Hasta La Gadget!

Chinese workers are planning to sue a Taiwan-based manufacturer who makes iPhone components for Apple. They say they were poisoned by a chemical used to clean LCD screens.

The 44 workers of Wintek in Suzhou, China, are alleging they were poisoned by n-hexane, a chemical that can cause damage to the peripheral nervous system and the spinal cord, according to Stratfor, a global intelligence agency.

Stratfor’s report said that since August 2009, 62 Wintek workers have been hospitalized due to n-hexane poisoning.

Wintek, which makes LCD and touch panels for consumer devices, began using n-hexane instead of alcohol sometime last year to clean screens, because apparently it dried more quickly and reduced streaks. Stratfor notes that the manager who decided to use n-hexane has since been fired.

The Guardian reported that after the chemical switch, workers immediately noticed the pungent smell of n-hexane but did not know it would affect their health.

“We hadn’t even heard of occupational illnesses before,” Wintek worker Xiao Ling said in an interview with The Guardian.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Wintek.

Apple works with several Asian suppliers who provide components for its iPhones, iPads, iPods and Macs. The company earlier this year published its supplier responsibility report, describing the company’s efforts to ensure its partners around the world comply with responsible business practices.

In its report (.pdf), Apple said it audited 102 facilities in 2009, up from only 39 just two years ago. The company also claimed it trained 133,000 supervisors and workers on workers’ rights and management responsibility.

Global Post ran an extensive report late last year detailing the labor violations committed at supply chains all over Asia. The report based its findings on six months of interviews with workers and activists. Some claimed they worked in sweatshop-like conditions, such as hourly wages below a dollar and firings with no notice.

From Barron’s

See Also:

• Chinese Supplier Already Selling Third Gen iPhone Bezel
• Apple Launches China Labor Probe
• Silicon Sweatshops: Gadget Factories Take a Toll on Workers …

Photo: dschulian/Flickr

Well, what do you know? Seems Samsung set up shop in the heart of London and threw itself a product introduction party! In case the company’s new laptop and desktop options didn’t tickle your fancy, Sammy’s giving you a host of new display options as well. Kicking things off is the June-bound H03, which the company incorrectly claims is the “world’s brightest pico projector” with just 30 ANSI lumens — too bad we’ve seen units with far more already. Moving on, there’s the new SyncMaster PX2370 LED-backlit LCD monitor, offering up a 16:9 aspect ratio, a Touch of Color design, 2ms response time, VGA / DVI / HDMI inputs and a 1080p native resolution. Bringing up the rear is the 1,000 ANSI lumen LED-based SP-F10M projector and the SyncMaster MD230, the latter of which we saw toying with ATI’s Eyefinity solution back at CES. Sadly, no concrete pricing details were made public, but you can peruse the respective press releases just beyond the break.

Continue reading Samsung goes display crazy: H03 pico projector, SyncMaster PX2370 LCD and more

Samsung goes display crazy: H03 pico projector, SyncMaster PX2370 LCD and more originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 May 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG Display may want to be more careful where it aims those patent lawsuits next time, after a dispute it kicked off with AUO has lead to a finding by a U.S. District court that it actually violated AUO’s patents and not the other way around. Say hello to patent Nos 6,778,160, 6,689,629, 7,125,157 and 7,090,506, covering “technologies help to improve response time, improve reliability of LCDs, solve the problem of defects in the displayed images, and provide a very compact structure useful for small handheld devices, respectively.” So far AUO is indicating that it will seek an injunction preventing LG from shipping its potentially infringing HDTVs, monitors, notebooks and even phones to the U.S, plus some other legal tough talk for good measure. After LG’s almost inevitable appeal this could drag out for years and/or be resolved in a sudden alliance of cross licensing so while there still may be time to grab that Chocolate Touch you’ve been eyeing, we’d keep a casual eye on LE9500 shipping dates in case of slippage.

Continue reading AUO scores patent lawsuit decision over LG Display

AUO scores patent lawsuit decision over LG Display originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 May 2010 14:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve long had a thing for Pixel Qi and its energy sipping dual-mode LCDs with switchable backlight; displays that carve out a niche between traditional LCDs hungry for power and long living e-paper displays. Unfortunately, even though Pixel Qi began to ramp production lines late last year, we still haven’t seen the displays shipping in any retail products. Turns out that while the screens have been made available in some “specialized products that aren’t sold in stores yet,” Pixel Qi’s manufacturer of choice ran into some snags that slowed down deployments. That seems set to change according to a new blog post by CEO Mary Lou Jepsen. Manufacturing has now ramped to the schedule and scale required to meet “strong pull from the some of the largest computer companies in the world.” Mary Lou also tells us that Pixel Qi’s DIY display kit partner will be announced shortly and that it has “wider viewing angle technology” coming in the fall that should help rectify one of Pixel Qi’s weaknesses. So yeah, good news all around, but we’ve heard these promises before and still don’t have product in hand.

Pixel Qi manufacturing delays fixed, ready for ‘some of the largest computer companies in the world’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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They might officially be targeting the lower end of business budgets, but a quick peek at the attractive stylings of Lenovo’s ThinkPad Edge and Dell’s Vostro V13 would suggest that both have no shortage of consumer market appeal. So, for the sake of differentiating between these two thin-and-light machines, Lenovo has provided us with one of its torture test videos. Subjecting the V13 and Edge to (hopefully identical) pressure at varying points across the LCD lid, this procedure assesses the robustness of each machine’s screen design. In spite of lacking all the fancy metals present in its elder ThinkPad siblings, the Edge comes through the test unscathed and begging for more, whereas the V13 … well, it doesn’t. Skip past the break to see the hideously disfigured LCD that resulted from its visit to the Lenovo labs.

Continue reading ThinkPad Edge beats Vostro V13 in LCD stress test (video)

ThinkPad Edge beats Vostro V13 in LCD stress test (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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