Physically damaged laptop screens:
Our outstanding device’s-lifetime manufacturer defects warranty covers our LCDs against everything except for physical damage. Cracked, crushed, punched screens cannot be replaced as a warranty claim, such mishaps are accidental damage and are not related to any LCD defect. LCDs consist of two 1mm glass panes glued together and are extremely fragile.
Physical impact such as pinched ear-bud or a pen under the lid will result in LCD damage. Cracks that occur near the bottom of the screen will affect most of the image because the pixel pathways from the LCD driver will all be severed at the source.
Obvious crack, with initial impact point near the lower middle. No color or image is visible due to severed pixel pathways.
Sometimes the color may show through and patterns of lines may also appear. This is a result of severe damage to pixel pathways.
Obvious crack, patterns of vertical light and color are a result of partially severed pixel pathways.
Sometimes, if you’re “lucky”, some partial image can shine through the cracks, but it is likely to deteriorate over time.
Obvious crack, some useable image is showing.
One of the common reasons for LCD damage is gruesome mishandling of sensitive electronics. The following is an example of someone picking their laptop up by their screen. The point where the cracks begin is where the thumb landed when the computer was picked up.
The same effect can happen on ultra-thin laptops when the top lid is opened with one hand. Always hold the palm-rest of your laptop with one hand when opening the screen with the other.
Obvious crack, mishandled screen. Despite point of impact being at the top the cracks ran all the way down to the LCD driver and severed the pixel pathways.
Another example of top-middle damage, likely due to attempting to pick laptop up by the top edge of the screen, or opening the lid without supporting the palm-rest.
Obvious crack, mishandled screen.
But in some rare cases, physical damage won’t even appear as cracks. Here is an example of a crushed LCD panel, likely from the back-side of the screen. The black spot is the liquid crystals spreading through a hair-line crack. This screen can still display 95% of useable image, the white background is intentional in this case – to highlight the “ink splotch”
Crushing blow to the back of the screen results in “ink splotches” – despite there being no obvious cracks, the screen has been physically damaged.
