Since Apple released its iPhone 5 Sept. 21, the smartphone has been plagued with issues from Wi-Fi connection to arriving pre-scuffed and scratched out-of-the-box. But as a string of new complaints suggest, Apple's latest iPhone may be fated to suffer a host of color glitches.
We heard several reports over the last week of the iPhone 5's purported "purple halo problem," a hazy purple color appearing on the edges of pictures, and videos, and today similar issues are being voiced with a "green glow" problem found on the display.
Users are describing the "green glow" as appearing on the edge of the screen like "plasma bleed," and occurring when the phone is woken from sleep mode. The Guardian was the first to point this out, citing complaints from a number of different tech forums.
Reportedly, the green glow appears for only a split second. However, some users are complaining that the issue gets worse over time. Users on the MacRumors forum note that Apple will apparently replace any iPhone 5 that shows the problem, although some have been turned away because they couldn't consistently replicate the glow.
"Immediately on wake up to the unlock screen, my iPhone will have a green plasma-like border bleed onto the screen. It is responsive to touch, moving/shifting and often becoming more pronounced," said one user in the forum.
"It goes away after a second or two, but the issue is getting worse day by day. Am going to Apple on the weekend to get it checked."
The good news is the problem seems like it's only affecting a minority of user's smartphones.
CNET points out that the iPhone 5's new display technology, which allows for its thinner design, could be causing some of the display problems reported.
Aside from these persistent thorns in Apple's side, reviews have been very kind to the iPhone 5, overall. Consumer Reports, apart from calling it a "winner" and awarding the phone the company's coveted "recommended" designation, has even come out in defense of some of the iPhone 5's camera issues like the "purple halo problem."
"We carried out our tests in response to reports, including those from PCMag.com and DPReview.com, that the iPhone 5 had a tendency to display a distracting purple color over parts of certain shots and videos. In our tests, the phone's camera did indeed display such a haze when we shot into a bright light source in our labs," said Consumer Reports.
"But it didn't do so in any more pronounced a fashion than did the iPhone 4S or two Android-based smart phones, the Samsung Galaxy S III and Motorola Droid Razr Maxx, when we tested those under the same conditions. In the course of our tests, the haze was sometimes purple, but sometimes another color or even a rainbow."
"All camera lenses, even those made for expensive SLRs, can yield lens flare, which is produced by scattered reflections inside the lens from a bright light source. How much flare appears in an image depends on how you orient the lens," said Consumer Reports.
"Some expensive advanced cameras, and even many point-and-shoots, have special lens coatings that can limit or eliminate such flare, and possibly associated colored haze. So can attaching a shading hood around the lens's edge. But smart phones' cameras are designed differently, so it's typically more difficult for manufacturers to minimize flare in them."
What's even more surprising about some of these display issues is that DisplayMate called the iPhone 5's display the best available on a smartphone. The site reported that the iPhone 5 has the highest Contrast Rating for High Ambient Light for any mobile device DisplayMate has tested, apparently 57 percent higher than the iPhone 4. The company also noted that the brightness of the Galaxy s III's screen is roughly half that of the iPhone 5 "due to power limits from the lower power efficiency of OLEDs and concerns regarding premature OLED aging."
"Based on our extensive Lab measurements the iPhone 5 has a true state-of-the-art display - it's not perfect and there is plenty of room for improvements (and competitors) but it's the best Smartphone display we have tested to date," said the site.
The iPhone 5 is also the brightest smartphone that DisplayMate says it has tested, and evidently has one of the lowest screen Reflectance values the site has ever measured. The smartphone's Color Gamut and Factory Calibration are second only to the new iPad, according to the study.
Apple iPhone 5 Features
Height: 4.87 inches, Width: 2.31 inches, Depth: 0.30 inch, Weight: 3.95 ounces.
4-inch (diagonal) Retina display, 1136-by-640 resolution, 326 ppi, GSM model: GSM/EDGE, UMTS/HSPA+, DC-HSDPA, CDMA model: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n; 802.11n on 2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and GLONASS, 1GB RAM, SoC: A6 Chip, Nano-SIM, three-axis gyro, dual-mic noise suppression, assisted GPS and GLONASS.
Front and back facing cameras:
Front: 1.2MP photos, 720p HD video, Backside illumination sensor;
Back: 8 megapixel Autofocus Tap to focus, LED flash, Backside illumination sensor, Five-element lens, Face detection, Hybrid IR filter, ƒ/2.4 aperture, Panorama,
Video: 1080p HD video recording, 30 fps, Tap to focus while recording, LED light, Improved video stabilization, Take still photos while recording video, Face detection.