Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 20

For all you people with bad LCD screens. Here's a story for you... (if youre in a hurry, just skip to the "Handspring Platinum" section....)

Background:
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My first PDA was an HP360LX winCE2.0 machine. When i bought it, the LCD was slightly defective but i lived with it . My second PDA was a PalmVx. The screen on that was also defective.. so I returned it and received another Vx only to find that the new Vx was also defective... I had to go through 4 PalmVx's to get one that had a good LCD screen.

PalmIIIc:
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Few days ago, I sold my Vx to buy a PalmIIIc. With my luck, the display on that unit was also sub-par. Not to mention that this screen is virtually impossible to read in sunlight! (Same goes to the Handspring Prism!) Also, the screen just gave me a headache due to the subtle flickering of the colour display (same goes for Prism). So I ended up unsatisfied and returned it.

Handspring Platinum:
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Now for the meat of this posting... my experience with the Platinum (as if you can't predict what this will be about hehehe). After being unsatisfied with current colour PalmOS pda's, i decided to stick with greyscale units. Bah who needs colour.

I picked up a Platinum in the weekend. I turned it on, with excitement.... and ARGH. I noticed the screen was really FAINT and unclear. I raised my contrast until i can actually see something, but by then, with the contrast slider at 3/4 position, the background became annoyingly too dark.

Perhaps this is the way all Handsprings are made? Not. I asked my co-workers how their screens looked with the slider at default MID position, and they said they actually need to put it a tad BELOW the mid position. So obviously my unit was screwed.

Then came the backlight! We all know that this backlighting is useless. Everything is all washed out and illegible unless its pitch dark, which is never the case! But on top of that, my particular unit was even WORSE. Not only was it washed-out and useless, the backlight was so faint, that even in pitch black environment, i could only see a couple dots! (yes, i had fresh batteries)

Finally, I went back to the store and demanded that not only should they exchange my unit for another Platinum, I demanded that I go through one box at a time until I find one that was GOOD. i.e: CLEAR display & lumescent backlight. (knowing my luck with PDA screens, this was the best thing to do -- saves me a few extra trips!)

They agreed. Guess what? I ended up opening 2 more boxes. The third one finally hit the jackpot. This particular unit was incredibly clear with a very accurate & lumescent & useful backlight. The difference was NIGHT and DAY between a bad unit and a GOOD unit.

So they sent 3 Platinum's back to Handspring, D O A. And I was happy to find this nice lookin, functional PDA.

End of story. I hope this helps you guys with BAD displays. Perhaps some of you have no idea that your screens are defective! Rather than buying from Handspring directly, just go to the store and buy one locally so that you can compare and pick out the "good" ones from the defective ones.

PS: The LCD's on these pda's are probably manufactured from difference plants (malaysia? taiwan? mexico?) at different times. There's an obvious inconsistency in manufacturing... some are simply better than others. So when i say "bad" unit, its not necessarily "defective", but rather, an "unlucky draw" from the batch I suppose. Much like some Intel P3-550mhz cpu's overclock better than others

Registered: Nov 1999
Location:
Posts: 341

I'm returning/exchanging my Platinumn direct with Handspring (for contrast issue, backlight never bothered me). I'll have the replacement tomorrow and will be able to report if it's any different.