Strange dust.

[Rirath]

Okay, this one has me boggled folks. I was getting ready to set down at my desk, glanced at the Axim in the charger, and saw something that really freaked me. Across the entire face of the screen was a perfect grid of medium sized grey dots, visible in the right light. Like 5 dots per row, several evenly spaced rows going down the screen. 8O

Now, my immediate fear was pixel burn in or screen wear, having played several hours continuously of Snowed In recently. (Great game, btw... check it out.) But, it wiped clean away with a cloth, seems it was merely dust. What on Earth would make dust gather in a perfect grid fashion on a screen? I've never seen anything like it. Ever seen it happen before?

By the way, in a semi-related question... is there a threat of pixel burn in from leaving the Axim synced but with the backlight off? The J525 had a nice blank screen feature, so I've never thought much about it before. Typically I turn it off of course, but just curious.

[Dave Beauvais]

LCDs cannot suffer from "burn-in" as CRTs can. Burn-in is caused when the same phosphors in a CRT are illuminated for long periods of time. Whenever I see an old monitor, it almost always has the old DOS WordPerfect screen burned into it. :) (In modern CRTs, it takes a very long time for burn-in to occur, but it can still happen.)

LCDs, on the other hand, do not use phosphors to generate the light you see. Instead, the pixels simply act like colored light filters light that regulate the amount of light that shines through them. That light comes from another source -- usually a fluorescent tube (or tubes). <a href="http://www.howstuffworks.com/lcd.htm" target="_blank">This page<a> gives a good overview of how LCDs work.

As for the grid of dust, I've never seen that happen before on any type of display. On the type of touchscreen used by all Pocket PCs, there is a grid of almost invisible spacers that separate the two layers of the touchscreen layer of the display. It shows up as a grid of evenly-spaced dots on the screen and is best seen when the screen is black (or at least very dark) and a bright light is shining onto it. I suppose it's possible that this grid somehow got a static charge which caused dust to be attracted to it, but I'm not sure how this would have happened without affecting the rest of the screen. :?: It's intriguing, to say the least.

--Dave

[Rirath]

If it ever happens again, I'll snap a picture and upload it. Thanks for the explanations, that clears that up.