I have two of these; one has been in storage in my unheated garage and the other in a desk drawer for the last several months. Both of them are exhibiting significant degradation of the display, along with this viscous fluid that's coming out of the seam between the rear cover and the frame of the tablet.

Now before anybody jumps to conclusions, no, neither of these laptops have ever been exposed to liquids; I've been all through them both and there's no external explanation for this to be happening.

And the thing is, I'm not the only one who's had this happen to them on this tablet. There's a whole thread over on the Acer forums of people who've had their laptops do the same thing.

Acer Iconia (W510P) Display Issue — Acer Community

I cleaned up the exterior of the laptop before I thought to take pictures, so I don't have photos of liquid that leaked out. It did clean up fairly easily with isopropyl alcohol.

My current working theory is that this is some sort of OCA that has broken down and returned to a liquid state. That's supported by what I see on the screen before powering it up; it looks like there are large air bubbles in the display.

You can see the bubbles in three corners of the screen. As you'll see from the following pictures, the display degradation is the same as what the people on the Acer forum experienced.

Once I got the back off of the tablet, I did find, as expected, more of the mystery liquid inside, concentrated in the lower right corner of the display.

Apparently there are a few older Dell laptops that seem to have the same problem, but in my internet searches I didn't find anyone who has had a definitive answer as to exactly what's going on here. Are there any experts on here who know what this is all about?

Obviously the displays on these tablets are shot, and unfortunately they're old and underpowered and realistically not worth repairing. However, I am going to go ahead and disassemble them and pull the LCDs to see if I can definitively pin the source to them, although I personally don't have any doubts myself.

This is going to be a bit of a slow process because I've decided to create some guides as I work, so it'll take longer than if I just tear into it.

Once I have the LCD out, I figure it can't hurt to see if it can be disassembled; who knows, maybe I can clean it and replace the OCA and effectively refurbish these defective screens.

Just as an update, I powered up the second W510 today and while it was messing around with updates I grabbed a photo of what its screen is doing.

⟐ Commented August 20, 2024 at 15:00 MST