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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.
...that Nintendo doesn't have to accept the lowest bid if it doesn't think a good job will be done, right? The buck stops with Nintendo, not the factory they contracted construction out to. The factory will happily take whatever quality control measures Nintendo deems necessary, so long as they're paid enough.
I didn't plan to buy one anyhow, but this is proof positive that Nintendo still has the sense of entitlement leading them to say "you'll take what we give you, and you'll like it". Getting rid of region locks might have been seen as a step to hand some control back to the customer, but refusing to accept that dead pixels are defects and have been considered such for at least ten years now is an admission that they either can't do better, or are honey badgers about what the customer actually thinks. Unreliable connections are defects too, even Apple wasn't able to get away with the "you're holding it wrong" defense for very long.
If they can't do better for technical reasons... well I'm not buying that. They can do better, because other device manufacturers are doing better. If they can't afford to do better, then they really should get out of the hardware market.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
... on an older screen or one that has been abused. On a new device? Not so much. The only reason that anyone's going to take Nintendo's explanation lying down is because trying to stand up to Nintendo on this point is going to take a ton of perseverance, time, and probably money with no assurance that it's actually going to work out.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I remember WAY back in the early 2000's when LCD flat panels first started getting cheap enough for the average consumer (I bought my first as a 17" for $300 back around 2001) it was common for there to be at least 1 dead pixel - and they generally wouldn't consider it a warranty item unless there were more than 10 or more than 2 within a few cm of each other.
That is pretty much of thing of the past now though. In the last ~7 years I can't recall having a single display with a dead pixel, and in today's age I certainly would return a display (or device) that had one.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Depends on the device. You'll notice it a lot more on a 720p screen like the Switch than you would on something like a 4k screen of the same physical dimension that has a much higher dpi.
If I went to the local tech mall and bought 100 tablets, I could take 100 tablets and none of them would have any dead pixels.
thats why people are complaining. it's not usual nowadays. if you have such a policy that you need x amount of them to be bad for it to be a defect, put it on the box.
or just try the device before buying, thats what people do in asia - in the west you just assume it works.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yeah but the Galaxy explodes.
... I guess sort of like bad sectors are a characteristic of disk drives ...
Each hard drive has bad sectors detected during the QA testing and permanently stored in drives primary defects list (PLIST) table. The visible reallocations that start from 0 and reported by S.M.A.R.T are grown defects list (GLIST), not existing during the manufacturing. So yes, bad sectors are sort of a characteristic of disk drives.
... I guess sort of like bad sectors are a characteristic of disk drives ...
Each hard drive has bad sectors detected during the QA testing and permanently stored in drives primary defects list (PLIST) table. The visible reallocations that start from 0 and reported by S.M.A.R.T are grown defects list (GLIST), not existing during the manufacturing. So yes, bad sectors are sort of a characteristic of disk drives.
But in that sense they get hidden and the user is never aware rather than them going "nah, you can't save that properly, bad sector innit, that's just how they work now pay up and fuck off"
Wanna buy a shirt?
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