
Apple on OLED burn in and off angle hue change: About the Display on iPhone X - tambourine_man
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208191
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veidr
The off-angle thing is definitely noticeable; it gets bluer the more you
rotate the phone.

However, I've only _actually_ seen it happen when intentionally rotating the
screen beyond anything I would normally do, to see the blue effect. Not really
a factor in day-to-day use for me, or, I suspect, most people.

The vague warning on burn-in sounds a little bit alarming. Couple years back,
I had a MacBook Pro that had that well-known "image persistence" defect and
that drove me _nuts_. I hated and quickly sold that machine.

Having said that I have not seen anything like that yet on my talking poo
phone.

(I should also probably add that this is by far the best screen I have ever
seen in my life... to the point that I am a little less satisfied with my 5K
desktop monitor and iPad Pro screen than I was last week :-P )

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chrisper
What's a talking poo phone?

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Jedd
I'm speculating a Mr Hankey (South Park) reference to the major advance of an
animated poo emoji in the latest Apple phone release.

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chrisper
Thanks. I don't watch South Park so I couldn't get the reference.

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marcosscriven
There is just no way I would accept ‘burn in’ as a ‘normal’ part of the tech,
on such an expensive device.

Rather than just whining about it, I’ve simply done the only thing I can do
and not bought the latest iPhone. An infinitesimal drop in a near-trillion
dollar ocean.

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dpkonofa
I really don't understand why this hasn't been a complaint at all on any other
phone that utilizes an OLED display but now, all of sudden, once Apple has an
OLED display it's suddenly a deal-breaker. This is craziness.

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rb666
Seems very unsuitable for using Waze or other nav apps then, typically an app
that keeps your display at relatively high brightness for a long period of
time with partially static content.

I suppose for Pokemon Go, but who still plays that anyway.

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Geee
Such apps require redesigning the interface for OLED. Specifically, black
background and auto-hide for everything that's not important. If there are
visible static parts, they should be low-contrast and moved around from time
to time.

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dbbk
I believe iOS does the pixel shifting automatically.

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pipio21
Burn in is a problem with all OLED displays, like it was with plasmas.

Having said that, the screens that I use the most are all OLEDs and they are
amazing displays, the best displays I ever had.

If you are careful there is no such a problem. It is going to be a big problem
if you use the screen outdoors because you will have to ramp up the display
intensity. This is the reason Apple recommends using the ambient light sensor,
because most people are indoors most of the time, with orders of magnitude
less light intensity for the screen to compete.

And being outdoors there is a significant difference living in Madrid,Spain or
Saudi Arabia with more than 300 extremely sunny days per year, or living in
Frankfurt or London, when most of the time is cloudy.

We should have to wait to other screen technologies for "having it all". Looks
like Samsung real electroluminescent QLED will be as good as OLED without the
problems, but there is a ton of work that needs to be done. I believe it is
remarkable how far displays have gone.

I had a hight definition 19'' CRT that costed 20.000 euros back at the time,
that weighted more than 30 kilos. When I see people dissatisfied with current
tech...

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muro
Are there more details about what Samsung is doing? AFAIK qled is just a
marketing name for LED backlit LCD (= same old) with a name that looks similar
to OLAD to confuse people into thinking they get something like OLED.

And sure the 19" CRT was 20k not 2k?

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wheresmyusern
what is the cause of burn in? is this a fundamental problem with oleds or will
it go away with as the technology matures? thats what i really want to know
because oled is next in line for dominance in display technology and that
would suck if it came with burn in.

off the top of my head, i would say that the burn in is caused by degradation
of one of the color elements in the leds. the blue elements were a problem for
a long time -- they would degrade very quickly. i would guess that the blue
elements of this display begin to lose their integrity much faster than the
other elements, so if you leave those blue elements on for a long period of
time you will cause those elements to go bad and then from then on you have a
pattern of burned out blue elements, causing burn in. so if this is true, apps
that are meant to display bright static images for long periods of time could
do everything in shades of red and green, leaving the blue elements off
completely.

this will also hopefully mean that all the cool screen savers from the 90s
will be given new life, and maybe we can even have a new renaissance of screen
savers

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lewisl9029
It does a appear to be a fundamental problem with OLED displays. AFAIK, every
OLED screen ever made has burn-in issues, and every manufacturer of OLED
screens takes care to explicitly exclude display burn-in from the warranty
terms.

I made the mistake of buying an OLED TV to use as a computer monitor last
year, and today there are multiple areas of the screen where burn-in marks are
visible from things like the taskbar, window title bars, window separators
from tiled arrangement, etc.

It's a real shame because OLED has otherwise terrific properties as a display
technology, and looks downright mind-blowing in a dark room where the infinite
contrast from the lack of a backlight shines through. But because of the burn-
in issues I've experienced, I can't in good faith recommend it as a long-term
investment for use cases where you're likely to have static images on the
screen for prolonged periods of time (smartphone and computer displays).

Anyone aware of other promising display technologies that can achieve the same
levels of contrast without the downsides of the burn-in risks associated with
OLED?

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sundvor
That's a great point, and I'm glad my HTPC screen was a Samsung SUHD over an
LG OLED now. The Samsung's uniformity and edge bleed isn't great but I think
I'd take that over the permanent burn in I'd inevitably get from eg Win10'
screensaver not kicking in.

I noticed the burn in on my button bar of my Samsung S8, and finally
understood why they didn't let me have a fully black navbar. I had installed a
custom Navbar app to make it black; now that area is lighter than the rest..
fortunately not too be yet, but I'll be careful about apps like Google Auto
going forward.

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etaioinshrdlu
I can imagine that burn-in could be corrected for, per-subpixel, in software,
periodically with a calibration step using a external scanner that measures
the altered voltage response of each subpixel.

In software it would boil down to one final compositing step to compensate.

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koopuluri
> In software it would boil down to one final compositing step to compensate.

Is this a technique that's used often? I'm curious what the cost of such a
step would be. How much lag would it cause?

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etaioinshrdlu
The lag would surely be low single digit ms, unnoticeable. Modern GPUs are
really good at compositing big images as games and window managers do it
routinely.

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homero
It's not burn in, it's burn out, used parts of the screen get dimmer. My
Samsung notes all had brighter notifications bars because they were usually
black and unused.

In portrait mode, a video would be brighter in this section. Plasma had the
same problem. The pixels age and dim since they're the light source. There's
no backlight. Please stop calling it burn in.

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ungzd
I used Galaxy Nexus which had OLED too (old, from 2011). Used it for 4 years,
not seen any visible permanent burn-ins. There were temporary image
persistence, noise and vertical lines (especially when using outside during
winter), but display was great overall.

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jondwillis
The first thing I think of as a burn-in risk is the ever-present bottom touch
indicator. It is a black strip that sort of resembles a mic or speaker grill
at the bottom of the screen and it is always drawn. Does anyone know if that
will burn in, or is Apple doing something different with it in software or
hardware?

The status bar elements also seem like a large risk, as some pixels tend to
not change.

I also can definitely notice a ghosting effect while reading and scrolling
text at the same time.

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helloandrewpark
Still waiting for my iPhone X to come in but from reading their info, they say
burn in is a result of brightness + duration. From that it seems that the
black strip will not be an issue.

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thinkythought
Black elements absolutely burned in on the S7 edge my work has for app
testing. And this is a device that, obviously, isn't even anyone's daily
phone, nor does it have any reason to be "left on" for super long periods of
time when it's not in someones hand. Those areas end up _brighter_ than the
rest of the screen, rather than darker. It's sort of a reverse ghosting.

I ran one of those "burn in fixer" solid color pattern apps for almost 24
hours(which i know have hit or miss efficacy) and it subdued it, but it's
still very clearly visible.

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tinus_hn
I don't like the sound of this at all. OLED has a design limitation in viewing
angles? Whatever. The panel has a limited lifespan if you use it normally
(with Apples static elements like the battery indicator)? I'll wait for the
next version, thanks.

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EugeneOZ
I use my Apple Watch since day they launched, every day, a lot of times per
day I use them. Zero issues with the screen and screen is amazing. I think in
iPhone Apple will be able to create OLED display not worse than in Watch.

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feiss
The return of screensavers?

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scarlac
For smart phones that's usually not an issue. You want the screen to turn off
and save power, not display another moving image.

But you could imagine that Apple records sub pixel usage and calibrates the
display accordingly, so any sub pixels that are over-exposed to could be
calibrated accordingly. But that would also mean _some_ color distortion.

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frik
I favor IPS panels any day over the ill-fated burn-in-friendly OLED panels.
IPS also has no off-angle hue, and a better color range. Only HDR (very black
and white parts) looks better on OLED.

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danmaz74
A bit OT, but a question for those who have OLED TVs, using them to watch
movies/shows etc: is burn-in a problem, or not because images are always
changing there?

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olympus
The typical use case for a TV is fine, since the images are constantly
changing. An iPhone has a static image by default (your home screen and lock
screen). You can have a 3D effect for the background, but the app icons stay
in one place.

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danmaz74
thx

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featherverse
HAHAHAHA a thousand dollar phone that suffers screen burn-in?

