flickering LCD backlight - Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet

got my nook tablet less than a week ago.
my first impression of the tablet was that the lcd was not as bright as i imagined.
at first i thought it was the screen brightness setting.
but even at max, it wasn't as bright as i had expected.
... especially when compared to kindle fire.
at the time, i didn't think much of it.
but today, the screen back light started to flicker.
i did a normal data wipe and returned it to bn for an exchange.
they took it back without much trouble... but just wondering if i'm the only one.
the new screen seems to be brighter... at max setting.
i should go back to bn and compare to other display models.

Related

question to those who got the prime already

When I had the transformer, there were a few things I was concerned with hopefully it's resolved with the prime.
1. Lockups...of course the transformer was later upgrade to HC and was smoother, but some asus apps were still locking up, such as the myzine app. Are all apps running without a problem. Compatibility with tegra2 apps? Problems?
2. The transformer I had had pretty bad screen bleeding, splotches of white spots. Is that resolved in the prime. Are the screen pretty smooth with brightness all the way up. Black levels good?
3. Wifi issue with the transformer, when unit goes on standby and moved to a different location, the unit would fail to wake up until turned off and back on. Issue fixed on the prime?
4. Thin bezel, easily dent or scratch. How's the prime?
5. Any problem that you are having with it?
2_ the screen is superbe, deep black at all brightness level. Every advanced review of the screen shows great result with a great contrast ratio of 1200:1. Of course it's no amoled, it can't be amoled but as far as IPS screen goes, it's awesome.
Some early review claim having minor screen bleed issues. It seems to affect any IPS device but I'm pretty sure Asus quality control will be much higher for the Prime than what it was for the Transformer.

Screen Burn... (Image Retention)

I am on my second Prime and discovered that my second one had some nasty screen burn. Short story... My first Prime I received on 12/27. UPS damaged it by dropping it on a corner, which is Best Buy's fault for only wrapping my Prime in plastic. This Prime was perfect.... no dead pixels, no wireless issues, typical GPS issues, no major light bleed... it was just damaged on a corner thanks to UPS.
I got my new Prime on 1/3 after doing some *****ing to Best Buy execs. This one I noticed right away that there is a slight light bleed on the right hand side (landscape) and 2 dead pixels. 2 out of 1,024,000 pixels isn't bad IMO, plus they were on the edges.
Now, last night I was watching The Devil's Rejects and noticed something funky on the right hand side of the screen (landscape mode obviously). I found a test color that shows my nice problem a lot more clearly... I wish I had something to calibrate the color more precisely to make it show better... Needless to say, I'm PISSED after discovering this thing has screen burn after only a few hours use!!! WTF!? I almost never use it in portrait mode and the brightness is almost always all the way down (auto brightness) because I'm by a lamp.
Here's a picture that I took. My sincere apologies, as taking pictures of LCD's is quite difficult without them showing up all messed up.
CLICK IMAGE FOR A BIGGER VERSION...
I can't get it to show up on camera, but it is clearly the black bar that holds your back, home, etc. buttons, as well as the time. You can see these burned in to this area of the screen.
Has anyone else had this problem yet? Looks like to me I'll be in for Prime #3... Maybe I'll just wait to see what CES has to bring, since I'm not getting what I want out of the Prime.
wow, that's bad... I have not come across anything like that (yet...) and hope that i never do!
I use my Prime right side up (with logo at top) during the day, and then at night when i'm home i use it upside down (logo on bottom right). I haven't noticed any status bar screen burn in yet... But I have always wondered about if the honeycomb status bar could burn into the screen, I guess it really can (and it scares me).
I hope you have better luck with #3. I have never seen status bar burn in on a tablet before but have always thought it was possible because of the way honeycombs status bar is always in view.
I was scared of that as well, but I figured LCD technology has come a long ways and there is no way it will burn in quick. My 3 year old Samsung 46" ToC has had stuff sit on the screen for an hour or two at a time, and I have zero burn issues. Same thing goes w/ my monitors. They've had stuff sit on the screen for 10-15 hours and I've not had an issue. I just really wish the status bar would hide so I can use the full real estate of my tablet and also prevent this issue. I've heard that BB is getting some of these in this weekend, so I may try an in-person exchange. I hope that rumor is true...
what do you have your screen display timeoit set at?
demandarin said:
what do you have your screen display timeoit set at?
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Click to collapse
The default 1 minute.
The last time i had screen burn was on my first ever LCD HDTV (from polaroid lol). It was cheap and over time it has bad screen burn.
Something is def up with your primes screen... 3rd times a charm
yeah, your best bet is exchanging it. never heard of screen burn in on a tablet before. I think you the first to report this.
Damn, xda duplicating my previous post...
Anyways, If your unhappy with the way you received your prime from BB get a refund. Order from Office Depot, mine came in a white padded bag and ended up being in perfect condition with no defects at all.
jzen said:
The last time i had screen burn was on my first ever LCD HDTV (from polaroid lol). It was cheap and over time it has bad screen burn.
Something i def up with your primes screen... 3rd times a charm
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only other device that I have screen related issues with, is my Samsung Captivate. It has ghosting, which goes away with you changing whatever is on the display. I know for a fact this is a burn pm the Prime, since I watched another hour of the movie afterwards and did all kinds of other tasks today, and it doesn't disappear. Kind of disappointing.
demandarin said:
yeah, your best bet is exchanging it. never heard of screen burn in on a tablet before. I think you the first to report this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's always a first, right? I'll definitely try exchanging it once I see them come in.
jzen said:
whoops, somehow I double posted... sorry. Def take it in for exchange... I was every upset with my original Prime from Gamestop, maybe get a refund and order from Office Depot.. Its where i got my perfect prime
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Click to collapse
What is likely going to keep me at BB, is the fact that I got a credit because I *****ed to execs about their crappy customer service.
I was using the pad heavily last night during the playoff games and my screen burned. I also noticed that a pixel died. It wasn't there when I first received the device. I'm not trippin because it is going back on Monday because of the "no serial number" issue.
This happened with my first one. I ran a pixel fixer over night and the status area was present the next day. I don't think this is screen burn though. It will go away after awhile if you use the tablet in landscape or whichever way you were not using it. I think it's called image persistence. It has to do with pixel charge or something.
Bring up an all gray background and you can really see it.
I'm waiting on a replacement due to stuck pixels and busted vibrator.
After several days of letting it not go in portrait mode, the bar has somewhat gone away. I did go ahead and used it for about an hour in portrait mode on both edges, and the opposite side had no problems with burn/ghosting. The original problem edge regained its problem right away. I would point this to not be a "burn" but rather a sort of long term ghosting. I'm highly disappointed with this one not only for the ghosting, but also several dead pixels. I'm up to 2 that won't turn black and 1 that won't turn colors. The one that won't turn colors is quite obnoxious.
I've been trying to contact Best Buy in regards to exchanging it... but I'm not having any luck with that crappy company. Ugh! All they tell me is I can return it and get my money back, exchange it in the store, or send it to ASUS. Option 1 is a no-go since I got a credit for my first troubles. Exchanging it won't happen since the stores don't have it, and their exchange policy is 14 days. The last one won't happen because I just bought this and I don't want a refurb a week into ownership.
This phenomenon is known as "image retention" and any early gen plasma tv owners will be familiar with it. why its cropping up here....i have no idea. my prime does this, for sure...its most noticeable when going from speedtest app to xda, which i have done a lot of..haha...anyway i have xda set to the black theme, and i see a very prominent white retention of the ad at the bottom of speedtest for several seconds after flipping back over to xda. I've seen it in a few other places, but it always goes away pretty quickly.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
Damn, didn't think I'd have to worry about burn in/image retention on a mobile device. Picking my Prime up today and now I'm gonna have that same paranoia I always get when I buy a new HDTV, but even my last two Plasmas never had any real problems (Panasonics). Hopefully this winds up not being a big issues though, sounds like I'll be getting insurance on my Prime after all and just doing arbitrary returns from time to time.
This was one of my first worries when the galaxy nexus was rumored to have on screen buttons rather than cap buttons. I thought amoled screens did get actul burn in. I didn't think it would really happen with these but it is a drawback of ips i guess.
I just wanted to tack this on, since I got a 3rd prime yesterday. This Prime I'm overall happy with, however the image retention still exists on this one. S/N is a BC batch, though I didn't grab the last one unfortunately. I will say this... this Prime's image retention happens when the screen brightness is at like 50% (no IPS+ mode). I flip to another app with a color, and I can see the retained image. Now what makes me quite a bit more happy about this one versus the other one... the image retention disappears after about 2 or 3 minutes. I definitely was not noticing it on a brief watch of the same movie that I noticed the image retention on the first one. My last one held onto the image for days at a time...
Overall 3rd time is a charm. Zero deal pixels, minor light bleed that you get with this style display, the feedback motor is quite a bit stronger, general GPS issues with every TF201, not noticing any horrible WiFi performance either.
I've noticed some minimal Burning over short periods when I have it screen maxed out and with IPS+ on as well and the screen with a fixed white bar or text . But then it goes away in five minutes once I change the image. Never gotten it to happen under Max brightness with out IPS+ or a white static image in conjunction.
I would return it. I also never keep anything static on my screen. Even my wallpaper is active and moving. I've seen LCD burn in all the time on desktop computer screens.
I saw something like this over the weekend.
I had it docked and was writing a blog post in Documents to Go. I spent probably about 3 hours on it. After I was finished with it, I noticed D2G didn't have a spell checker so I closed it and went into Polaris Office to see if it did.
Underneath the transparent gray of the file screen, I noticed something looked weird. I took a closer look and I could still see shadows of the blog post I wrote.
I turned it off and couldn't see any burn in the screen. I rebooted it and went back to Polaris and didn't see it after the reboot.
Now I'm debating sending it back for a warranty replacement.

Prime Image Retention

OK, I have seen several threads here, concerning image retention problem, sometimes marked as screen burn. So I thought we could collapse into one general thread on this subject.
So, LCD screen does not have image burn problems. Image burn is name for persistent effect. What we have with our Primes is image retention. This effect is caused becouse liquid crystals in LCD gets used to its certain possition...
For example, if you have some bright background, and you leave it unchanged for about 10-15 minutes, than run some grey screen picture, you will see "ghost" of the background image in the app.
This effect can be seen in many screen technologies. S-IPS and AMOLED are widely used ones on tablets and mobile devices. They both suffer from this effect.
There is actualy big chance you won´t even notice that. Prime turns it screen off after some time, and when you use your device you are probably actually doing something, meaning you are dynamically changing the screen, so image retention has no time to take place.
In everyday use, problems could occur when you use SW keyboard for a long time, or for example game menu controls, etc.
The most important thing is, this is NOT PERSISTENT. Image retention of this type should dissapear after while, you can speed it up by either turning screen off or displaying plain white image for a while.
I believe none of our tablet displays are immune to this. In fact, even glory iPad 1&2 displays are not immune. Neither was my HTC Diamond screen. (Yes, pretty old, but it has nice VGA screen). Sometimes I get navigation cursors retained after reset, even for few minutes (on my HTC Diamond)... So I believe we just need to live with this effect. Most of the time, you won´t even notice it.
But we can share our experience. I have not notice any image retention untill today, when I needed to discharge my Prime more quickly, so I maxed brighteness (IPS+ on) and leave it in home screen on for about 15 minutes. Than I started YouTube app, and on its grey load screen, I clearly seen ghost of my homescreen background. I immediatelly retried lauchning YouTube app, but it was all gone. If curious, or if you want to replicate this, my homescreen image is the default with tree, most yellow-ish like I believe autumn sunset version
pokevitek said:
so I maxed brighteness (IPS+ on) and leave it in home screen on for about 15 minutes
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Think that is the root of your ghosting issue there, would not call that normal operation at all to leave it maxed out for 15mins. The display is super bright and I dont think even outdoors you need max IPS+ to adequately use the tab.
Well, if I am right, it sould have nothing to do with brighteness level. Like I said, it is different effect, it is not burned. But maye thrucomming light intensity has some effect on the crystal polarisation...
Thanks for the post, I get this effect with my Nexus One as well. The notification bar from having the phone in portrait mode shows itself at times in landscape.
Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk
Actually LCD panels can get screen burn, I have had two LCD HDTV s that had it. But those were first gen LCD HDTV s.
You shouldn't see anything like it on LCD screens of today. If what your saying is true then why isn't the status bar in ICS (or honeycomb) ghosting for everyone?
I've done some tests recently after finding this issue on my Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. It was VERY dramatic on that tab. Only a few seconds on one screen, change to a screen that is mostly gray and the image persistence was there for quite a while. And it was a strong persistence. Not just a faint image. You could easily read text and see images. The pictures in the following thread show it.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1437445
But after having this issue, I ended up testing some other tabs I have. I've seen the issue on my Kindle Fire's (I have 3 of them). I have a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet and have not seen the issue there. I also have a Transformer Prime and I do see it faintly on the prime, generally on the right side of the tab when holding in landscape (with power button on top). I also see it sometimes on my 30" Dell IPS monitor.
I guess the point is, it is more common than you think. But some screens may exhibit the problem more than others. That Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (that specific one) exhibited it far worse than anything else I've seen.
I've decided not to worry about it. If it's happening to yours and it happens very quickly and doesn't go away quickly, perhaps your display is worse than the norm. But I would expect all of these displays to show some level of image persistence. Return it if it bugs you, but accept the fact that they all may have this issue to some degree.
Thanks to the OP for this post.

Anyone have both a TF101 and a TFP?

Does anyone have both the TF 101 and the prime? I had gotten a replacement from Asus, and I noticed the screen would wash out a lot more on an angle compared to my TF 101, So asus replaced it (the first replacement was a C30 and they replaced it with a C20 which actually has better wifi range than the C30 did) And I noticed again that the screen would wash out more when held on an angle than the TF 101 did. Now I dont think I got two primes with the same exact issue so now I'm thinking that maybe its just the way the TFP LCD panel is. So I was wondering if someone that has both a TF101 and a Prime if they can do a side by side and let me know. Put the same wallpaper on both devices, and also set the brightness to the same on both devices(I set them both to max, with IPS+ off on the prime). Does the prime get more washed out when held on an angle compared to the TF101?
Thanks in advance
Put the Prime in Performance Mode and then re-do your testing.
Its an auto contrast feature of the tegra 3. Seems to happen more in lower power modes. Search for contrast on this forum there posts about it but its a feature not a bug. Higher brightness and super ips mode are also ways to reduce it from happening.
Oh yea and the 101 didnt have this feature.
DX` said:
Put the Prime in Performance Mode and then re-do your testing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have it in performance mode and it still washes out more on an angle than my TF101.
indie13 said:
Its an auto contrast feature of the tegra 3. Seems to happen more in lower power modes. Search for contrast on this forum there posts about it but its a feature not a bug. Higher brightness and super ips mode are also ways to reduce it from happening.
Oh yea and the 101 didnt have this feature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I was looking at that but wasnt sure if it was the same issue. I do notice the TFP washes out a lot more on an angle even when in performance mode. Since I got two replacements that were like this I'm thinking more its just the way it was made. When asus sent me the first replacement and I noticed it(I dont think I noticed it on my original TFP) I took a video of it washing out more compared to the tf101 when viewed on an angle. I'm pretty disappointed.. I have never seen an IPS screen wash out like that. It washes out on an angle more than my HTC Evo View(flyer) and that's not even an ips or slcd screen
Here are the links of the videos of the first replacement they sent me. This new replacement washes out the same way on an angle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdQIbLpCLj4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_SIoyhUEVs
I have both, and don't notice any difference except the 201's screen is much sharper and way brighter. I hack the 101 with revolver, and have left the 201 stock. Just got the GPS kit, and now get more sats with the 201 indoors! Too bad the GPS kit doesn't have a power jack. My 201 is a BCOKAS.
If those videos are accurately showing what you're seeing with the device in-person, then I would exchange the unit again. Mine looks nothing like that. Like others have said, the viewing angles on my TF201 are just as good as on my TF101. I'd say the Prime's screen is an improvement in every way, and I thought the original Transformer had a very nice screen.
What you are seeing is Light Bleed, you can search in XDA how to fix it yourself (you have to open your Prime) or return it to Asus. That is not how the screen should look.
bedoig said:
If those videos are accurately showing what you're seeing with the device in-person, then I would exchange the unit again. Mine looks nothing like that. Like others have said, the viewing angles on my TF201 are just as good as on my TF101. I'd say the Prime's screen is an improvement in every way, and I thought the original Transformer had a very nice screen.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, thats the way it looks in person. I really doubt asus will replace it a 3rd time... I'm waiting to hear back from Hai Trat. I expected the viewing angles to be the same as well. when I wish I could remember if my first unit washed out.. I think I was too anal about the dead pixels it had to notice if that one washed out. But after getting the 1st replacement and the 2nd and both washed out like that and both were different batches (first replacement was a C3, 2nd was a C2) I figured maybe it was normal. Guess not..
Zephyrot said:
What you are seeing is Light Bleed, you can search in XDA how to fix it yourself (you have to open your Prime) or return it to Asus. That is not how the screen should look.
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Click to collapse
Nope, it's not light bleed. That unit does have some but the video shows it correctly, when viewed on an angle the whole screen clouds and washes out. And this is the 2nd one that has done this. My tf101 has some light bleed and doesnt do that at all. This 2nd replacement I have (the video is of the 1st one) the backlight bleeding isnt as bad and it still washes out like that on an angle.
Hmmm....Now that I do a direct side-by-side...in a dark room, with dark backgrounds on both tablets...I do see more of that "glow" that you're showing in your videos. The image is still crisp, but there is a distinct white-out, glow kinda thing going on. Maybe not quite as pronounced as your video, but that could just be lighting, camera, etc.
I probably wouldn't have noticed without doing the side by side video to see if I could show you how mine was OK, lol. LIke I said, the image and colors are still crisp, but there is a bit of that glow over the image.
I almost wonder if it isn't the oleophobic coating refracting the light. It's definitely not just general backlight bleed. My Galaxy Nexus (which also has an oleophobic coating of some kind) doesn't seem to exhibit the same off-axis behavior, but the screen is OLED, is much smaller, etc, so it's hard to make a direct comparison.
Your videos did seem pretty pronounced though. At this point I can't comfortably say one way or the other. I still think my screen looks great. I guess you just have to figure out if you're satisfied or not. In comparison to my TF101, I'd pick my Prime's screen every time.

2nd Screen Light Bleed - Want other user opinions.

Hey guys so I just picked up my LG V10 2 days ago, I knew there were some issues with light bleed on the upper left corner of the 2nd screen but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
The first night I had the 2nd screen off, however last night I decided to give it a try since it seemed like an elegant idea to have on this phone.
In the darkness of my bedroom the light bleed from the upper left was utterly atrocious, it actually fans out and extends into the other screen to about where the notification bar is (this is with the main screen off). The light bleed is also quite bright at night, it is very visible from across the room and really destroys the user experience.
I'll update with photos this evening as I want to know if other users have a significant problem or it's something that happens on every few phones and I can exchange for a unit that hopefully has less bleeding.
I'd love your feedback on how the 2nd screen bleeding WITH MAIN SCREEN OFF is for you especially in a dark room.
Yeah mineb does exactly that..doesnt really bother me too much
If you're in a very dark or completely dark room, you're going to notice light bleed. It's unavoidable with LCD technology. Mine also bleeds a bit into the regular display. Look at the screen directly (not at an angle) and it should look a little better. Angles produce worse backlight bleed - you're going to notice when you're laying in bed and look over at the phone and see the backlight bleed being a lot worse.
The big concern is if the backlight is actually bleeding in normal day-to-day conditions. On my first phone, I noticed in the STORE that the upper left corner of the notification bar was brighter than the rest of the screen. It had backlight bleed bad up there to the point if it being visible in daylight on colored portions of the screen. Exchanged it for another phone on the spot and it looks completely fine now. In most conditions the second screen appears to be floating because your eyes are adjusted to the brighter ambient light and can't see the poorer contrast ratio of an LCD compared to an AMOLED. At night though, you will definitely see that the second screen would have been executed better if LG would implement OLED in their flagship phones.
I see a little bleed on the left edge of the second screen, when the main screen is off, but it doesn't bother me. I kind of like that the notification icon is brighter than the rest of the second screen because it helps me notice that I have a notification, especially since the phone has no notification LED (shame). The second screen is not important to me, plus I don't see the bleed when the main screen is on which is when I'm actually spending significant time on the phone.
There reason you see bleed is because the second screen has a dedicated white LED on the left edge that's separate from the main panel backlight and positioned to "inject" light from the side without being properly integrated with the panel's backlight diffuser. This is why you'll see this, to varying degrees, on every unit. When you're in a well-lit room with the main screen on, the second screen looks perfect, because that secondary LED is off when the main screen is on. Also, the second screen auto-dims based on the amount of ambient light, so you might see the bleed on the "high" mode when you first turn off the main screen, but not when it dims down to the "low" mode after a while. Maybe they'll introduce a new hardware revision that repositions the second screen edge LED or does something else to limit its bleed. We'll know in 1-2 months when the next batch of V10s hits the stores.
I replaced my V10 twice because it had yellow bleed at the BOTTOM of the screen by the navigation buttons and that annoyed me as hell, since it affects the colors of everything I do, especially watching movies. All three had second screen bleed. What was particularly interesting is that each had a different color temperature screen. My first one was reddish, the second one was blueish (like the G4), and my current one is greenish, it actually looks exactly like the Nexus 6P screen (I put them side by side to compare).
I'll agree with Nitemare3219's and siraltus' observations and comments. When the main screen is on nothing is really noticeable. When the main screen is off I have the second screen off. It's so dim I don't see the point to having it on. The second screen is a bit of a gimmick. If I had additional issues I might think of exchanging it (still have 10 days), but I don't notice any other screen issues, and my fingerprint reader works...with a case. Every LCD screen I've had has had some sort of bleed. The problem starts if it is noticeable during normal use/viewing.
Mine slightly lights up the whole right corner 1/5th down the screen, only visible in a dark room. I dont get bleed from the right like ive seen in pictures and youtube.
It's only noticeable when it's pitch black and my main screen is off, so it doesn't bother me at all. It's not noticeable any other time.
First the second screen has already become a staple of my use habits, it's no gimack. Yes bleed is there when main screen is off, no I don't like it, but don't feel it's as big an issue as some make it out to be. That's just me though, I can see it bothering some.
jamor414 said:
It's only noticeable when it's pitch black and my main screen is off, so it doesn't bother me at all. It's not noticeable any other time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same, the light bleed is noticeable in the dark, but not bothersome. It is not nearly brought enough to light up my room at all, and is very slight in the upper left corner of the second screen. For the usefulness of the second screen with my usage, it's an ok trade off for me.
If your not happy with it and your within the 20 days id return it. I did return my initial one and my second one is better with less bleed.
my bleeding is always noticeable but especially on dark rooms,
I posted the pictures here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/lg-v10/help/consider-exchange-problems-t3245822

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