Amazon's new Kindle Fire HDX tablet started shipping recently, and just as Amazon thought they had a hit, issues began cropping up for the new high-definition device. It appears that the screen on the Kindle Fire HDX is glowing blue on the edges.
Often new products launch, noted Android Police, only to have customers point out some flaw that has made its way into the design or manufacturing, and Amazon just got theirs. Customers are flooding the Amazon Kindle support pages with complaints about their new 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX, which began shipping at the end of last week.
The common complaint is that the edges of the screen on the Kindle Fire HDX are glowing blue or purple, in a kind of light haze. Both Kindle Fire HDX tablets direct from Amazon and some units sold by Best Buy are experiencing this issue. Here's what Kindle users are saying:
"I have a weird issue with my new kindle fire hdx 7"," said M. Fridman on Amazon's support forum. "The long edges of the screen show a light purple fringe, most noticeable on white pages but there on grey also. Amazon is going to send me a new one."
"Just got mine, very noticeable purple fringe around the edge (HDX 7" 32gb), said Lee Abraham on Amazon. "Only see it on white/light colored screens but very distracting. Is this a flaw or does every Fire HDX do this? Only notice one review so far mentions it."
For a visual of the problem, here's Macmixing on YouTube, who got one of the purple haze-afflicted Kindle Fire HDX tablets:
Wayne Anderson, another customer on the forum, had this thought: "This may simply be a mismatch between the panel and the glass. When you deal with light, it only takes a tiny, tiny millimetric imprecision to see the intense panel lighting / edge reflection. Its unfortunate that you received one, but I would also suggest you think about scale. Defect rates in the electronics industry are low, something in the handful-of-percent range. Even a 1% defect rate across a million devices means that thousands of devices will be returned as defective"
No matter what is causing the problem, luckily for Kindle Fire HDX users, Amazon's newest Kindle feature is "MayDay" 24/7 live customer support - through the device itself - just by pressing the "MayDay" button.
Nearly everyone reporting this problem also report that Amazon is happily offering replacement Kindle Fire HDXs and is responding to the issue in a timely manner. Some customers have gone through three tablets until they received an HDX that doesn't glow blue on the edge of the screen.
The Kindle Fire HDX is Amazon's super high-resolution follow-up to the Kindle Fire HD. The 7-inch model, which is the only HDX currently available, features a 1920 x 1200p resolution, packing 323 pixels per inch. Whether or not it glows blue on the edge, the HDX's resolution rivals top tablets on the market, including the Google Nexus 7 2.
The Kindle Fire HDX is powered by a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Processor, which is the cutting edge at the moment.
If you're experiencing the blue haze on the edge of your 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX, tell us in the comments: How bad is it? Is it distracting, or just a minor nuisance? Have you reported the issue to Amazon through "MayDay," and if so, how responsive is the new 24/7 Amazon live support feature?
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