Quote:
Originally Posted by jswinden
You got a good WHITE one and I got a bad PINK/TAN one.
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I think you're exactly right.
I had close contact with two Paperwhites at the media event Sept 6. Yours is just obviously (to me) a defective one. I haven't seen such uneven font darkness/lightness since Kindle 2 when they had some defective batches.
Re what you can expect, I took pictures and a video while there. I think one thing with those who have normal, not defective ones, there ARE mild differences in brightness if you look for them, as in concentrating on the screen rather than trying to read on it, because there are light sources way at the bottom and it is somewhat brighter where they start. There IS a slightly darker something in the top half but it's barely noticeable to me in real life.
What I saw had minimal problems, and I was coming from not liking the unevenness of the Glowlight, so the Paperwhite screen looked very even as a result. It was beyond my own expectations.
It's hard to take pictures that come out well, when you're photographing, essentially, Light and then trying to also get the text on top of that light that is affecting your camera badly, which when it sees bright light, tries to shut down its aperture (to grey it out) or just gets overwhelmed by the light and shows only white for awhile.
The blotches described are faintly there but don't bother any of us who were used to having lamps shining on ours or who were using a Glowlight. When photographing it or video'g it, I was aware that I could never get it the way I SAW it, which was with darker text, due to shooting Light coming off a surface.
Here are the photos I took, and the video, and you can see both the faint shadows and more obvious ones at the very bottom but also ... if you're trying to read the text, you don't tend to notice them. Also, I prefer very little light and usually turn mine way down. On the Nook Color, I read text at about 7% of what brightness is. On the Kindle Fire and KF HD, at about 45%
A few photos:
http://www.pbase.com/andrys/image/146426552/original
http://www.pbase.com/andrys/image/146176726/original
http://www.pbase.com/andrys/image/145892507/original
and
a screen capture from the video I took of a demo being done for me.
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http://www.pbase.com/andrys/image/146368875/original
BELOW that picture there, you can see the video, but since it's in HD, it's better to tap the bottom status line and then the gear/wheel to "ChangeQuality" upwards (depending on whether your Internet hosting is speedy enough) and go full screen to see it best.
OR, you can just go direct to youtube to see the video there, where it's easier to change quality to 1080p or 720p and go full screen.
So, video directly at youtube:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3__m0aFKtw
When the camera is underexposing it again, in the middle, you'll see the mild splotches.
Notice that when it's used with light, the camera sees it as blue or blue-ish at first but gets used to it and then it starts to look
I think that, if you have a Non-defective unit, the key would be to see it as adding light when you need it and only enough to make it easier to read it.
Relative to our other lighting that is available for reading an e-Ink reader in lower light, the Paperwhite's lighting might work best at minimal to medium lighting for actual reading function vs than looking at the screen itself...
In total darkness? Normally you want less light because any light is more evident in darkness, but maybe that brings out unevenness, as the light-distribution method used may be less effective at lowest settings (I don't know).