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Comment by thih9 | Hacker News Reader

The store page mentions dead pixels; It's the first time I'm seeing a disclaimer like this on a smartphone. Is this normal? Why aren't other manufacturers mentioning this?

Source: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-conve...

> A small numbers of stuck or dead pixels (1-3) can be a characteristic of LCD screens. While rare, this should not be considered a defect. If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute, DO NOT purchase the PinePhone.

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All webshops I've ever ordered monitors from basically had the same rules, except they're usually slightly more hidden.

I have 7 pinephones here and not a single dead pixel, only defect I've ever had was dust in a display on a pinetab prototype.

Query, since you appear to be heavily involved: I am looking to buy a used/cheap phone to replace our home wifi hotspot(a very tired Moto G4 + LineageOS, always plugged to power). No calls or texts required, just handling up to 5 device connections to the inet(music streaming, video downloads, web browsing). Having a new linux toy to tinker with would be a bonus, would love to support Pine64, but the inet reliability would need to be there as it is our only connection... extreme rural locale, no landline or line-of-site options available, Starlink is not yet an option, AFAIK, and def outside the budget.

In your opinion, would a PinePhone be a realistic candidate for our hotspot at this time?

A PinePhone would work fine for that I think. It's also possible to use any MSM8916 phone together with postmarketOS to do that kind of thing, the G4 is not supported on mainline in postmarketOS yet sadly, only the G4 Play.

I would recommend to use usb tethering though instead of wifi tethering. Just get a router that has an USB port that supports a modem and use that with a phone.

Note that the Pinephone only supports 2.4GHz, not 5GHz.

In the early days of LCD screens different vendors and even resellers had different warranty and return policies for dead pixels, even going as far as cluster vs spread out. E.G. in circa 2007 Dell had a 5 dead pixels policy but if 3 were in a cluster you could replace the monitor too.

The reason why Apple or Samsung can have a 0 dead pixel policy is because they have money to buy higher quality screens in the first place and eat the cost of replacing phones / screens because they have a lot of money and a mature supply and sales chain.

PinePhone doesn’t it would potentially cost them as much to replace a phone post sale as the hardware in the phone is worth so they are making it clear to people that they shouldn’t expect a perfect device.

Would this actually pass consumer protection laws probably not.

I got 1 dead pixel on fairly recent XPS 13. Appeared shortly after warranty lapsed.

Displays are frequently binned based on quality. They are probably just buying the cheapest they can, and end up with a lot of prematurely dead pixels.

I bought a monitor a few years ago and out of the box it had a dead pixel in a pretty annoying spot. I looked up the manufacturer's replacement policy and they wouldn't take it back for just a single pixel.

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