I had published an article yesterday where Apple’s senior director of iPhone product marketing Bob Borchers had clarified that iPhone 3G’s screen are bit yellowish by Design and not a display defect.
Guess what? We now have not one but couple of solutions to solve the iPhone 3G’s yellow-tinted screen issue, that might be troubling you.
I must admit that the entire situation is quite confusing, especially with
Apple’s statement that iPhone 3G’s screens are bit yellowish by design
and not a display defect.
Ars Technica is reporting that their forum readers have discovered that the reason for the yellowish screen with new iPhone 3Gs is because they are shipped with slightly older iPhone firmware version i.e firmware 2.0 (54345) while if you upgrade your older iPhone via iTunes then the firmware version is firmware 2.0 (54347), the same version that had got leaked out on Thursday a day prior to iPhone 3G launch and were advised to downgrade from.
Ars Technica have also confirmed it by testing it out themselves. They took an iPhone purchased at an AT&T store on Friday (running iPhone firmware 2.0 5A345), restored and updated its firmware, and compared it to other iPhone 3G models running the firmware 2.0 (54345) and firmware 2.0 (54347) after synchronizing the screen brightness levels and auto brightness features. The results can be seen in the picture below, iPhone 3G running iPhone firmware 2.0 (5A347) seems to be less-yellow than iPhone 3G running iPhone firmware 2.0 (5A345).
Jonathan Zdziarski, one of the iPhone Hacking gurus and also the author of the “iPhone Open Application Development” had the following explanation and suggests another solution to resolve the yellowish screen issue:
“As many have reported, I’ve too noticed a yellow tinge on the screen. What I found, however, was that this seemed to be due, in part, to the case I was using, which was blocking the new light sensor. This caused the iPhone to think it was constantly dark. Using a hole punch, I punched two holes to the left of the speaker hole in my case (use a flashlight to find the exact positions). This fixed both my light sensor and my proximity sensor (so that the screen would shut off when using it for calls). One side effect to this was that the yellow tinge seems to have gone completely away. I suspect this might have something to do with the backlight being somewhat tinted when on its lowest settings.”
I am not sure if I would try out Zdziarski’s solution if I were you. If you were really inclined to check it out, I would suggest that you simply remove the iPhone case and see if it helps first before punching any holes in your case.
As always, do let us know what you plan to do. I don’t know why but get the felling that this is not the last we have heard on this matter.
[via Ars Technica and iPhone Atlas]
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