrible*. The screen is yellow, and it is noticeable on pretty much all screens. In fact, it is yellow with a green hue, and some of the top menus/navigation take on a yellow-green hue. :(
Click to expand...
 
I got lucky then. Both screens are different but 3g is more accurate by far. Greens are green with no blue whisper to them, etc. Very very nice.
We're headed out to get my husband's phone now so we'll see how that one is.
 
I tried "restoring" although I felt that was terribly futile, and it did absolutely nothing. A yellow screen is not going to be affected by a firmware restore.

Also note that I have dual 24" displays on my desktop here (24" imac, 24" HP) both calibrated with an eye one display 2 to 6500k color temp.

Comparing a white page on the desktop (either 24" screen) to the two iphone 3Gs yields,

- comparing to "good" iPhone 3G: white on phone looks almost identical
- comparing to "bad" iPhone 3G, white on phone has a noticeable yellow tint.
 
WHY can't apple just get it right? Seems like many of their products have display issues.. wth?
 
OK I just came from the Apple store on Michigan Ave. They have plenty of stock if anyone wants to know. I played with the 3G. To me it is very BUDGET. Sorry. Now I have held it and played with it and compared it to my old iPhone. You know what? I went with the possible intention of BUYING IT. YES even after hating on it for weeks and calling it BUDGET whenever I could I went with the idea that maybe I was wrong. Well I wasn't. If you have an original then my advice would be to sit tight. This phone feels cheap to me. The plastic sucks compared to the aluminum. The screen is a major disappointment, just bring in your original and see the difference. The yellowing is very apparent. I really don't see that much of an improvement to warrant an upgrade unless you just have to have the latest and greatest. Apple needs to produce a proper iPhone II.

X-
 
dustinl4m3 said:
I tried "restoring" although I felt that was terribly futile, and it did absolutely nothing. A yellow screen is not going to be affected by a firmware restore.
Click to expand...
Actually, the point was that the shipping firmware is older than the one you'll get when you restore, and you should not restore to an old backup (it will throw in all your old settings). If the screen is yellow, red, blue or even green, a software update actually can make it better (color correction, gamma etc.).

Without any sort of proof or data, I believe that if you restore your iPhone 3G and do not restore your backup, the screen is a bit different than with the shipping firmware and/or if you have restored a backup. I saw the difference, and so did some other users as well. Some didn't, which makes this whole thing interesting (and at the same time odd).

Well, hopefully Apple will say something official about this soon.

BR,

S
 
Ok, as requested, I'm uploading some more shots of my new (replacement) 3G iPhone compared to my 1G one.

All of these were taken in a dark room with just one (yellowy) table light on my desk on. The 3G is the one with the cable connected (right).

Photo 1: Here I'd just turned my iSight on and it couldn't quite adjust to the brightness of the 3G's screen.
Photo 84.jpg

Photo 2: Here I've cranked the brightness way down on both displays to let my iSight capture it right. Notice the tones are far closer to each other. I'm afraid both look slightly warmer than they would do normally (my 2G iPhone doesn't look quite as blue), this is probably because I'm using a fairly orange table light and my ACD instead of the sun as my main light sources.
Photo 85.jpg

Photo 3: The dashboard on both taken when set to the same brightness as in the previous photo. Notice the tones are far more similar although the 3G is brighter and slightly more vivid.
Photo 86.jpg

Photo 4: By this point my iSight had calmed down a bit and I could take some shots at full brightness. Notice the colour tones are far more similar.
Photo 87.jpg

Photo 5: The dashboard now at maximum brightness.
Photo 88.jpg
 
Original Photo: My first iPhone 3G on the left compared to my 2G iPhone on the right

Photo 76.jpg

I've created a comparison between my iPhones below. Please note, this is something I threw together in Photoshop in about ten seconds. Also please note that the iPhones were taken under different lighting conditions.

The top left is my iPhone 2G in the daytime. The top right is my iPhone 2G in my current lighting conditions which are an ACD + a fairly dim orangey table light.

The bottom left is the first iPhone 3G I had taken in the daylight. The bottom right is my replacement iPhone 3G taken now.

Note: The two images on the right are more yellow than they would be during the day due to the lighting conditions. However, the bottom left image is *clearly* far more yellow than any of the ones on the right even though it was taken in a far less yellow lighting conditions. The original 3G I had is clearly dimmer than my 2G while my new 3G is clearly brighter than my 2G.

comparison.jpg

In my opinion, my current iPhone 3G is as it should be. Its still slightly yellower than the iPhone 2G, however, its not half as yellow as my first one was. Some other people have mentioned that they've seen a few iPhone 3Gs and some were far far more yellow than others.

My advice: If in doubt, take your iPhone into a store with multiple demo units and compare it at equal brightness settings. If yours looks yellower than all of theirs then you probably have a dodgy one and you should try to get it replaced.

If you do not like the slight yellow tint of the new iPhones then please leave Apple some feedback on the matter here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html and hopefully they will give us a few colour temperature choices in a future firmware update.
 
The plastic back was to improve reception since the iphone 3g has more radios...Gizmodo says the wifi range is increased 20 feet just from the plastic black.
 
xploit said:
OK I just came from the Apple store on Michigan Ave. They have plenty of stock if anyone wants to know. I played with the 3G. To me it is very BUDGET. Sorry. Now I have held it and played with it and compared it to my old iPhone. You know what? I went with the possible intention of BUYING IT. YES even after hating on it for weeks and calling it BUDGET whenever I could I went with the idea that maybe I was wrong. Well I wasn't. If you have an original then my advice would be to sit tight. This phone feels cheap to me. The plastic sucks compared to the aluminum. The screen is a major disappointment, just bring in your original and see the difference. The yellowing is very apparent. I really don't see that much of an improvement to warrant an upgrade unless you just have to have the latest and greatest. Apple needs to produce a proper iPhone II.

X-
Click to expand...

Sadly,I disagree with everything you said. The moment I held it, you could tell how well it felt to the hand. The screen is amazing and looks better in my opinion to the first one. I guess it all comes down to opinion, but in my opinion this thing is slick and worth the money I spent.

As for the others, I just did the restore to the most up-to-date firmware (That is going from the one that was preloaded on the iPhone 3G to the one in iTunes) It seem to make the display look better. I don't know, but I am more than pleased. The movies and everything looks fantastic.
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
Original Photo: My first iPhone 3G on the left compared to my 2G iPhone on the right

View attachment 123781

I've created a comparison between my iPhones below. Please note, this is something I threw together in Photoshop in about ten seconds. Also please note that the iPhones were taken under different lighting conditions.

The top left is my iPhone 2G in the daytime. The top right is my iPhone 2G in my current lighting conditions which are an ACD + a fairly dim orangey table light.

The bottom left is the first iPhone 3G I had taken in the daylight. The bottom right is my replacement iPhone 3G taken now.

Note: The two images on the right are more yellow than they would be during the day due to the lighting conditions. However, the bottom left image is *clearly* far more yellow than any of the ones on the right even though it was taken in a far less yellow lighting conditions. The original 3G I had is clearly dimmer than my 2G while my new 3G is clearly brighter than my 2G.

View attachment 123780

In my opinion, my current iPhone 3G is as it should be. Its still slightly yellower than the iPhone 2G, however, its not half as yellow as my first one was. Some other people have mentioned that they've seen a few iPhone 3Gs and some were far far more yellow than others.

My advice: If in doubt, take your iPhone into a store with multiple demo units and compare it at equal brightness settings. If yours looks yellower than all of theirs then you probably have a dodgy one and you should try to get it replaced.

If you do not like the slight yellow tint of the new iPhones then please leave Apple some feedback on the matter here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html and hopefully they will give us a few colour temperature choices in a future firmware update.
Click to expand...


So you bought one, came home, went back to the store and got it replaced all in the same day?
 
I'm gonna give CPW a ring in the morning, try and sort out a replacement - hopefully I'll be able to swap for one in my local CPW store and not have to wait for them to deliver one to me.
 
does anyone think that canadian iphone 3g retailers would replace them if they have the extreme case of yellow screen...?
 
tamakin said:
So you bought one, came home, went back to the store and got it replaced all in the same day?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I did. Although I was very lucky in the end. I waited for the store to open from about 7:45am (the store opened at 9am), was first in line and started the authorisation process at 9:06 am. At 10:06 am the store said I could head off and they'd call me back when it authorised. An hour later I got a phone call saying all had gone through and I was back shortly afterwards (its two minutes from where I live).
It took me about an hour to notice that the screen was distinctly yellow (since I'd been restoring and copying music over etc etc for aaages) and then I called Apple. They said I had to take it back to CPW because they couldn't do anything about it. I went back to the store but was told that all 16GB iPhones had sold out in the region so they couldn't get me a replacement and that I should try and get one through Apple. Luckily, however, I got a call from CPW a few hours later saying they'd managed to find one last 16GB in another branch and had reserved it for me. They really were fantastic in the store, very friendly and I believe appreciated having a calm customer that didn't start screaming their head off at the first stumbling block.

So I was incredibly lucky in the end to get another one. Lucky as well because I can tell my tale of how some iPhone 3Gs are yellower than other ones.
 
Yes, there is a tint to it, but after looking at photos that I have on both phones, the 1st gen phone and the new 3G phone, the picture quality is a helluva lot better on the 3G...
 
Abstract said:
I think that using the 2G iPhone's screen as some sort of standard is a really poor idea, as it may not be accurate either. Maybe the 3G's screen is only a tiny bit warmer than it should be, and the old 2G's screen was a tiny bit bluer than it should be. If the 3G model was then compared to the 2G model (rather than a correctly calibrated source), the difference is twice as big. It doesn't mean one is more correct.

That's why many people in this thread who have never had an iPhone have said that the screen looks great. :) It may be due to a lack of a 2G iPhone to compare to, or it may be due to the fact that they're comparing it to something that's less blue, like their computer screen, white paper, etc.

Besides, most of you probably don't calibrate your laptop LCD with a Spyder or GretagMacBeth screen calibrator of any sort, and yet I don't hear the same number of complaints about white balance and colours on your computers. Do people have far greater standards when it comes to the iPhone than their laptop and LCD monitors? :confused:
Click to expand...

I don't agree as I saw this straight away after turning the phone on and didn't comparer with the 2G.

My wallpaper wasn't looking good then the black was differentand the white background is yellow.
 
I'm going to say I noticed the yellowish tint over the first gen iPhones myself... after pulling up the same high quality JPG files on each iPhone I preferred the new 3G colors over the 2G... The color tones were more close to real-life tones.. people's faces looked way better on the 3G. The 2G in comparison looked too cool blue, whites were way too bluish and all the color was way bad.

Of course you never notice this when you have nothing else to compare to, but I might be one of the few people who actually prefer the warm tone of the 3g screen.

On the bad side, it looks like my 3g iphone has WORSE viewing angles over my original. It's not a big issue but the slightest angle change of the 3g iphone and the picture inverts a lot easier than my 2g iphone did. TN panels suck!

I wish they opted for OLED .. perfect viewing angles!

Jay
 
Penguinwrangler said:
I was going to stay out of this thread till I had a 3G iPhone in my hand to use as reference, but as a lighting designer and someone who works with variable color temperatures a lot, I have to say that this thread SOUNDS to me like much ado about nothing. The iPhone Classic was clearly set to a color temperature range well within "blue". About that, I have no doubt. If the new iPhone has a more "color corrected" or "tungsten" temperature range, it is absolutely going to look yellow next to the Classic iPhone. That does not, in itself, indicate a defect in the LCD or the glass. In fact, it probably renders better looking photos and video as a result. Like I said, I could be wrong here, but that's all it sounds like to me.
Click to expand...

That is just about the most on the mark opinion here so far. I don't have a 3G phone in hand just yet (did not want to wait in line) but I can say for certain that my original iPhone with the 5 series screen is definitely calibrated to have a very bluish tone, about 9000K. How do I know? I have an Eizo monitor and I comparing its rendition of a grey scale at 9000K against that of the iPhone and the two are spot on.
 
Damnit Spanky! I understand you are trying to make a point but the quality of your pictures are horrendous. How in the world are you going to really tell if what you saying is true by such terrible pictures. Please, don't take this personally because I am not trying to say you are wrong or right. What I am trying to say is you can not make an objective decision with those pictures. Just like the original frog post compared to an accurate high resolution pic I took. One would think one thing from the crap picture that was posted originally then I post a high res pic that just blows his ludicrous point to shreds.

Please, someone with a digital SLR take some nice comparative pics and post at least 1 meg jpg's.
 
Most people are "conditioned" to like bluish pictures

To those who are wondering why as I mentioned most of the computer monitors in the market are calibrated to the color temperature of 9000K and as a result most of you people grew up looking at those monitors and were thus conditioned to like the bluish tone they produce, the story I read was that monitor manufactures found out that when they produce a monitor with a more bluish tone, the customer would prefer that monitor over one with less blue (though more accurate) when looking at the two side by side. So when you have your customers looking at a dozen monitors in the the store side by side, the manufacturers started basically on a race to see who can produce a more bluish monitor without the monitor looking overly blue when you look at it alone.

If any of you don't believe me do this very simple test - take a picture of your first gen iPhone in outdoor day light with plenty of natural background using a digital camera set to auto-white balance. Your iPhone would look so blue you would think it is defective.
 
I couldn't do any better than those. I've used camera phones as my main cameras for the last few years now and usually use my iPhone's camera. The only other thing I had available was my old iSight camera!
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
I couldn't do any better than those. I've used camera phones as my main cameras for the last few years now and usually use my iPhone's camera. The only other thing I had available was my old iSight camera!
Click to expand...

I did the restore and the yellow went away....so it shouldn't be that big of a deal
 
pflau said:
That is just about the most on the mark opinion here so far. I don't have a 3G phone in hand just yet (did not want to wait in line) but I can say for certain that my original iPhone with the 5 series screen is definitely calibrated to have a very bluish tone, about 9000K. How do I know? I have an Eizo monitor and I comparing its rendition of a grey scale at 9000K against that of the iPhone and the two are spot on.
Click to expand...

I don't see why anyone would want a monitor set to a 9000k color temperature.
 
alexplank said:
I don't see why anyone would want a monitor set to a 9000k color temperature.
Click to expand...

Because most of the computer monitors nowadays are calibrated to 9000K, so if you work on a picture that would look best on most monitors, you might want to set your monitor to 9000K just so you are looking at what most people look at.

But if you were to work on pictures for printing or other critical work, you would want to use 6500K because that is the same color tempreature as daylight films.
 
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