Hey, folks. You may have heard that a few Kindle units have trouble refreshing in direct sunlight. My unit was one of those, and Amazon cheerfully and quickly sent a replacement. The trouble I ran into was an extended spate of cloudiness so I couldn’t test my new unit. I tried holding the old one up to various bright lights, none of which worked, until I tried a bathroom heat lamp. So if you are unable to test your screen due to cloudiness, but have access to a heat lamp of some variety, try turning pages or sleeping the Kindle while holding it up near the lamp. The effect isn’t quite as pronounced as with real sunlight, but it’s still obvious, especially if you cover part of the image with a piece of paper.My replacement seems to work fine.In many forums, people have assumed that UV light is the culprit in the sun fading issue, but this lamp discovery leads me to believe that it’s not UV, but IR or infrared light that causes the trouble. Sunlight and heat lamps pump out buckets of IR light — that’s what makes them feel hot on the skin. Indeed, I saw no fade at all when trying the same experiment with a bright fluorescent bulb, which are known to put out UV light to some degree.I’d love to know more about the mechanism behind this problem, and why it only happens on some screens.

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