iPod nano owners sue Apple over screen issues - Page 5

There is some truth to that, but there are easy ways around that. I think part of the limitations are that most cameras aren't binocular, like one eye would see from a slightly different angle, and another is that with the object in hand, it's easy to change the angle by hand to see the flaws, whereas a still image doesn't give a person that ability. Changing the lighting and the angle should help a lot.


I too wonder, curing or if the chemistry was off in some batches.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JeffDM
[B]I'm not saying you didn't read the thread....

No, you said

"maybe you should READ this thread before posting?"

I think at a whole other level than you do. I read the first few pages and likely more. What all you people did not say is how you quantify your testing of the plastic. I pointed out the simple thing to do is compare it to old iPods that did not receive this scratching concern. If it's the same then the case should go away. You are to dense to get my point.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by BushHater
[B]
Nope. franksargeant said that.


I was not making a personal attack against you, I don't see why I should get one from you. Seems another case of mistaken identity here.

Yeah, I didn't start my quote correctly. Fraknen whatever is dense.

Gents, Ladies,

I was alerted to some possibly scandalous material on this page of the thread (now the page before, cause y'all yak like a bunch of chickadees) I have not read the tread, I did not check for relevance; I simply put on my MAVAV hat and cleaned house.


Please: no questionable references to race, religion or sex. No naughty words.

Also, try to smile as little as possible, it indicates to outsiders that we may be having a good time and that just increases traffic and makes my job harder.

If you have an iPod put it away. Careful though - I had my keys in my pocket and it scr... er..

Kidding. Yeesh, sensitive aren't we. Take it with a grain of salt folks, and play nice.

Your loving mod,

Graham

Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha,....., ROTFLMAO!

Yes, you do think on another level, perhaps a LOWER level?

Please refer to post #113 (where I mentioned testing methods (ASTM/ISO)) and relative metrics, then post #128 (where I reiterate post #113), and finally post #150 (where again I mentioned ASTM/ISO standards bodies, provided links to said sites, and posed a question as to my thoughts on the appropriate test(s), and if anyone was interested (asked me), I would pursue it further (I have access to the ASTM specifications)). I also had several other posts going into some (albeit) brief details on modulus, strength, hardness, etcetera. BTW, hardness in and of itself can sometimes be a misleading indicator of the wear and strength properties of a material, seeing as the chemical composition (principally additives) can give misleading results when trying to infer the wearability and strength of said material. It is the specificity of the test method (in this case a relatively low pressure wear/abrasion test with fabric materials (clean and/or impregnated with grit common to the environments under considration), and somewhat more severe tests with discrete objects (i. e. a metal tool with an profile similar to things like coins and keys)) that is most important in doing a relative comparison (i. e. replicating the insitu environmental conditions).

Hmmm, I didn't think about the chemistry being off by batches - that could be the issue, too.

Does anybody know if Apple buys the plastic front ready-cast, or if they make it themselves? If ready-cast, it could be a supplier issue, and Apple might need a longer time to investigate that...

Ho, Ho! Methinks this BushHater is a troll! Anybody that would put --hater-- into their online handle (much less identify themselves primarily as such!) must be purely troll! Doesn't sound as if he's had much contructive to say...

Guilty as charged, I didn't mean to incur the wrath of the moderator(s), it won't happen again, I guess my attempt at humor crossed at least two of the three aforementioned subject areas (or is it 3 out of 4)? I guess I'll go reread the AI TOS, Its been a while! BTW, I didn't know we had a mom in the house (I hope I didn't just cross over the last of the aforementioned subject areas, did I)?

I don't know, hard to tell, whomever they are, they don't seem to have reached puberty yet?

Guys.. I just felt I should point something "constructive" out. But it seems the density of several in here is very high. Maybe you should get the hardness of your heads tested.

After all your talk about this issue (150 posts or whatever), I could not believe the obvious was not stated. To just compare the strength/hardness of the older iPods to the newer one. There are companies that do these sorts of tests, no biggy here. Apple should do it and release the results. You can talk all you want about what material is used, were it could go wrong, how to test it Yadda yadda. Don't matter. What matters is how it compares to what Apple has sold in the market in the past, since that apperently does not have the same issue. If it comes out the same, take your results to court, if not, find out where the problem is and fix it and say sorry as you exhange them. Discusion (should be) is over! That is all I was saying and I don't believe anyone else put it that way.

I'm only pointing out the obvious. Something that I thought would have been brought up in the first few posts because of the genuises in here. Laugh if you want, if you can't understand my points, skip them and read ahead my friend. I am just a guy who posted the above and then got attacked for not reading the posts, I guess franksarg can't understand English. What a welcome from ya'll!

As for my "handle" it's my small way to state my dissaproval of your moronic leader, that I have no doubt you voted for.

Let's see now, the article was posted on a Friday, I was returning home from a business trip at that time (arrived early Saturday morning), so didn't read this thread (and other forums elsewhere) until Saturday afternoon. Also, I'm usually not one for "brain fart" responses, I usually like to "sleep on it" before posting, and I also prefer to read what others are thinking before posting. You also have to consider the frequency of posts (high initially, lower frequency with time). Finally, consider the direction threads take, here it started as mostly pro-Apple (I was also of this opinion initially, but upon some reflection, and reading other forums, I slowly changed my view, to one of (hopefully) objective analysis), I believe the tone has changed somewhat, to perhaps a neutral position. Considering all this, I believe I WAS the first to mention (someone correct me if I'm wrong) ASTM/ISO wear tests on the nano screen (post #113, on Sunday morning (I believe) CDT). You just might try to READ IT! BTW, my last post suggests that hardness testing, in and of itself, may result in a false positive, the test method needs to be specific to the insitu environmental conditions, in this case a wear/abrasion test method is more appropriate. Also, do you really think Apple would release test results into the public domain (they may have to in court, as a matter of public record), seeing as they are currently in litigation?

As for this statement,

I am just a guy who posted the above and then got attacked for not reading the posts, I guess franksarg can't understand English.

what can I say, you obviously didn't care to read post #113 OR my reply to one of your brilliant posts (post #166). As for my ability to understand English, what can I say, at least I try to spell my words correctly (which means I tend to edit them several times (afterall, I are a engineer)). It would appear that English is not your native language? Is it French perhaps (considering your last comment, which isn't allowed BTW)?

Call me skeptical, but there are three big factors that make me think this scratching situation can be NO WORSE than isolated to the batch of plastic in the affected nanos:

1) Previous iPods used the SAME material. My little 40Gb-iPod-in-the-cargo-pocket experiment the other night revealed no change from the previous condition. If the iPods have all used the same materials, what other than a manufacturing anomoly could cause this? If it is a manufacturing anomoly, how is that worthy of a class-action lawsuit requesting a portion of the profits?

2) There have been no pictures, videos, charcoal reliefs, crop circles, or anything else that shows me that the scratches -- which I acknowledge look ugly on a black nano -- make the screen specifically difficult to read or completely unreadable. Ugly is one thing. Disfunctional is another. If the nano is scratched so bad you can't read it, you WILL be able to pick that up with a camera.

3) There are people who can put their nano in a cotton pocket and have no problems and others who have significant problems. To me, if the "bad batch" is affected by a soft cotton cloth, the plastic must be so soft that you could imprint your thumb in it and the dent or thumbprint would remain.

Dude. Three words. Breate.

However, you do raise a good point, someone SHOULD test the hardness of the old Mini to a nano, and likewise a 4g? ipod to the 5g.

Anyways, do it without the moronic and dense and disapporoval please. A lot of us dont actually LIVe in america, though our Prime Minister may be so far up G.W ass its coming out the other side, we are still governed by a completly different government.

Hmm, just a thought, if this already hasn't been mentioned, but perhaps the polycarbonate coating wasn't applied to one (or several) batches of nanos? This would (perhaps) explain the discrepancy in end user reports. Stuff like that does occasionally happen at the factory. Is there any way to detect the coating by eyeballing the nano (it does look rather "shiny" in the Ars Technica photos, or conversely would the underlying plastic have a "duller" appearance)? Or perhaps the thickness of the coating was less than the specifications, or the coating properties themselves were under the specifications, or applied incorrectly? I think I've already alluded to the possibility of substandard plastics themselves (as have others).

There is still no picture showing a nano with a screen rendered unreadable because of "normal" use, people trying to explain that are comming up with somewhat esotheric theories...

First there is this guy saying that since the scratches are 3d and a camera is 2d they wouldn't appear on camera...Oh please... I guess that if you close one of your eye the screen magically becomes readable? If someone makes a picture to show how the screen is unreadable, he will find the right angle and light to show scratches, it shouldn't be hard at all.

You make it sound like the problem is like ghosts or UFO's that cannot be photographed.

On a more concrete side, Steve Berman, which is the attorney leading the nano class-action against Apple, is friend with Microsoft.

Berman defended Microsoft in at least 50 class action suits (that was in 2000, he did more for them since then). He defended MS against the government, and groups of people claiming that MS had a flawed product (Windows). Don't expect this guy to ever lead a suit against MS, as they are his friends.

I'm sure many people and companies are now ready to twist the facts because they've had enough with Apple's success. MS had big plans to shove us TPM down the throat using music DRM as an entry point, and now they can't do that, how sad...

Yes the nano can be scratched because of normal use, like just about every piece of plastic. Yes some people may be pissed off about their iPods eastethics. But no I don't believe the screen can become unreadable after only a few weeks of normal use. Please prove otherwise

Is this really true? Because if it is, this "class action" suit will probably get tossed with Xtreme prejudice... and Apple will save 100s of 1,000s of $$ in legal costs. !

No, what I was suggesting was that perhaps, just perhaps, actually SEEING a scratched nano (first hand, up close, in real time), just might, give someone a better understanding of the validity of these claims than a picture would ever convey. But let's say that there were 100's (or 1000's) of images showing various clean and scratched nano's, and let's say that they showed text and images, as an A versus B comparison (i. e. clean versus scratched), granted you probably can see the text reasonably, but the images, I'm not so sure that this would be as esthetically pleasing? Maybe this is what is upsetting certain owners?

On the Berman thing, when I first heard about the suit, the first thing that popped into my mind was the motives of the lawyers. Greed, you bet. Fighting for the consumer, you bet (but I believe that self interest is a greater motivator). But I also was thinking someone who disliked the iPod franchise (i. e. success) might be more willing to pursue litigation. I'm rather surprised it took someone this long to dig up some dirt on the lawyers! I do find it interesting that someone who defended a de facto monopoly, is now prosecuting a de facto monopoly (maybe de facto is too strong a term but I think that you get what I'm driving at), but than again I guess their still defending Microsoft? Can anyone smell bias?

It seems to me that if some pods had a problem with exploding screens, not all of the screens would shatter. Some would crack somewhat but not shatter. Some cracks would appear as tiny scratches. It all depends on how careful a person was with their iPod nano. Apple has already admitted a defect. But they were careful to minimize the problem, at least publicly. They were also careful to separate the two issues. I believe we are letting them slide too easily. I don't believe those issues can't be so easily separated. I believe that at least some of the scratches are minor stress fractures in disguise. Is this at least possible?

i agree with almost everything you are saying and love the "handle." however, lets not assume that all americans voted for bush.

on a side note, there has been some serious plastics/polymer dick-slinging going on in this thread... calm down.

Oh no please, now you try to take this into a PowerMac Cube reference?

The LCD screen is two sheets of glass, sandwiched between plastic polarizer filters, on top of that is the transparent polycarbonate plastic that covers all the front of the unit. Are you seriously thinking that a screen can break just a little and then produce scratches that are clearly on the surface of the plastic?

If a screen breaks, even just a little, it will be clear that the screen is broken. Apple will replace those units, no questions asked. It only affected 0.1% of the first batch. Every single iPod competitors have similar fail rates, just like most consumer electronic products. But since the iPod is in the spotlight, problems like that are more easily reported.

You clearly don't seem to grasp how plastic behaves. Stress on a plastic sheet from under or the sides cannot produce scratches only on the surface. If the screen cracks in any way, it will be obvious.


Yes it's true, really true, just read the news about it, you can actually find quotes from him in news about the nano suit.

Go on the website of the law firm that is suing and you'll find Steve Berman.http://www.hagens-berman.com/fronten...il&iStaffId=10

Here is a quote from the page:

More recently, Microsoft recognized Mr. Berman's experience and expertise when the company retained him to be part of the core national team representing the company in antitrust class actions arising from Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact in the Department of Justice antitrust case against the company.

For the 50+ times he defended MS, I found this on the newsgroups:

http://groups.google.com/group/misc....e24802601594da

Mr. Berman made his fame on very grass-root class-actions, like pro-environment suits and defending AOL consumers. Still, like many attorneys, he also worked on the "other side", when he defended MS for example against the DOJ and consumers.

I guess that since he's not a judge, it's "ok" in the judiciary system...

Could Apple countersue the law firm for defamation?

Yes it's true, really true, just read the news about it, you can actually find quotes from him in news about the nano suit.

<snip interesting quotes and links>

For the 50+ times he defended MS, I found this on the newsgroups:

Wow. I guess Mr. Berman "made his bones" and isn't kidding around...

Mr. Berman made his fame on very grass-root class-actions, like pro-environment suits and defending AOL consumers. Still, like many attorneys, he also worked on the "other side", when he defended MS for example against the DOJ and consumers.

I guess that since he's not a judge, it's "ok" in the judiciary system...

Could Apple countersue the law firm for defamation? [/B][/QUOTE]



I don't know, but it's an interesting twist on an emerging story about Gates v Jobs (and those who hate/envy either one or both), the nature of litigation here and in the EU... thanks for the added insight.

I couldn't help but notice there were no Nano/Rockr ads in this week's New Yorker magazine... wonder if Jobs was informed the centerpiece article would be about Mr. Bill and His Wondrous Philanthropy. Like TIME said on last week's cover: he always seems to know what's "Next"!

I doubt the lawsuit will affect sales during the upcoming Xmas gift-buying rush. Whaddya think?

............I doubt the lawsuit will affect sales during the upcoming Xmas gift-buying rush. Whaddya think?....
i predict 10-15 million nanos sold worldwide for the october-december 2005 quarter

Yeah, I agree 100%, the Nano will sell like hotcakes, in fact I think I'll get one today! If anything, this issue should make people take better care of something they must see through!

Wow, I didn't realize they actually used GLASS in the Nano screen, you wouldn't have a link (or anything WRT small LCD construction) on this by any chance? If not, could you be a little more specific on the sandwich nature of the screen (i. e. you say two glass sheets sandwiched "between" plastic...), is it like PGGP or PGPGP (if you know what I mean, I'm really clueless on "small" LCD construction techniques (or "large" LCD construction techniques for that matter)). I'm assuming that there's a sheet of something (material?) in there that creates the pixel display (I think you know what I mean, the photons)? To me, since this is a composite (and given that glass (i. e. silica) has much less elongation than plastics), the glass will always fracture first (of course if the glass sheets are relatively thin and located close to the axis of stress symmetry (i. e. the neutral axis), then I guess it would be possible for the plastic to fail first (this get's into the specifics of the composite geometry (thickness of each layer, location of each in the sandwich, allowable stress of each material, brittleness (or conversely plasticity) of each material, etcetera))). Finally, on your last statement, I believe this to be fairly true for relatively thin plastics (however, I have seen relatively thin lighting panels with surface fractures (however, it has to be stressed (in bending) just right)), on thicker (clear) plastics, I've seen all kinds of surface fractures, at various length scales, the smallest of which (you could even call them "nano-fractures" ) give the surface a "hazy" appearance. Of course it depends on how brittle the plastic is and how the stress is applied.

I'm a little in a hurry so my reply will be shorter than I would want.

You should know that EVERY LCD panel uses GLASS to enclose the liquid crystal.

Hey, there's a podcast directly from CIJ's house, it's at 247nano.com, it sounds like he's drunk and singing;

10,000,000 iPod Nano's in the warehouse, 10,000,000 iPod Nano's,
I sold one now, it'll get scratched to hell, 9,999,999 iPod Nano's in the warehouse,
...

But seriously, I got one, 4GB, CompUSA only had white, but it was $50 off of MSRP, so I can't complain. Now I'll stick it in my pocket with some coins, keys, a handful of sand, and a dash of salt, and see what happens! BTW, I thought the class-action was already settled, but when I went to the mailbox, no check, wazzup with that anyway!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by franksargent
[B]

Hey, there's a podcast directly from CIJ's house, it's at 247nano.com, it sounds like he's drunk and singing;

Who's CIJ?

<wake me when it's ova>[COLOR=silver]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by someonelse
[B]


As Foghorn Leghorn would say "It's a joke son." There is no podcast (although there is a 247nano.com website (to my surprise)). You may know what the J stands for (somebody we all know and love), the other two letters are a sly reference to Hardball (6/3/05), where a reporter refers to one of Hardball's pundits as perhaps not being a law abiding citizen and not playing with a full deck of cards (neither of which I think are really true (or are they?)). The timing is of some significance, as it predated WWDC by a week or so and rumors were flying about the switch to MacTel, when most of the faithful were in denial (including myself), and perhaps many would have thought that the J man was indeed CI! I used the term in my first post on AI (6/5/05), I still use it occasionally, just to remind myself that with CIJ, anything is possible.

Thanks! You're very tuned in (& turned on!)

I may just check out that nanosite. When you're done vingling, please turn out the lights.

I just came back from a Mac user group. The person going over the recent news said that he had a nano that scratched, and Apple replaced it. One thing he claimed was that there was a stealth revision, where his new revision is actually slightly thicker than his friend's, the extra thickness being a scratch resistant overlay on the faceplate. It was my first time attending this group, I really don't know this person, so take it however you will.

Really? I'm tempted to call "bullshit" on that one. But how would i know either way?

Okay. Last night I saw a scratched nano at Best Buy and have a little better feel of what you all are talking about:

The issue has something to do with the coating on the nano's plastic faceplate, not the plastic itself. I've seen computer screens -- and even my glasses! -- that have had the same issue. Somehow the coating on the surface gets scratched or chipped away; when it does, it creates a bit of an irridescent effect.

I wouldn't say it made the nano unreadable, but I could see how it would be incredibly annoying after much of the screen has had the coating compromised. As I mentioned earlier, I have a spot on my glasses that part of the anti-reflective coating has been scratched or chipped away and has made kind of the same effect. It looks like there's a smudge in it. While I can still see through that spot, the consistency of vision between coating/no coating is quite noticeable.

My conclusion: There is a problem with that uber-thin coating on the nanos. I'm guessing it didn't get applied correctly OR even that said coating was not applied to previous iPods even though the plastic below it is the same as all the others. If the coating is new to the nano, Apple might be wise to just drop it from the production process unless they can guarantee a better end result.

I might try to go back to Best Buy with my digital camera and sneak a few snapshots, though I agree that it will be hard to fully capture the effect. Now that you've read this post, go back and re-read what I've written before and notice the difference. I really do "get it" now, though I think EVERYONE here has done a piss-poor job of articulating the problem.

totally. all you l33t muthas (this means you franksargent) that are material scientists, let's get a scien-ta-ti-fic characterisation of the problem here rather than endless conjecture

I'll try. I did buy one yesterday, (BTW it wasn't $50 off MSRP, it was $50 off of their $50 markup, (i. e. it was MSRP afterall)) so now I have some first hand appreciation for the proported scratching complaints. My first observations of the Nano are that the backlit screen and contrast of the character display, makes it very hard for me to believe ANYONE would have trouble reading the display under almost any condition (of course if your outside (as I was today) in bright sunlight even a NEW Nano is difficult to read), short of taking a piece of SANDPAPER and doing SERIOUS damage to the screen (i. e. sorry, NOT going to happen). My second impression is this thing IS tiny, by that I mean specifically the screen, what's the pixel count on this sucker (and PPI for that matter)? I mean really, I'd like to look at photos on a larger display than this (regardless of condition), I won't be using this as a photo iPod, that's for sure. My third impression is this is one KICKASS portable music player (someday soon the word iPod will be in Webster's Dictionary)!

I also did some quick and dirty (QAD) tests on portable devices; 2 TFT screens (I think they were TFT, I haven't really kept up with display technologies, as you may have guessed by now) and 4 LCD screens while there (on an 2G iPod mini, a 5G (video) iPod, an HP LCD portable device, and another manufacturer's LCD portable device (name escapes me)). As VL-Tone has pointed out, LCD screens have a couple of glass layers, this tends to make them relatively very stiff (or hard), maybe I should have known this as I have a 21" LCD monitor (with the polycarbonate coating the hardness (I'm guessing) probably exceeds 80 on the Shore D scale for these small displays). Conversely the TFT screens are relatively soft (i. e. no glass) with perhaps an equivalent hardness of 50 on the Shore A scale (it's definitely a few orders of magnitude softer than the LCD screens, at least the one's I sampled). I have 7 (polyurethane) samples that cover this range of hardnesses, but again I'm doing a touch test, no testing instruments were used here. So what did I do, I took a worn penny (relatively dull edge), placed it on its flat side, at an ~1:1 slope, applied moderate force (say 10 lbs, was the same force applied to each screen (all I can say is that I tried)), and dragged it an inch or so across each screen. NOT very scientific, but what the heck, its better than nothing. Anyway the test results are in; The HP and other manufacturer's LCD pretty much passed the penny test (I wiped the smudge marks off with my thumb), on the TFT's, because their so soft, you really can't get a "bite" into them so no marking occured, however on the iPods, I couldn't wipe the smudge marks off with my thumb (believe me I tried). BTW, I was in stealth mode in the store so no one saw me do the "tests." Remarks; remember this IS NOT a rigorous quantitative methodology, at best it is somewhat qualitative (i. e. QAD), also the force applied is over a finite surface area (sharp objects (smaller areas (i. e. grit)) would need less force for an equivalent applied pressure force)

Lessons learned: The obvious, take care of your Nano, cover it with something, ANYTHING, stick it in a CLEAN pocket (no keys, no coins, no grit, etcetera), preferably a shirt pocket, gosh this thing is TINY and THIN, use your head, when you sit down with this thing in your pants pocket, you're appling all kinds of forces to this device (unless your wearing hip-hop prison pants, of course). As far as I'm concerned, I'm going for the one cent solution, it came with a clear piece of plastic tape for shipping purposes (which I left over the screen area), I plan to get some clear plastic packing tape, and apply as necessary, thus eliminating scratches to the screen itself (BTW, you have to look carefully to even notice the clear tape, IMHO). Eventually I'll get some form of case/cover/skin/tube (whatever).

EDIT - I just wanted to add that what CosmoNut saw was similar to what I saw after the scratch "tests." I actually didn't read his entire message before I posted this reply. In fact the penny tests produced an ~3/16" wide discoloration (I still like the word smudge though, it more accurately describes what I saw) which was easily seen with the iPods OFF, I don't know how easy I would have been able to see the smudge marks with the iPods on WITH the backlit screen. Also, I mentioned how difficult it was to see the display (even backlit) in direct sunlight, but even outside, in the shade (given it was sunny), I found it diffucult to read the display WHILE backlit. My feeling is that the ambient lighting, as well as whether the screen is backlit, both play important roles in people's preceptions WRT scratches/smudges. If what CosmoNut is saying is true, actually breaking through the protective coating (or even intact but delaminated), this would be a serious problem, and easily seeable.

thank you franksargent, that is a very informative wrap-up to this issue. seems like you have identified several areas in which visual dissatisfaction with the nano may arise...

i think apple decided to go "blanket replacement" policy on the ipod screen thing because it would save time and trouble (and money) really characterising and zoning in on what exactly the issues are.

Well, we'll see. I think I'll take mine to the local apple retail shrine and see what they say. I'll report back next week. (probably Monday evening)

Ok I got my nano yesterday (Wow it is tiny!) It's a 2GB white model

It seems my unit was not totally brand-new... (Yikes!) The round tape patch that holds the package closed was obviously already opened at least one time, and one corner of the screen protector was peeled off a little. It was also already named when it appeared in iTunes. Anyway it works and was like new so I didn't return it (it's a local store in Montreal, not an Apple Store).

I made the only scratch on it. Just to see I tried to make a scratch with my thumbnail. I had to press very hard to make a very thin smaller than a hair line. The thing is I cannot see the scratch today, it vanished (!).

I didn't travel with it yet and I didn't put it in a pocket so I don't know for the "normal" use part.

I still not believe that scratches from 3 weeks of normal use can render the display unreadable.

Anyway most scratches can be removed with Brasso or some other plastic polishing substance. Deep scratches only happen when you put very hard things like keys and other metallic objects in the same pocket, so just don't do that...

Now isn't that a kick, almost sounds like an elastomer. What you saw is something called compression set, it shows up for all plastics/elastomers (if I'm not mistaken), under cyclic loading, and is commonly referred to as a hysteresis loop. On a load-deflection curve the loading curve is to the left of the unloading curve, and there is a gap (or offset) at the bottom of the unloading curve (zero axis), this is the compression set. Of course if you yield the plastic, it will never rebound completely. Apparently your fingernail didn't abrade the coating, but was enough applied pressure force to cause the aforementioned compression set, it just took a while to recover, after all plastic by definition is a visco-elastic material (longer duration loads do incur a permenant compression set (essentially it creeps (i. e. the visco part of visco-elastic))).

I recently did an elastomer design where we used polyurethane elastomers (the same kind you find in inline skate wheels) for compression and shear loads, that's where the 7 durometer samples I mentioned in a previous post came from. The "structure" must support an M1A1 tank (note that these elastomers are a relatively minor, but necessary feature of the design). In my evaluation, I had the manufacturer's nominal values for compression set, however these values were derived from an ASTM test that didn't meet our load pattern, so I was concerned about minimizing the effect of compression set, if at all possible (we also have some other interesting dynamic loads (for me anyway)). So I did a QAD with a vice and the 7 samples and loaded for the duration expected for the tank. All 7 samples showed compression set to varying degrees, however the 75-95 durometer (Shore A) range, rebounded (almost) completely (i. e. before the next expected tank cycle (in fact, within a few seconds)). The softer elastomers took several minutes to recover completely, while the harder elastomers took a minimum of several hours (don't know exactly when they did recover completely (i. e. sometime overnight)). I thought for sure that I had "failed" the harder elastomers, but to my surprise, the next day all that you could see was some very minor imprints from the vice.

EDIT - You did get me to thinking about the Nano some more. I don't dare to apply pressure (of any kind) to the screen, so did you do this directly on the screen, or away from it? I just did a couple of fingernail tests myself, I'll look at them tomorrow (however my fingernail was somewhat "ragged" so the marks look permanent, at this time). BTW, upon further examination, the Nano's front face is completely covered with ~1/32" to ~1/40" of clear plastic, then the white/black plastic is below this. Also, in the screen area the LCD screen face itself appears to be ~1/40" to ~1/50" recessed from the clear plastic layer (it's hard to measure exactly, as you have to look at it from a fairly shallow angel (and at that angle, given whatever the index of refraction is, it distorts the true thickness significantly, IMHO)). I don't know if this is an air gap or filled with more clear plastic (this photo http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0908/nano29.jpg clearly shows that the LCD screen is bigger then the cutout in the white/black plastic)? It sure would be nice to see a detailed teardown (photo) of the inside of the screen area.

Thanks, for the additional insight!

Maybe you like MicroSoft better?