Pixel-style display woes on your shiny new X? Perfectly normal, says Apple Is the technology press operating double standards when it comes holding Apple to account? Owners of the £999 iPhone X are reporting issues with the OLED display similar to those experienced by Pixel owners. Only this time Apple is brazening it out. While Google promised fixes and software patches, Apple says you're going to …
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"Funny that they waited until after launch day sales were racked up before they tell us this"
I couldn't say it any better.
"Oh yes.... and a foot operated button on the floor to dip the head lights."
I have an old Alfa Romeo Berlina.. it has a foot switch to operate both the Headlight dipping and the windscreen washer , some times it's like doing a tap dance while steering through bends and changing gears
Manual chokes did have one advantage. The first bit of travel only adjusted the idle speed so in slow moving traffic I found I could use the choke to give my right foot a rest.
But the day my Metro's cable failed and would no longer lock in position wasn't fun. I had to negotiate rush hour traffic and keep holding the choke out when I came to a stop. And as I remember it was to the right and below the steering wheel so I had to stay kind of hunched over.
Ah that Metro. It's other memorable moment was when I was caught in a traffic jam on the M6 in the outside lane on a hot summer's day. I watched in horror as the temperature gauge began to climb. Fearing the embarrassment of an expired car in lane 3 I turned the heater on full blast and opened the windows. Still the gauge climbed. As it approached the red line I closed my eyes..and there was a sudden whoooooosh from under the bonnet as the fan kicked in and the gauge dropped straight back down to normal.
Oh how I laughed. Hysterical relief I think :)
> ...a foot operated button on the floor to dip the head lights.
> I actually thought that was a brilliant idea, and I'd love to see it "reinvented"...
Sadly we are going the other direction. My car goes all nanny state on you if your high beams are on and it thinks some street light in the distance could be another car.
"I'll take your manual choke and raise you an odd lever to cut off the diesel supply to stop the engine."
I actually liked Diesels where you could loosen the drive belt, take the battery away, disconnect the alternator, replace the alternator with a new one and reconnect the battery all with the motor still running.
Bukh FTW.
Though you would need to be an ape to turn over a 2l diesel
The hand-cranked diesels I remember had a lever to open a valve so there was no compression, you cranked to get the flywheel spinning and then closed the valve. At that point it hopefully burst into life, belching black smoke as it burnt off the overfuelling.
My car has a choke. And a foot operating main beam switch. It doesn’t have fog lights, hazard lights or an intermittent wash wipe. But, on the other hand, it has got half a million miles on the clock - a number that, I suspect, most modern cars will struggle to reach before succumbing to terminal bit-rot. Not all old technology is bad. Some of it is very good indeed.
@404 Nevertheless, I’m prepared to bet good money that, in ten years time, what remains of your car will be a 4’x4’x4’ cube. 228 thousand miles is half way there and, sad to say, I don’t think it’ll be the (repairable) oily bits that let you down. It’ll be all the electronics for the ECU, gearbox, cruise control, safety systems, navigation and so forth. I sincerely hope that I’m wrong - it’s good to read that there are still people who look after their stuff carefully but (shakes head in despair)
We live in a disposable world now.
Actually, already planned on plumbing a Chevy 350 with a 5 speed trans in there with a carb and ripping out most of the electronics when the 2.9l dies. Nag doesn't have electric windows or navigation, don't use cruise control (vacuum cruise control is available if wanted). Airbag and antilocks (hate the bastards anyway) may be challenging.
I do want to see 500k miles on this engine - this was my first (and last) brand new vehicle purchase. You're not kidding though, I get looks sometimes at the tire place when they find out how long I've had it - I'm the exception evidently, not the rule.
There was an entertaining Radio 4 programme on recently concerning self driving cars, in which several pundits enthused about how cars increasingly have features you find on your phone and would become more like phones. I found myself wondering whether that meant after two years you could expect the manufacturer to stop providing updates, after which it would gradually go slower and slower while the fuel tank shrank and occasionally a passing billboard would hack it.
I'm guessing it's the substrate; LG use a polymer substrate and have screen issues, Samsung phones use a glass substrate. Samsung make the OLED panels for Apple. Whilst I can't immediately find which substrate Apple use, my assumption is that they've gone for the lighter, thinner polymer.
I noticed that my old LG G3 was showing screen burn-in when it was approaching 2yrs old.
I can see that happening on my 1 year old Samsung Galaxy S7, though this may not be because it is worse, and instead because I am more aware of the problem.
Never experienced burn-in on a TFT screen though. My old PC monitor's only problem is a dead pixel which it has had since new.
It won't matter.
It won't matter even if it acts just like a Samsung Phone, this is Apple we are talking about.
There will be a load of class action law suits being prepared right now.
Apple does not get things wrong (yeah right) so when they do they need to be punnished.
It is a pity that the only winners will be the scumbag lawyers that bring the case.
Just had a good hard look at my trusty old Nexus 6 (which had its own burn-in rumours back when it was released), and I can look at in from pretty much any angle until it gets so shallow the front glass just reflects the room, and I can't find any burn in on the OLED either.
TBH, I really should just find a good quality replacement battery for it and use it for another 3 years!
Massive 2560x1440 screen, dual front facing speakers, wireless charging and a headphone jack...
Can't see any burn in on my Note 4. Even though I am now paranoid, and have changed the browser settings to display full screen, so as to remove the clock etc from permanent display - but no actual sign of burn in from the time display which has been up there for over two years until now.
Maybe if websites could all offer a choice of a black background (as dpreview.com) we would suffer less screen (and retina) burn.
The green shift, yes. But did wonder why I should be looking at my device sideways however... face on seems more natural.
Agh - someone had to mention sunlight visibility. Never a problem with my Lumia 1020. The magic on Windows Phone would automatically adjust the colours to improve the display. Worked really well.
Now I'm stuck with Android - can't believe it succeeded. If only MS marketing had removed their collected heads from their arses, we'd still have more OS choice.
The color (sic) balance feature is an innovative technology to enhance the consumers experience by ensuring it is held at the correct angle at all times.
Additionally what you are witness is not screen burn, but historical page augmenting, where you get not only to see the current displayed, but also images you viewed previously, all at the same time.
Cobranded... OK, so Pixel's don't have any other sticker on them except Google's, but we still know exactly which mobile company made the phones each time.
The Pixel construction is still miles closer to the Nexus line model than Apple's contracting various Chinese manufacturers for 10 million units and a dozen deaths please.
"This is a characteristic of OLED and is normal behavior"
"Horizontal lines: The vertically striped Aperture Grille is stabilized by wires. The Aperture Grille allows more light to pass through the screen giving the Trinitron CRT more color and brightness. The resulting horizontal lines are a trademark of genuine Sony Trinitrons."
No, no, no: the problem is quite obviously with "viewing angle hue shift and god awful Pentile layout." because the poster knows better and can make better screens with his toaster… Obviously, Apple's geniuses could easily develop better screens themselves but they're too bus at the moment adding notches to them that people didn't know they needed until now…
"So, where are the complaints of Samsung's handsets?"
My Galaxy S4 (still going strong, I expect to get a few more years out of it) developed a bit of burn-in that I noticed a year or so ago. It's noticeable and a little annoying, but not catastrophic. If, however, it had developed the issue within a year or two of my getting the phone, then I would have considered that an unacceptable fault.
For years we’ve heard about the benefits of OLED and why, thanks to this wonder-tech, we should all be buying Samsung or LG phones. Now, as soon as Apple starts to use it, it turns out that we all misunderstood and that the technology is, in fact, complete crap - akin to an old TV tube.
So which is it? Is OLED crap? Should we all be sticking to good old LCD? And what are the benefits of this apparently ill-conceived technology supposed to be anyway?
The advantages of OLED stem from pixels being lit individually, so the blacks are perfect black, and displaying a small amount of text on a black screen uses very little battery.
LG OLED televisions have mostly solved issues with burn-in by tweaking the control circuitry. The OLED TVs are just beautiful, but cost about 4x as much as an equivalent 4K television set. Their phones, which use a polymer rather than glass substrate, evidently haven't.
The other advantage of OLED is that it allows for flexible displays. Samsung are promising to release a couple of such phones next year.
The major cause of 'Burn In' is the loss of the hardware home and navigation buttons. This gives the need to have an 'Always On' nav bar at the bottom of applications. Always the same buttons and same colour, resulting in the burn.
Having owned a Pixel XL for just over a year now, I have complained to Google (yes Google via the provider as their own solution was non existent) about the screen burn in.
Google requested that the provider immediately furnish me with a brand new, boxed handset and send the old one back to them. This has now happened twice, with the exact same outcome.
I understand that 'Screen Burn' is something that they cannot really do anything about due to the design, however id rather have the google handset as Google appear to know a little something about after sales care. (I was told that at any point in my two year contract, i could swap the unit for a new one if i had screen burn as the ombudsman now views the hardware as unfit for purpose)
Additionally in Android Oreo, the nav and home icons change colour depending on the colour of the app screen in the background. This should serve to save the overuse of particular pixel colours and should make the unit last a little longer.
Well, if that's "normal for OLED", then I don't want a "normal OLED" screen thanks.
The issues of burn-in are something that's literally NEVER affected modern hardware I've used (and even then, only on one ANCIENT monitor I have got some burn-in after 2-weeks of showing a bright logo, and even that's cleared now... [checks monitor he's using... yep... gone]).
Honestly, if "the best tech" involves screen-burn-in if I'm not careful, I'll have last year's screen tech with this year's processor, etc. please.
Otherwise forget it. We're supposed to be PROGRESSING here, with expensive devices sold to consumers, not beta-testing for OLED manufacturers.
Well, if that's "normal for OLED", then I don't want a "normal OLED" screen thanks.
Swings and roundabouts. LCD displays have lots of annoying issues too; blacks never quite being black, inconsistent backlighting being just two of the more annoying ones.
Plasma TVs, some tube TVs and OLED (I believe, though I haven't seen more than a couple in a shop) solve(d) the black and the backlighting issues but introduce others, notably burn-in.
We have several plasmas at work; one spent the first four months of its life playing a video game and despite being used for the five years since then to display a good variety of "normal" video, the burn-in is still evident.
Another played video for the first few months, then spent a year playing a slideshow where there was a lot of white/black border. When it went back to video the burn-in was obvious, but after a few months it reduced. A couple of years later and it's difficult to spot, unless you have an all-white image.
My 20-year-old widescreen Trinitron TV at home died almost exactly two years ago and the LCD that replaced it wasn't as much of an improvement as I'd sort of expected.
Early OLED suffered (I believe) from poor life of the blue LEDs; over a (relatively) short period of time (a few thousand hours) the output from the blue LEDs would reduce considerably more than that from the red and the green, leading to a colour shift that could only be corrected up to a certain point. I have no idea if they've solved that particular problem with current panels, but it sounds as if they haven't.
I have similar compromises with projectors. Working at a museum where displays are on for about 7½ hours a day, LCD projectors (where the image is projected through LCD shutters) just don't last more than three years. LCD panels and their associated dichroic colour filters have rated lifespans of maybe 8,000 hours and failures are horrid colour casts and colour blotches.
DLP projectors are much more robust, and I have single-chip units which have done well over 22,000 hours with hardly any maintenance and are old enough now that even were I to want to replace the colour wheels, potentially improving colour rendition and contrast, the spares are no longer available. Also at this age the DLP units start to have stuck pixels.
LCoS projectors are marginally better than LCD, but in our experience not significantly longer-lived.
BUT, when new, there is no doubt that the image from LCD (and particularly LCoS) is actually easier on the eye than that from DLP, though I have to admit here that I don't use any three-chip DLP systems and I am sensitive to the "rainbow effect" that I know other people can't see.
Nothing is perfect, unfortunately. You have to make your decision based on what is important to you. Personally I'm hoping that OLED lifespan improves within the next 5 to 7 years, which is when I expect to need to buy a new TV for home.
M.
OLED burn-in isn't permanent like CRT burn in of yore.. it can usually be scrubbed eventually.
It's also worth noting that the Reddit user with the dodgy phone hadn't been refused a replacement by Apple - because he hadn't yet tried. Some of the other Reddit users had some slight issues in specific circumstances (off angle, displaying 10% grey) but none as bad as the original poster. Most of them were wondering why he didn't just take it back for a replacement.
"OLED burn-in isn't permanent like CRT burn in of yore.. it can usually be scrubbed eventually."
As I understand it, it's permanent degradation of the LEDs. High brightness causes accelerated wear which is why people who only use them indoors may get much better life than people who use them outdoors in sunlight a lot. It was LCDs that recovered after a bit.
Have real bad burn-in
Just go to a Vodafone store and look at the S8 or S8 plus, it's horrendous. But they are on 24/7 with a red screen permanently in place.
My Note 4 I have had since it came out has no burn in whatsoever, but I'm not so sure about the newer models as they seem more prone to it?
Read the thread pointed to in the article. The reports are of a non-uniform black (changing from black to grey in a relatively smooth transition, top to bottom or bottom to top), for which you need to turn the brightness right down and view it in a darkened room for the effect to be visible.
Nothing like the Google problems, which can be seen in normal light and is obviously where the menu bar was displayed. Perfect? No, but not in the same ballpark.
Colour transition off axis was something they pointed out even before release (proudly, they claim to have reduced it below normal for OLED), so its not like that should have been a surprise for anyone either.
Even has the stupid pentile layout... So it shouldn't have issues better or worse than those phones. The Pixel 2 uses an LG POLED instead of Samsung AMOLED, so the problems on one aren't necessarily the same as the other.
Image retention is (eventually) an issue with OLED in general, along with off angle viewing color distortion. While Samsung did a lot to mitigate it with their next gen panels that first appeared on the Note 7 (which all reviewers said had the best display they'd ever seen, though that was largely forgotten once they started catching on fire) which is probably why Apple finally decided to take the plunge with OLED.
There are tradeoffs with any display technology, I am able to see a slight color shift for off angle viewing on my X, and just checked a friend's S8 and it is the same on hers. There is zero degradation of off angle colors on my 6S plus, but that's one of the factors were IPS is superior. That's probably less important for a phone since you don't tend to use your phone at a 60* angle. Haven't seen any image retention, but I sure hope I wouldn't after three days!
In what way are they different? The manufacturing process of the two is the same as far as I'm aware, with the only detail that differs being the ppi, because Samsung had to match Apple's specs because they relate everything back to an exact integer scaling of the original iPhone's ppi.
Dodgy screens from Samsung. Looks like the people on Reddit are being given replacements and Apple will bill Samsung for that given these are defective panels.Apple needs to improve quality control at Foxconn though, as these shouldn't be leaving the factory.
This is a known issue with OLED technology (and plasmas and CRT...). There are ways around it and I am sure Apple has used these techniques (pixel shifting etc) but you cant fix a broken display.
If you look on the Internet you will find similar stories with Samsung / LG phones with burn in issues.
The ones Samsung has been making for the past year or so are pretty good - displaymate says they are nearly as accurate as the Igzo IPS panels Apple was using. A lot of what you're seeing when you see the "unnatural" OLEDs isn't the panel sucking it is the colors being deliberately oversaturated by the OEM - a lot of Android phones come that way by default. Even Samsung was doing that the first few years they had AMOLED phones. Those of us who like accurate colors don't want that and think it looks horrid, but I guess there are a lot of people who prefer that look since it is more 'dramatic'.
I have no complaints with the panel in my X, I looked at the same photos side by side with my 6S plus and the colors were identical. It is nice seeing true blacks instead of the 'very dark grey' regions where black should be if you're in a darkened room.
Samsung do make the displays but the end user's contract is with Apple, and it is with Apple the responsibility of quality control lies.
As it is,.The OP on that Reddit thread seems to have a duff screen that's slipped through QA and he should receive a replacement phone.
I guess we need an updated version of DOA
DOA+7 perhaps.
Works fine when taken out of the packaging but by the end of Week 1 is basically sucks.
Can apply to any bit of kit (even that sold by Apple).
It will be interesting to see if this is a really widespread problem or just limited to a specific batch of displays.
HTC One S, the only one in the original HTC One range to have an OLED screen, and mine is still perfect a whole 4 years later. I bought mine as end-of-line, it's a 2012 model.
It has come to something when a device is classed as 'old' at 4 years, and is 'impressive' because it still works...
the majority of the display issues wont be noticed by the average consumer, unless you actively look for them.
The issues on the pixel 2 XL had been widely overblown. Many reviewers have since noted they do in fact have similar issues on other oled screens too (samsung, LG, and other devices) now that they looked have for them, they just hadn't noticed they had a 'problem' before.
Google have released their software update to address many of the reported issues, mostly down to the muted colour palette the went with, which is where this all started from.
Maybe now this this is a problem that Apple have 'acknowledged' perhaps we are all indeed just looking at it wrong.
One thing to note with the recent Samsung and Apple phones is that these devices are really, really fragile and are made of slippery shiny glass with minimal amounts of alloy. So, the people who are likely to see screen burn problems are also the people using these phones outdoors, without a case, in sunlight.
In other words, the people most likely to see problems are also the people most likely to accidentally drop their phones, shatter the glass and screen and get both replaced under warranty or insurance, thus rendering the screen burn issue moot.
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