# Words/Images burning into screen?



## kuklachica (Dec 26, 2010)

Often when I turn pages or navigate around menus, I find that the previous page's words are still imprinted lightly in the background. It is VVVVERY annoying. Is this normal? It's as if you were reading a paper book and they closed the page before it was dry and you could still see outlines of the other page's words on the page you are reading. It also does this with the screen saver - I can see the thick black lines dividing my content in my menu lightly behind the screen saver images. When I power off the kindle, the screen saver image still appears faintly on the blank screen. 

Is this supposed to happen?? If it is, I am regretting buying a Kindle. It is very distracting and annoying. 

EDIT: Just now i went to the dictionary, then back to my menu. When the little dictionary definition popped up on the bottom, then went away, I could still read the definition and see everything in the faint marks it left behind. I can still read the title of the dictionary in the background of the menu. VERY frustrating.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

It's normal for there to be an after-image sometimes. You can hit ALT-G to refresh the screen and it should go away. If it is there all the time or you think it’s objectionable, give Kindle Customer Service a call (not Amazon Customer Service, they are different).

Mike


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

It's just part of the e-ink technology.  It was a lot worse on my K2 than my K3.  Still, I seldom get it when reading, just when going from a menu to a book etc.  As noted you can hit alt-G to refresh and clear it out.

If it's really bad, you can call Amazon and try to exchange.  Some units are apparently defective on that regard--at least with the K2 I recall threads of people complaining and getting a replacement unit and reporting back that the ghosting issue wasn't as bad on the new one.

In short, you're going to get some of that, but there is some slim possibility that you may have a bad unit if it's really bad rather than just a faint image after coming out of a menu that goes away in a page or two.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

If it is doing it to the point of distraction for you, then certainly you should check with Kindle CS to see if they will send you a replacement unit to try. Be aware though that the nature of any e-ink screen (so far) is that when the processor tells thousands of the little black and white spheres in the "ink" layer to change orientation, it never gets 100% obedience, which results in some ghosting. This is why when you do a next page click while reading a book, it flashes black and then white (or is it vice versa?) before displaying the next page. It is basically telling all the little balls to flip to black and then to white, in the hopes that by that point there is a uniform background color upon which to draw the new text when it _then_ tells which balls to flip to black side up to create the text. So, when the dictionary stuff pops up or goes away, it does not do that screen refresh, so you will most likely get a little ghosting. _But_, it should not be horribly ghosted unless either you are extra sensitive to it or your e-ink screen is performing below specification (or some mix of the two?).

I realize none of that info fixes your problem, but I figured if you had an idea as to what is going on, it might help you better evaluate your situation and be able to discuss it with customer service from a slightly stronger position.


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

NogDog,

Strictly speaking, the e-ink displays in the Kindle and so on don't have the little black-and-white "balls" that you describe, this is an earlier technology called Gyricon (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper). In the current displays each of those balls is replaced by a microcapsule which has charged particles of black and white pigment in it - under a magnetic field, the pigment moves to the top or the bottom so the microcapsule appears black or white.

The cause of the ghosting is just as you described, though - the pigment particles want to stay where they are so a full screen refresh has the flicker which is the screen pushing the particles top-bottom-top (or bottom-top-bottom) to get them moving. Without this refresh (as with the menus and so on) the particles tend to stay put and so the ghosting occurs.

Kuklachica, I found this ghosting quite irritating when I first started with my Kindle, but I soon got used to it and now never notice it. It is more noticeable with the menus, and with dictionary pop-ups etc - these are times when the Kindle doesn't do a full refresh (to make response quicker) and the ghosting is the result.

You should not normally see it from one page of the book to the next - the refresh (with flicker) between the pages should clear it. Occasionally I see it when going from a page with a picture to a page without, but not otherwise with text pages.

I would say the crucial way to test if there is a fault is that if you see ghosting from one page of text to another then this is not normal. Also, if you have ghosting on the screen and you press Alt-G which forces a full screen refresh (with the black/white flicker) and the ghosting goes away, then it is probably normal. If you do Alt-G and you can still see ghosting, then I'd be concerned that there is a fault and I would talk to Kindle CS.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

I went from a K1 to a K3 and I noticed that it refreshes sometimes only portions of the screen. I don't remember that from the K1. But It really is only there when looking up something in the dictionary or when I scroll down to put stuff in collection, you see the black line on the page. 

In the books itself while reading, I have less ghosting on the K3 than on the K1 even though my K1 never really had much of that either.
For me this all adds to the "paper" experience.   But like Morf said, once you go to the next page, it shouldn't be there anymore.


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