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Nintendo Switch Owners Complain About Dead Pixels, Nintendo Says They're 'Normal' (theguardian.com)
Nintendo says the dead or stuck pixels Switch owners are complaining about are "normal" and not defects. "New Switch players have taken to online discussion boards, including a 2,000-comment strong Reddit post, to complain of screen issues distracting play, unbecoming of a $300 handheld gaming machine," reports The Guardian. From the report: In a support document entitled "There are black or bright dots on the Nintendo Switch screen that do not go away, or there are dark or light patches on the screen," Nintendo said: "Small numbers of stuck or dead pixels are a characteristic of LCD screens. These are normal and should not be considered a defect." Customers wishing to swap their Switch consoles with defective screens will get no support from Nintendo. A similar issue happened with the Nintendo DS at launch in the U.S., but the Japanese gaming company eventually relented after complaints from buyers, begrudgingly offering replacements under warranty. Nintendo also warned users that using the Switch near an aquarium or within a meter of another wireless device, including laptops, wireless headsets, wireless printers, microwaves, cordless phones or even USB-3.0 compatible devices "such as hard drives, thumb drives, LAN adapters, etc," might cause the Joy-Con controllers to disconnect from the Switch.
Because if the Switch was a stunning 4K (710 PPI for a 6.2" screen), people wouldn't complain much because the pixel are too tiny to be noticeable if they die.
But at 720P (237 PPI), that's a whole different world. It's comparable to the first Samsung Galaxy S with 233 PPI. Even the new iPhone 7 is not "that" far ahead with 326 ppi (well, the Galaxy S7 have over 500 PPI).
Elok
I did repair work at Nintendo when the original gameboy came out. All day long people would show up to get screen issues fixed and many of the came right back without even leaving the parking lot before it went bad again.Being an early adopter of Nintendo gear has never been a good idea.
Here's Dells dead pixel policy for 2017. So basically Dell will ignore 5 dead dark pixels before you can get a replacement.
Flat panel monitors with Premium Panel Guarantee (HD+ (1600 x 900) and above LCD resolutions):
1 or more 6 or more
Bright = 1 or more
Dark = 6 or more
Dell monitors (D Series) 6 or more 9 or more Combination of bright and dark = 9 or more
All other Dell flat panel monitors 6 or more 6 or more Combination of bright and dark = 6 or more
Dell Laptop LCD screen with standard panel (HD (1366 x 768) or below resolutions):
Dell Inspiron laptops 3 or more 6 or more Combination of bright and dark = 6 or more
Dell Laptop LCD screen with Premium Panel Guarantee (HD+ (1600 x 900) and above LCD resolutions): :
Can confirm I've fought manufacturers on their 'dead pixel policies' before in Oz and won, with the help of the ACCC. Basically a defect is 'Anything that would prevent the consumer from buying one instance of a product over another instance of the same product if they knew about it in advance', and dead pixels are considered defects by this definition, and manufacturers can't refuse replacement on defective products, period. The '7 day' or '30 day' policies are also not enforceable, if you get dead pixels 9 months down the road they still have to fix or replace. Even if it's 1 dead pixel. Nintendo will not be able to enforce this policy here, though it might be quite time consuming and tedious to make them comply. (nb: I am not a lawyer but I've been in this boat before)
Made in Japan .... at our facilities in China.
WELL KNOWN FACT: Nintendo consoles are built by Foxconn.
I'd like to show you some capacitors out of my SNES. Bottom of the barrel quality.
Or how they left out a capacitor on the power inverter and that's why many SNES's have white bars in the middle.
Or why they chose underpowered hardware on the SNES to the point where addon chips were put on SNES carts.
Or how they were about to join forces with Sony to make the SNES Playstation but turned on Sony at the last minute and went with junk Phillips hardware.
Humans don't do this kind of work in a mass produced product like the Switch. Like PCB inspection, it's done with machine vision. The device displays a test image, a camera takes a photo and a computer scans it for defective pixels. The manufacturer configures the maximum number of acceptable dead pixels in the software.
We long ago reached the point where machine vision was cheap enough to make it more economical than having a human do the job, both in terms of time taken per test and reduction of mistakes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Wrong. In electrical engineering terms Nintendo are very well known for using the worst components available because they focus on price above known quality. Adding $0.05 to a power board to avoid the Chinese cap' cancer is something they will not do. They don't even have a standard set of components.for product lines. If a supplier offers something equivalent but cheaper, they'll rip off their hands to make more money despite knowing the likely quality problems.
Great. Now ALL pixels are dead.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not just cheap labour, it's also often weaker pollution regulation. Dumping the waste from your factory in the local river can dramatically cut the cost of production compared with having to collect and process the same waste. That's been almost as big a driver for moving production to China, India, Africa, and so on as the cheaper labour. It's now harder in China, as they're starting to tighten up pollution laws and have executed a couple of officials for taking bribes to overlook polluting factories.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I bought a Switch at launch, more out of curiousity than anything else. The story of the platform across the board is "handful of nice ideas let down by corner-cutting and failure to comprehend basic design lessons".
I haven't personally experienced the most serious issues with the device. That's to say, I have no dead pixels. I do not, under normal circumstances, have the wireless interference problems that is causing the joycons (particularly the left one) to lose synchronisation (though I can replicate them if I try, by switching on more devices). Nor have I yet scratched the screen putting the thing into and out of its dock.
That said, there are some design decisions around the Switch that scream "cheap", some which scream "incompetent" and some which scream both. For a relatively pricey piece of hardware, that's not really acceptable. Let's leave aside for the moment the crap Bluetooth transmission from the joycons and the dead pixels; here are some of the smaller quality-of-life issues with the Switch that should not be an issue in 2017:
- The size of the joycon controllers is way too small for the average Western hand (and certainly for a good proportion of adult males). The shape of the thing provides relatively little support to the hand and, whether it is held on its own or in the grip, encourages a cramped hand posture. This is really, really bad for your hands.
- When the unit is used in handheld mode with the joycons attached, the impacts on hand posture are arguably even worse. The device is reasonably large and, while I wouldn't describe it as heavy, nor is it particularly light. Your hands are supporting a noticeable degree of weight here. But the design of the joycons and the manner in which they attach to the main unit means that you end up crabbing your hands if you want to both hold the unit up and reach the control inputs. Unlike the Wii-U Gamepad and the Vita (both of which were by no means perfect in this respect), there is no grip at the back to allow you to distribute some of the weight more evenly around your hands or improve hand posture. It's worst for your right hand, where the location of the right analogue stick at the bottom of the unit means that you are essentially going to end up holding up that end of the unit by "pinching" it near the bottom.
- The layout of buttons on the joycons is terrible. The + and - buttons are located, for some bizarre reason, "above" the analogue sticks. This means you need a large thumb movement to reach them, which is both uncomfortable and likely to result in an accidental button-press or analogue stick input.
- The charging point's location on the bottom of the main unit means that it is awkward to support the weight of the unit on a table while using it in handheld mode. It also means you can't charge it while using the built-in stand.
- The built-in stand is a cheap, nasty and fragile plastic flap, barely capable of staying upright. Many people are already reporting this has snapped off or failed.
- The cartridge slot cover feels flimsy and fragile. I haven't yet seen reports of these snapping off, but I wouldn't be surprised to. The Vita had the same problem here.
- The dock unit you use to connect the thing to the TV has a cheap and nasty plastic feel. There are numerous reports that the version of the dock shipped with retail units is lower than that which was seen on preview units used for demonstrations and sent out for review purposes (though I haven't seen a preview unit myself yet, so cannot confirm this). Certainly, it is a loose and wobbly fit for the console on retail units and there are many reports of the dock scratching the main-unit's screen.
- The process of attaching/detaching the joycons is a bit fiddlier, and requires a bit more force, than had commonly been assumed.
- It is easily possible to put the joycons on the grip unit the wrong way around. What is rather less possible is getting them off again (at least without a very large degree of force) after you've done