While the overall issue has not yet been acknowledged by Palm, so far today there are eight pages of discussion over at the Precentral forums, where most of the affected users report similar circular distortion at the bottom of the Pre's otherwise sharp-looking screen.

At the EverythingPre forums there are similar complaints, each regarding the bottom area of the screen.

From our brief foray over to the forums, it appears as though some Sprint stores are aware of the issue, and have been exchanging the spot-plagued handsets for new ones, if stock allows. Some of the photo "evidence" is a little more compelling than others, although there does appear to be something faint at the bottom of the screen in a few images. Be warned though that some of the "distortion" has been ID'd by users as a normal part of the background design.

Are any of you new Palm Pre owners experiencing any burnout or spottiness? Do tell, one way or the other. [Precentral, Everything Pre via Laptop Mag]

Here are a couple of the more jaw-dropping excerpts:

Most of the problems pointed to as the cause of the epidemic of Red Rings of Death showed up way before launch, naturally:

In an Aug. 30, 2005 memo, the team reported overheating graphics chip, cracking heat sinks, cosmetic issues with the hard disk drive and the front of the box, under-performing graphics memory chips from Infineon (now Qimonda), a problem with the DVD drive, and other things.

The test machines were not properly debugged, due to an ill-advised cost-cutting initiative that shaved $2 million from $25 million paid to Cimtek, a test machine maker in Canada. The Microsoft team decided not to pay the consulting fee to Cimtek to build, manage and debug the test machines. Sources familiar with the matter said there were only about 500 test machines at the time of launch, a third of the 1,500 needed.

“There were so many problems, you didn’t know what was wrong,” said one source of the machines. “The [test engineers] didn’t have enough time to get up and running.”

The shortages at launch were in fact largely a product of the Xbox 360's low yields—in Spring 2006, this was the situation:

Microsoft had more than 500,000 defective consoles that sat in warehouses. They were either duds coming out of the factory or they were returned boxes, according to inside sources. The yield was climbing, but far too slowly. The company stood by its statement that returns were within “normal rates for consumer electronics products.”

At that time, the yield rate was still only "an abysmal 50 percent on the first pass. When the bad machines were reworked within the factory, the yield went up to 75 percent –- hardly acceptable." It's gotten better now, but still not amazing. As of the beginning of 2008, it's still only 85 percent—meaning for every 100 Xbox 360s produced, 15 don't work.

The Falcon revision, which used smaller 65nm chips and had a bunch of other tweaks, like more expensive, better quality heatsinks, alleviated some of the problems, as well as made them cheaper to produce—as many had suspected with their introduction. The latest, the Jasper board, takes that a step further, which Takahashi reports is what allowed them to steeply cut console prices last week.

All of this is just a small cut of Takahashi's dense, extremely well-reported feature. If you own an Xbox 360, you owe it to yourself to read. [Venture Beat]

He says that he had 3G disabled, no push, and the screen set to lock after a minute—so the phone shouldn't have been active. It's definitely an anomaly we haven't heard of before, if this report is legit. Has anyone else noticed their phone getting uncomfortably warm? [Mac Rumors via Gearlog - Thanks Robert!]

The defects span across eight models. Sony is expecting around 4,000 cameras to be defective and they will be offering free repairs. Oddly enough, Sony is not expecting this to affect it's yearly earnings.

Jump to see if your model is affected.

Remember, these were only cameras sold between September 2003 and January 2005. The models are the DSC-F88, DSC-M1, DSC-T1, DSC-T11, DSC-T3, DSC-T33, DSC-U40 and the DSC-U50. – Travis Hudson

Sony fins defect in Cyber-shot digital cameras [Reuters]

Crecente discovered that Nintendo doesn't warranty physical damage, but they will take a look at this specific case. Basically they ship you out a UPS label, you ship it to them. They check to see if the damage was misuse and repair if it was determined to not be from misuse. So if it is busted, they will likely fix it. If they don't, let's revolt! We are in need of a good revolt, it's been a while. – Travis Hudson

Nintendo Capitulates, Offers Free Repairs for Cracked DS Lites [Kotaku]

On the positive side, even when a DS lite got chewed nearly beyond recognition by a wayward dog, Nintendo has been showing its goodwill with generous customer service. Will Nintendo extend that generosity to remedy a defect that seems to be affecting such a large percentage of its users? Or is this just a sampling error? – Charlie White

14 Percent of DS Lites Have Cracked Hinges? [Kotaku]

Apparently the culprit are Sony CCD sensors that were packaged in epoxy, which is a lower-cost alternative to more expensive ceramic packaging. The epoxy packaging may lead to moisture and the defects don't show up until years later due to heat and humidity. Word is that Sony will be paying for the repairs on all the cameras regardless of manufacturer — which is certainly a credit to them, but considering the sheer number of cameras this defect affects, Sony could potentially be losing a bunch of money over this.

Here's the list of service advisories from the manufacturers:
Canon advisory
Konica-Minolta advisory
Fujifilm advisory
Sony advisory

Defective Digital Cameras: Sony, Fuji, Konica Minolta and Canon [Retrothing]
Digital Camera Failures [Slashdot]