lcd screen break made in china

Chemicals leaking from millions of computer screens in homes, offices and schools could damage human health, according to research by Chinese scientists.

Chemistry professor Su Guanyong and colleagues at Nanjing University of Science and Technology in eastern Jiangsu province studied more than 360 types of chemicals used in computer and mobile phone screens and found that 87 of them could be a danger if they got into the environment.

Some chemicals in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) could alter genes, they said. Animal cells mutated unexpectedly if exposed, and preliminary results of their ongoing study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday showed that one of the most polluted places was the home.

Researchers said about a quarter of the chemicals from screens they tested might be pollutants. Photo: Getty alt=Researchers said about a quarter of the chemicals from screens they tested might be pollutants. Photo: Getty

Studies found that excessive radiation from screens could speed up the ageing of skin and blue light from diodes could harm the retina of the eye. "But nobody has looked beyond the brightness to unveil the dark secrets behind," Su said.

Over the years, screen panel manufacturers have pushed LCD technology to higher resolutions and faster refreshing rates, but the chemical composition of the liquid crystal that fills their screens has hardly changed.

Smartphones mean booming demand for components such as screens. Photo: Ben Sin alt=Smartphones mean booming demand for components such as screens. Photo: Ben Sin

They exposed embryonic chicken cells to liquid crystal taken from the screens and compared them to cells grown in normal conditions. They found genetic changes that suggested the exposed cells had mutated.

The Nanjing team was baffled by the amount of liquid crystal in the air. They knew screens were made in dust-free factories and sealed, but their surveys of hotels, school buildings, canteens, dormitories, electronic product repair centres, homes and laboratories revealed surprising results.

Scientists say cracked screens and leaking chemicals are a worldwide problem. Photo: Shutterstock alt=Scientists say cracked screens and leaking chemicals are a worldwide problem. Photo: Shutterstock

The lowest levels were found in a canteen, a dormitory and classrooms. Su said they were not sure where the drifting liquid crystals came from. Some screens might have been cracked or broken, he said. If a screen was left on for a long time, heat and radiation might cause liquid crystal to evaporate.

"Electric device recycling plants could be a major source of emissions, with broken screens dumped everywhere and little protection. This practice must stop," he said.

Having checked out your video, I personally will not use the aftermarket screen as a replacement for my X. It just doesn"t have what I expect for a $1000 USD phone. I recognize that $300 USD for a replacement is hefty but the aftermarket screen does not appear to have the quality that I would expect for my phone.

— --A fire at an LCD monitor assembly plant in China ultimately damaged 14 production lines and caused an estimated US$71.27 million in damage, according to Lite-On IT, the Taiwanese owner of the factory.

A short circuit caused the fire at Lite-On"s Dongguan, China factory on February 3, but the company reported the cause and damages on Tuesday in a public release. The damaged lines are used to make LCD (liquid crystal display) computer monitors and LCD TVs and the fire damage will affect shipments.

Over the next two months, Lite-On, a major contract LCD monitor assembler, will only be able to partially fill orders to major customers. The company has been able to shift some production to other production lines, it said in the statement.

Analysts do not expect the supply disruption to affect global LCD monitor or LCD TV markets, but said it could cause headaches for some of Lite-On"s customers.

Maybe your significant other tossed your phone off the balcony after discovering flirty texts with a certain coworker, or maybe you were just blackout drunk and dropped your phone on the club’s tile washroom floor while taking a shameless mirror selfie. Either way, your mobile’s glass screen likely looks like a drunken spider’s web.

Luckily for you, smartphone repairs in China are both affordable and fast. But before you venture off to your city’s electronics sales and repair market, we encourage you to browse these six helpful tips for repairing your phone screen:

In the case of phone glass and the LCD – or more recently AMOLED – screen underneath, it helps to know whether just one, or both, of these elements needs replacing (particularly so you can better estimate the cost).

While broken glass on the front of your mobile is obvious and easy to diagnose, a damaged screen (the part that actually displays all the programs and interface) can be a bit trickier to identify. Look for black spots, discolored areas, new lines and out-of-place patterns on your screen, as any of these may indicate a problem with the screen. Naturally, a totally black screen is a pretty good indicator that something is amiss.

One way to test your screen is to hold down on an app on your phone’s ‘desktop area’ until it starts vibrating, allowing you the move the app to new locations on your screen. Move the app to all parts of your display, if the app is unable to reach a certain area, this is a good indication that you’ll be fixing more than just broken glass.

From our experience, this may very likely be the most important step of all. When having your device"s screen or glass fixed, be sure to show the person doing the repair that all of its key components are in working order. In particular, be sure to demonstrate that both your front and rear cameras work, as well as the speaker and microphone.

The price of having your phone’s glass or LCD screen replaced will depend greatly on the make and model of your phone, the honesty of the person fixing it and – like all things in Asia – your bargaining skills. If your local smartphone repair person wants RMB300 to replace your iPhone 6’s shattered glass, lowball them and offer RMB150. From our experience, repair people seem more inclined to budge on price when it comes to older model phones, meaning your brand new iPhone Xs Plus or Huawei P20 will likely have a higher price point and less discount wiggle-room.

Finding a good repair shop with honest staff who do repairs at a high quality and reasonable price can sometimes be difficult. If you manage to track down a good phone-fixing location, be sure to recommend it to your friends to save them the potentially costly and annoying trial-and-error process when having their glass or screen replaced.

Use our “Get an Estimate” tool to review potential costs if you get service directly from Apple. The prices shown here are only for screen repair. If your iPhone needs other service, you’ll pay additional costs.

Your country or region offers AppleCare+ for this product. Screen repair (front) is eligible for coverage with a fee by using an incident of accidental damage from handling that comes with your AppleCare+ plan.

As an official phone repair provider who has been in the business for almost a decade, one unique question people ask when they visit our service centres to replace their phone screen is: "what"s the difference between original and copy phone screen?"

Well, the answer is, there are many differences between these two screens, which is mostly in their quality. And while “copy” phone screens are somewhat cheaper than the originals, it doesn’t justify the difference in quality. So, before you regret replacing your phone screen with a forbidden part, the tips below will tell you the critical differences between original and copy phone screens.

Generally, phone screens manufactured from your brand"s factory are the original ones while ‘Copy’screens are the ones designed and produced by third-party manufacturers and factories that are not related to your brand.

Many people usually like to go for copy screens because of their cheaper price. However, the "real" differences between original and copy screens lie in their quality, and here’s what you need to know about them.

One of the principal issues with "copied" phone screens and why it differs from the originals is touch and digitizer problems. And that"s a big problem since you"re going to control the device with the touchscreen anyway.

As far as we could remember, phone manufacturers build the touch panel/digitizer with the LCD itself, while the copied screen manufacturer build it separately on the surface glass. Hence, there"s a difference in touch sensitivity. Additionally, copied phone screens usually drop the high touch sampling rate, meaning your screen may not respond to your touches faster.

Here"s also another major issue with the digitizer on copied phone screens. When you crack a copied screen accidentally, the touchscreen stops working, stopping you from accessing the device until you fix it again. Meanwhile, the touch on the original phone screen works perfectly, even after undergoing severe cracking.

Besides having touch problems, most copy phone screens usually have poor display properties. That means you get lower brightness, colour accuracy, sharpness, contrast, etc. And when the display isn"t great, watching movies and viewing other content becomes boring.

For instance, if the original screen is supposed to have 480 nits of brightness, but the copy screen has just 200 nits, the screen becomes unusable under bright lights. Moreso, copied phone screen seems to have more blue light, which, in return, affect your sight and disrupts your sleep at night.

Among others, copied phone screens drop higher refresh rates, and that"s a bummer since most phones come with at least 90Hz refresh rate screens. What that means is the copied screen won’t feel smooth as it’s supposed to be.

It"s not all about the display quality. A copy phone screen may also affect other parts of the phone system if its specifications don"t tally with the original one. In such a case, it could drain your battery at an alarming rate, or at worse, damage your backlight.

If you happen to have a phone with an in-display fingerprint sensor, then replacing its screen with a copied one is not an option – it’s going to mess with your fingerprint accuracy.

We know copied phone screens for their poor quality, and it also extends to the fingerprint sensor. Hence, it takes a longer time to unlock your device. And in other cases, the security of the sensor is not accurate. We"ve seen situations where phones get unlocked with many unregistered fingers after replacing the screen with a copied one.

If you care about your phone"s security and you don"t want a sluggish fingerprint sensor, then we recommend you only go for the original phone screen replacement.

That brings us to the last difference we’re going to mention between copied and original phone screens. They manufacture copied phone screens with poor glass materials. Hence, they break quicker than the originals. And when they do, you’ll be left with only one option: to replace the screen again.

The major reason for choosing the official service centre over third-party/local repair shops summarizes what we"ve said earlier. The official service centre is the reliable place to get original phone screen replacement parts.

Besides offering you the original screen spare parts, the official service centres also have other advantages. These include certified and well-experienced technicians to fix the screen, the use of modern tools that won"t damage your phone further, and most importantly, a reliable warranty. Local repair shops usually don"t offer these features; most especially a reliable warranty, which means you"re on your own if the replaced screen gets faulty afterwards.

As far as choosing the official service centre is concerned for genuine screen replacement, then you shouldn"t shy away from Carlcare Service if you own a TECNO, Infinix, or itel phone with a cracked screen.

We"re the official service center for these three brands to cater for your mobile repair needs. And for screen replacement, Carlcare delivers excellently. Our brand-trained technicians replace your cracked screen with genuine OEM parts at affordable rates.

We understand you have a busy schedule; and yes, we"ll replace your screen in the shortest possible time. Start by checking how much it cost to fix your cracked phone screen, then you can book an online reservation service with us to reduce your waiting time and also become a VIP customer.

► When the leading Korean players Samsung Display and LG Display exit LCD production, BOE will be the most significant player in the LCD market. Though OLED can replace the LCD, it will take years for it to be fully replaced.

When mainstream consumer electronics brands choose their device panels, the top three choices are Samsung Display, LG Display (LGD) and BOE (000725:SZ) – the first two from Korea and the third from China. From liquid-crystal displays (LCD) to active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED), display panel technology has been upgrading with bigger screen products.

From the early 1990s, LCDs appeared and replaced cathode-ray tube (CRT) screens, which enabled lighter and thinner display devices. Japanese electronics companies like JDI pioneered the panel technology upgrade while Samsung Display and LGD were nobodies in the field. Every technology upgrade or revolution is a chance for new players to disrupt the old paradigm.

The landscape was changed in 2001 when Korean players firstly made a breakthrough in the Gen 5 panel technology – the later the generation, the bigger the panel size. A large panel size allows display manufacturers to cut more display screens from one panel and create bigger-screen products. "The bigger the better" is a motto for panel makers as the cost can be controlled better and they can offer bigger-size products to satisfy the burgeoning middle-class" needs.

LCD panel makers have been striving to realize bigger-size products in the past four decades. The technology breakthrough of Gen 5 in 2002 made big-screen LCD TV available and it sent Samsung Display and LGD to the front row, squeezing the market share of Japanese panel makers.

The throne chair of LCD passed from Japanese companies to Korean enterprises – and now Chinese players are clinching it, replacing the Koreans. After twenty years of development, Chinese panel makers have mastered LCD panel technology and actively engage in large panel R&D projects. Mass production created a supply surplus that led to drops in LCD price. In May 2020, Samsung Display announced that it would shut down all LCD fabs in China and Korea but concentrate on quantum dot LCD (Samsung calls it QLED) production; LGD stated that it would close LCD TV panel fabs in Korea and focus on organic LED (OLED). Their retreats left BOE and China Stars to digest the LCD market share.

Consumer preference has been changing during the Korean fab"s recession: Bigger-or-not is fine but better image quality ranks first. While LCD needs the backlight to show colors and substrates for the liquid crystal layer, OLED enables lighter and flexible screens (curvy or foldable), higher resolution and improved color display. It itself can emit lights – no backlight or liquid layer is needed. With the above advantages, OLED has been replacing the less-profitable LCD screens.

Samsung Display has been the major screen supplier for high-end consumer electronics, like its own flagship cell phone products and Apple"s iPhone series. LGD dominated the large OLED TV market as it is the one that handles large-size OLED mass production. To further understand Korean panel makers" monopolizing position, it is worth mentioning fine metal mask (FMM), a critical part of the OLED RGB evaporation process – a process in OLED mass production that significantly affects the yield rate.

The shortage of equipment and scarcity of materials inspired panel fabs to explore substitute technology; they discovered that inkjet printing has the potential to be the thing to replace evaporation. Plus, evaporation could be applied to QLED panels as quantum dots are difficult to be vaporized. Inkjet printing prints materials (liquefied organic gas or quantum dots) to substrates, saving materials and breaking free from FMM"s size restriction. With the new tech, large-size OLED panels can theoretically be recognized with improved yield rate and cost-efficiency. However, the tech is at an early stage when inkjet printing precision could not meet panel manufacturers" requirements.

Presently, Chinese panel fabs are investing heavily in OLED production while betting on QLED. BOE has four Gen 6 OLED product lines, four Gen 8.5 and one Gen 10.5 LCD lines; China Star, controlled by the major appliance titan TCL, has invested two Gen 6 OLED fabs and four large-size LCD product lines.

Remembering the last "regime change" that occurred in 2005 when Korean fabs overtook Japanese" place in the LCD market, the new phase of panel technology changed the outlook of the industry. Now, OLED or QLED could mark the perfect time for us to expect landscape change.

After Samsung Display and LGD ceding from LCD TV productions, the vacant market share will be digested by BOE, China Star and other LCD makers. Indeed, OLED and QLED have the potential to take over the LCD market in the future, but the process may take more than a decade. Korean companies took ten years from panel fab"s research on OLED to mass production of small- and medium-size OLED electronics. Yet, LCD screen cell phones are still available in the market.

LCD will not disappear until OLED/QLED"s cost control can compete with it. The low- to middle-end panel market still prefers cheap LCD devices and consumers are satisfied with LCD products – thicker but cheaper. BOE has been the largest TV panel maker since 2019. As estimated by Informa, BOE and China Star will hold a duopoly on the flat panel display market.

BOE"s performance seems to have ridden on a roller coaster ride in the past several years. Large-size panel mass production like Gen 8.5 and Gen 10.5 fabs helped BOE recognize the first place in production volume. On the other side, expanded large-size panel factories and expenses of OLED product lines are costly: BOE planned to spend CNY 176.24 billion (USD 25.92 billion) – more than Tibet"s 2019 GDP CNY 169.78 billion – on Chengdu and Mianyang"s Gen 6 AMOLED lines and Hefei and Wuhan"s Gen 10.5 LCD lines.

Except for making large-size TVs, bigger panels can cut out more display screens for smaller devices like laptops and cell phones, which are more profitable than TV products. On its first-half earnings concall, BOE said that it is shifting its production focus to cell phone and laptop products as they are more profitable than TV products. TV, IT and cell phone products counted for 30%, 44% and 33% of its productions respectively and the recent rising TV price may lead to an increased portion of TV products in the short term.

Except for outdoor large screens, TV is another driver that pushes panel makers to research on how to make bigger and bigger screens. A research done by CHEARI showed that Chinese TV sales dropped by 10.6% to CNY 128.2 billion from 2018 to 2019. Large-size TV sales increased as a total but the unit price decreased; high-end products like laser TV and OLED TV saw a strong growth of 131.2% and 34.1%, respectively.

The demand for different products may vary as lifestyles change and panel fabs need to make on-time judgments and respond to the change. For instance, the coming Olympics is a new driving factor to boost TV sales; "smart city" projects around the world will need more screens for data visualization; people will own more screens and better screens when life quality improves. Flexible screens, cost-efficient production process, accessible materials, changing market and all these problems are indeed the next opportunity for the industry.

Zhou Qunfei (Chinese: 周群飞; born 1970) is a Chinese entrepreneur who founded the major touchscreen maker Lens Technology. After the public listing of her company on the Shenzhen ChiNext market in March 2015, her net worth reached US$10 billion, making her the richest woman in China.

In 2003, while still producing watch faces, Zhou"s company received a request from Motorola to develop glass screens for their Razr V3, during a period when the mobile phone industry was transitioning from plastic to glass display screens.

Following this, Zhou Qunfei started touch-screen maker Lens Technology (named so that it would turn up to potential customers searching "lens" online)HTC, Nokia, and Samsung Electronics.Apple"s iPhone during its 2007 market entry, Lens developed into the dominant player of the industry. Lens Technology now primarily supplies touch-screens to leading electronics makers such as Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, receiving nearly 75% of its revenue from Apple and Samsung.Apple Watch uses her company"s glass and sapphire crystal screens. As of 2017, the company employs about 90,000 people, was expected to churn out more than a billion glass screens, and has 32 different factory locations.