iPod touch having display issues?

No rest for the weary on the Apple LCD front -- hot the heels of reports that the 20-inch iMac's screen is less than impressive, word on the street (and Apple's support forums) is the iPod touch is having trouble displaying blacks correctly. Posters have described is everything from a "negative black effect" to "shimmering" to simply "washed-out." We're hearing that simply bringing a defective unit back to an Apple Store will result in an immediate swap, but it certainly looks like Steve was glossing over a detail or two when he said the touch had the "same screen" as the iPhone, eh?

[Thanks, Mobilehavoc]

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 21st 2007 10:28AM]

Exact same troubles here, and worse. First, the screen has "luminescent" blacks with a deep orange-brown tint. Poor contrast, washed out. Second, Optimal viewing angle is the same. Tilt the unit backwards and slightly to the left, which restores some contrast to the blacks but desaturates all the color. Third, there's a smear across the screen, such that it looks like a cat's paw print of darker blacks against the tinted luminescent blacks. This 8gb Touch goes back this morning. Swap first because of the cat's paw, but if this unit is also bad on the other points, I'll eat the $30 restocking fee.

[rthprog Posted Sep 16th 2007 1:45PM]

Now if only i had ur email, I could give u spammer a taste of ur own medicine

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 16th 2007 1:50PM]

Over on the Apple forums, a person who works as an engineer involved in LCDs thinks it is the anti-reflective coating on the glass display. He might be right, he might be wrong, but it does make sense to me. If the anti-reflective coating were applied poorly on the first batch of ipod touches, it could cause light from the display to reflect back onto the display, giving the negative effect. It would also explain why you can sort of fix the problem by tilting the ipod touch in certain directions and also why some people might experience the problem less than others, since the application of the AR coating might not have been as bad on all the ipod touches manufactured so far.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 16th 2007 4:10PM]

I had the same issues, I took mine in today to have the guy at apple look at it and he was like, it looks amazing to me. Tried to say it was just my perception of the device and would gladly exchange it for a restocking fee. I find that totally unacceptable. Why should I pay 45 bucks for a replacement unit when it is a production defect.

[nathanstl Posted Sep 18th 2007 2:14PM]

This is not limited to the itouch. Check out any iphone that was sold after the intitial 499/599 priced ones were sold out. I bought a $399 8gb iphone over the weekend for my wife and it has the negative black issues and looks horrible compared to her 5g video ipod on the same exact video. I posted a quick picture here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1134707&tstart=0

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 20th 2007 3:18PM]

Does the "negative black" effect only appear when the Touch is in a horizontal position? I've had this problem with a couple of PDAs that have the function to flip the screen from portrait to landscape.
I think it's to do with the sort of screens that are used with these sort of devices, or it could be the touch-screen overlay. Can somebody verify this?

I also have a Sony-Ericsson that has this problem when going into "camera-mode" (which I have to flip the phone into a horizontal position to use), and the screen gets rather hard to look at in the landscape orientation.

:)

[Lucas1 Posted Sep 21st 2007 4:45PM]

Ya im having this problem :( gonna go return it to bestbuy on saturday

[AntLaw Posted Sep 26th 2007 10:11AM]

Screen issue seems to have been corrected with units from week 38 on, see the link below for more details.

http://digg.com/apple/iPod_touch_Screen_Problem_Fixed

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 16th 2007 7:47AM]

For god sake. This discussion has gone round and round and all you get is the same bunch of stupid sinical idiots all talking about how defective the iPod touch is when they themselves probably havent even had a go on one. Sitting here gossiping is stupid and sayin things like this 'might' happen and this 'could' happen. so what if it happens it happens get it fixed, its stressful when your new 270 quid toy breaks but its not the end of the fucking world.

Going all high and mighty and political about how apple is fat cat company or whatever when this is just about a new clever peice of kit, but all you idiots seem to do is bitch about something you probably havent even tried out

get a life