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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.
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
Nintendo has it half right
Dead pixels ARE normal.... Fortunately, so is the replacing of affected devices under warranty.
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)