Back in April John Hagewood wrote us to tell about his Kindle 2 was losing screen contract and how Amazon replaced it. Now it seems that the problem has recurred, and Amazon stepped up again. Here’s what John wrote:
Today a friend of mine in the office showed me his brand new Kindle2 (International Wireless, or course, the only one they sell).
When I saw the screen I just about blew a gasket. The background color was NEARLY WHITE compare to my smudgy grayish one. I could not BELIEVE IT. He of course had the default font on there, and it looked GREAT….I have always had to put the Georgia2 Font Hack on mine to make it somewhere CLOSE to being as readable as my old Sony 505.
So I called Amazon tonight and told them that I STILL believe my Kindle2 screen is devective (I already got a replacement a year ago). I told them “either it has gotten a LOT darker in the last year, or the new Kindle2’s have a VASTLY better screen”. He said that NO, the original Kindle2 and the new ones should have the same screen and screen contrast, and that his supervisor said the screen on mine is probably indeed “going bad”. They agreed to overnight me a replacement, though when I pressed them they admitted this will be a refurbished Kindle2 US Wireless, like I have now. Never mind that I paid $359 for mine, and the new ones are $100 cheaper. He said if the screen didn’t look as good as the guy at work to call them back and he would “see what they could do”.
My 10 month old Kindle2 is really starting to have POOR battery life too…barely 2 days with the wireless on, so at least that will be fixed by the refurb. He assured me they had new batteries in them 🙂
Paul, I wonder where the QA problem is — with EInk or with PVI when they were assembling these displays and integrating them with the rest of the unit.
They are in closed boxes by the time Amazon gets them to send.
Is it something different in voltage options chosen? Why is the Nook consistently better in screen contrast (not that I want the slow and awkward screen-relay control of the Nook). I hard heard in May that it was adjustable with a firmware update.
Here’s hoping the new one is better. Kinda worrying though. My 1st gen Kindle looks pretty near identical to my Sony 505.
Good news! The new one looks FANTASTIC. I cannot believe the difference. I took some photos with my wife’s new Nikon D5000 and put them up on this page for all to see:
http://www.hybernationmusic.com/kindle2screens/
Like Andrys said, I’m left wondering where the QA problem is. And I’m also curious if there is a “wearing out” issue here. I use mine an average of 2 hours a day, every day. Does an EInk screen grow darker with age perhaps?
Anyway, thanks to Amazon for stellar customer service!
(by the way, if the serial numbers are issued sequentially, this unit is quite a bit OLDER than my first two. But I don’t care really, and I am MIGHTY glad I bought the two-year extended warranty!)