Los Angeles Times: Amazon's $290 e-reader misfire

[JoHunt]

The article references the "splotchy screen" thread in this forum.

Screen quality is the number-one complaint about the Oasis on e-reader fan sites such as mobileread and kboards, where disappointment in the new device is palpable. Users are conducting a vigorous debate on both sites about whether the Oasis screen flaws are real or imagined, major or minor, avoidable or inevitable given the technology. But plainly they’re serious enough to prompt many users to return their models. “I'm not really comfortable with letting these faults with the screen slide,” wrote one user on mobileread, “but I absolutely love the weight, the form factor, the asymmetry, and the size…. It's a beautiful rose with some painful thorns.”

http://www.latimes.com/business/hilt...nap-story.html

[cerem0ny]

Yay I'm famous!
Returned my Kindle today for a refund and fell a hundred bucks short of the galaxy tab s 2 8.0 to complement my Kobo aura h2o. Not wasting another second on any of that return, exchange, return, exchange, refund crap.
And as for wishing the Oasis had a screen like the Voyage, well, all I can say is that he must have been one of the "lucky" ones without a two-toned screen! :haha

[cerem0ny]

Anywho I'm kinda glad that I was directly quoted (lol!) and somebody is actually commenting about this screen. It's kinda unacceptable to me and I'm surprised its taken five generations and several years in order for somebody to actually take notice that Amazon is mass producing faulty devices. Giving up the ereader game and moving to tablets I think, the blue light filters work beautifully for my eyes.

[SCION]

The Voyage should have received such press.

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[cerem0ny]

Or worse, everybody just carries on ignoring these enormous, glaring faults in every iteration of the Kindle since it got lit screens, and learns to enjoy getting ripped off by Bezos and his team with poorer and poorer quality devices at higher and higher prices.

hehe sorry if I sound grumpy, the lady who i got a refund off today looked at me like I was some delusional scammer when I told her I could see different colours and she couldn't, further enriching my wonderful experience with the Oasis :/

I wish somebody would at least tell us WHY this is happening, and WHY it's so impossible to get a decent, uniform looking screen! Backlight the screens if you must! the Oasis ruined City of Mirrors for me, I spent more time being annoyed and distracted by the background than reading the actual book! And I've waited over a year for that one >

First, you cannot back light an opaque eInk screen. Not going to happen.

Second, whenever a top layer of plastic is put above the screen for lighting purposes, you can expect inconsistencies like splotches and discoloration. Light is tricky to get right with a reflective layer of plastic on top. So expect that as long as Amazon continues to insist on using such a lighting layer there will be a degradation in readability of the eInk screen. Even without the splotchiness and/or discoloration, an extra layer of plastic will blur the eInk screen a bit. No plastic is perfectly transparent or invisible.

Yes I agree that the light layer is poorly designed and implemented in all the PWs, Voyage, and I assume the Oasis as well. I wish they would offer the Voyage without the light layer, though I know they never will. I would rather Amazon improve the physical quality of their basic Kindle with higher resolution screen and better ergonomics instead of focusing on a bunch of firmware features that I could care less about. Most of those firmware features are there because it helps Amazon to sell you more books.

[cerem0ny]

Originally Posted by jswinden

First, you cannot back light an opaque eInk screen. Not going to happen.

Second, whenever a top layer of plastic is put above the screen for lighting purposes, you can expect inconsistencies like splotches and discoloration. Light is tricky to get right with a reflective layer of plastic on top. So expect that as long as Amazon continues to insist on using such a lighting layer there will be a degradation in readability of the eInk screen. Even without the splotchiness and/or discoloration, an extra layer of plastic will blur the eInk screen a bit. No plastic is perfectly transparent or invisible.

Yes I agree that the light layer is poorly designed and implemented in all the PWs, Voyage, and I assume the Oasis as well. I wish they would offer the Voyage without the light layer, though I know they never will. I would rather Amazon improve the physical quality of their basic Kindle with higher resolution screen and better ergonomics instead of focusing on a bunch of firmware features that I could care less about. Most of those firmware features are there because it helps Amazon to sell you more books.

There are, however, many devices with uniformly lit devices, for example, I've bought and in imported two Kobo Aura H2Os from Canada chapters indigo with absolutely uniform lighting both times, every time, and I'd be willing to wager that if I bought a third it would be uniform too. How are they able to get their devices looking normal? Luck of the draw?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Second, whenever a top layer of plastic is put above the screen for lighting purposes, you can expect inconsistencies like splotches and discoloration. Light is tricky to get right with a reflective layer of plastic on top. So expect that as long as Amazon continues to insist on using such a lighting layer there will be a degradation in readability of the eInk screen. Even without the splotchiness and/or discoloration, an extra layer of plastic will blur the eInk screen a bit. No plastic is perfectly transparent or invisible.

I have to disagree. I have an H2O and it does not have splotches or discoloration. When the light is off, the screen does look like there is no light layer. I don't know what Kobo has done, but it seem they did the light layer correctly.

[Julius Caesar]

Originally Posted by cerem0ny

the lady who i got a refund off today looked at me like I was some delusional scammer when I told her I could see different colours and she couldn't, further enriching my wonderful experience with the Oasis :/

Is the lady much older than you? Perhaps, younger people are able to perceive and discern screen imperfection much better than older people.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Julius Caesar

Is the lady much older than you? Perhaps, younger people are able to perceive and discern screen imperfection much better than older people.

Not sure age is a primary factor, but rather color vision. Anyone with tendencies towards color blindness will not discover the uneven color that those with perfect color vision encounters.

Twitter is to communications as haiku is to literature.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Not sure age is a primary factor, but rather color vision.

Colour vision does change with age, as well as with genetics.

[cerem0ny]

Originally Posted by Julius Caesar

Is the lady much older than you? Perhaps, younger people are able to perceive and discern screen imperfection much better than older people.

I am 27, she was about 50 so... Maybe?

Regardless there are enough defective units to warrant an article in the LA times about it.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by meeera

Colour vision does change with age, as well as with genetics.

In particular, some people were complaining about yellowish tinges on the screen. The lens of the eye grows yellowish with age (due to the action of solar UV), which would tend to block this out for older people.

[howyoudoin]

The perception of screen colours also might depend on pre-conditioning of the rods and cones.

I find that the lighting of my ereader appears white to me if I read on it after having spent some time reading a physical book with yellowed pages, even without a side-by-side comparison. Whereas if I spend time reading a newer physical book with glossy white alkaline paper, and then read on my ereader, the lighting appears yellow.

From this entirely unscientific experience, I hypothesise that there must be a scientific basis to different people 'objectively' perceiving screen colours differently based on what they have been viewing for a significant period of time prior to looking at the same screen.

[cerem0ny]

I've grown up in front of screens so I can easily spot when somethings amiss. And the more beautiful a device is, the more weight it's faults have with me (remembering the first dent I saw on my beautiful iPhone 5 *shudders*)