S20 OLED image persistence - Samsung Galaxy S20 / S20+ / S20 Ultra Questions &
Is image persistence normal for S20's screen or OLED screens in general?
For example, playing a bright video game with black aspect ratio bars, leaves a lasting persistent image, where on dark pastel backgrounds you can clearly see where bars and game were.
Or writing a long article, leaves remnants of Android's nav. buttons, Chrome's address bar, and even keyboard visible, when tested on dark pastel backgrounds.
These persistent images gradually disappear, but it takes a long time to disappear completely. Do you experience something similar to this?
Thanks.
Scroll down for testing methods, post #5. Start by opening dark gray image, view full image, zoom in, do you see discoloration?
Image retention (persistence) is a somewhat common issue with all OLED. That said you shouldn't be experiencing it unless your constantly rocking your screen at 100% brightness, or near there, for hours on end.
I found this cNet article which explains it really well.
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/oled-screen-burn-in-what-you-need-to-know-now/
scaredy-cat said:
Is image persistence normal for S20's screen or OLED screens in general?
For example, playing a bright video game with black aspect ratio bars, leaves a lasting persistent image, where on dark pastel backgrounds you can clearly see where bars and game were.
Or writing a long article, leaves remnants of Android's nav. buttons, Chrome's address bar, and even keyboard visible, when tested on dark pastel backgrounds.
These persistent images gradually disappear, but it takes a long time to disappear completely. Do you experience something similar to this?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Galaxy S7 and S8 had issues with Screen Burn which Samsung improved going forward from the S9. If the ghost images gradually disappear it isn't Screen Burn which causes permanent discoloration. If under warranty you may wish to get the device replaced, it doesn't seem the problem will correct itself over time. The other options I would consider are uninstalling apps which you enabled just before the problem appeared or performing a Factory Reset.
if you're playing games and the background is constantly moving, then there should be little, or no image retention. However, if you are using Google Maps and high brightness and stationary for a long period of time (eg stuck in traffic) then I would consider some image retention could be present.
Thank you for your answers. Bold text for topics. Testing methods at the end of this reply.
Was not aware OLED screens' image retention is such a common issue, but I knew OLED screens are prone to burn-in, read about it online, and saw it on my relatives' older devices, so out of the box I turned on the dark mode and changed wallpaper to black.
I preferred regular Android's navigation buttons to gestures, because of ergonomics, due to phones center of mass (wish it was more bottom heavy), when using with one hand, balancing phone while performing gestures always feels like I'm about to drop the phone, I also find gestures to be slower, simple tap vs sliding your finger. And on top of that, I have carpal tunnel syndrome, so it's much easier to simply reach and tap. But now I started using gestures, as a burn-in preventative measure.
By the way, having Chrome open for around 20 minutes, and quickly switching to Display Tester's BurnIn detection, I can already distinguish Chrome's address bar section, and clearly see tab switcher button. This will gradually disappear, but the fact that afterimage appears so quickly and remains for so long is concerning, since I feel such image retention might indicate my display may be prone to burn-in, but of course, I don't know this for sure, just my uneducated guess.
Having dark mode keyboard open for around an hour, and I can see remnants of it even on grey backgrounds of folders.
Back to reply..
I never use my screen at full brightness, it's always set to somewhere around 50%, and as I said earlier, image retention starts to occurs in a matter of minutes. Images do gradually disappear, but it takes a long time, and when I use screen for hours with static elements, it felt like it took awfully long time to disappear, but to determine how long exactly it takes for them to appear and disappear, I need to do more thorough testing.
Yes, when playing games, indeed, a lot of things are moving, except for Heads-up Display, but I first noticed this image retention issue playing an older video game called "Super Cat Bros". That game is not optimized for such wide-screen phones as S20, so on each side you have a black bar, display is split into 3 sections - bar-game-bar. That game is very colorful and has lots of solid colors, so after I finished playing, in dark user interface backgrounds I noticed discoloration, later looking at solid color backgrounds l noticed clearly where each section was, so bar-game-bar. Because sides of a display were turned off, and all action happened in the middle, you can clearly see which part of the screen was the most active.
This is why I'm coming to conclusion, that dark mode alone is still only a small part in burn-in prevention, you should blackout everything, including websites (I remember firefox had plug-in like that, capable of replacing background and font colors), switch to a dim keyboard preferably without visible keys with orange-red colored font, download oled friendly icon packs, watch movies cropped in, so you're not left with permanent discoloration in place of "black bars", and play games full-screen, only then wear will be uniform. Seems like too much work. I wish micro-led displays would become widespread sooner.
I don't think factory reset or uninstalling apps will help, because it appears to be not software related.
At least not software user can update, such as display's firmware, but I don't know for sure just how independent display is from other phone's guts. Even then, I don't think firmware can fix this.
The phone is under warranty, since it's new, used for a few moths, and unmodified, but sadly is probably not an option, because in my country, gaslighting customers is fairly common. Service center will probably take it away for a few weeks, then return it scratched up, and say they didn't find any issue. So unless it's a serious burn-in, that's visible always and on every background, it'll be extremely difficult to make a return, and even then they'll probably tell it's normal wear, but then at least you can without explaining too much contact consumer protection and show them the problem.
Software used for discovery and testing:
• Super Cat Bros (video game)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FDGEntertainment.SuperCatBros.gp
Play it for an hour (or more) and then test on solid darker pastel colors, do you see discoloration? Report for how long you played and how long discoloration was visible. Do not reopen game when retesting discoloration, because it may appear permanent. I know some people are not good at seeing minute differences in shades, but at first it should be very obvious which parts were black bars and part where game ran.
• Display Tester (app)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gombosdev.displaytester
Very good display tester, free, lots of features and tests, and works on wide-screen displays, enable "use immersive mode if possible" in the settings. I think default color in BurnIn tester is very good at revealing discoloration, but you can play with sliders, just remember position which reveals discoloration the best.
• I'll also attach solid color image, which works for revealing discoloration.
And another dark gray image, which also helps reveal discoloration, use in dark room at around 50% screen brightness (play around), no matter how much you zoom in or out, it appears like screen has gradient, notifications bar icons are also visible, not sure if it's temporary or a permanent discoloration. I recommend opening these images with a gallery app, set to full screen, or simply pinch to zoom, and tap screen one time to hide gallery's UI elements. Tilt phone left and right, move towards and away from yourself, do you see discoloration?
You can also open them up with browser, and examine your screen, but I found you can't hide all UI elements, so better use gallery or other image viewer.
Related
Better control over brightness
For amateur astronomy use, I needed to be able to bring down my A43's LCD brightness to a very low level. After a bit of experimenting, here is a very simple app that lets you have a darker screen than the OS normally allows: http://code.google.com/p/superdim It requires root. This is my first independent Android app, so no doubt I screwed up in some way.
arpruss said: For amateur astronomy use, I needed to be able to bring down my A43's LCD brightness to a very low level. After a bit of experimenting, here is a very simple app that lets you have a darker screen than the OS normally allows: http://www.mediafire.com/?zwsg7aeqtcqogpm It requires root. This is my first independent Android app, so no doubt I screwed up in some way. Click to expand... Click to collapse Nice, if you need it, make it. Personally, I find using Night Mode in Chainfire better than simply turning down brightness. It turns the brightness down, and renders everything in red, or whatever color you choose, but red is the correct choice to retain night sensitivity. Obviously, I probably wouldn't watch a movie like that, but it's great for when I'm bow-fishing by full moon and want to change songs or something without wrecking my night vision.
For astronomy purposes, ChainFire3D's night mode won't be enough. At the lowest normal system backlight setting, if one is fully dark adapted under a dark sky, the amount of light leaking through the black pixels will be enormous--the screen will look grey rather than black (well, I haven't tried it, but I have experience with other devices). What one needs to do for serious night vision protection is to BOTH turn the view to red with ChainFire3D AND dim the backlight to a very low level with this app. And I am not even sure this will be fully satisfactory, because on my A43 the amount of light leakage is really big. By the way, I posted a new version and source, and renamed the project to SuperDim. I also added a toggle for the power LED, since they made it green rather than red.
arpruss said: For astronomy purposes, ChainFire3D's night mode won't be enough. At the lowest normal system backlight setting, if one is fully dark adapted under a dark sky, the amount of light leaking through the black pixels will be enormous--the screen will look grey rather than black (well, I haven't tried it, but I have experience with other devices). What one needs to do for serious night vision protection is to BOTH turn the view to red with ChainFire3D AND dim the backlight to a very low level with this app. And I am not even sure this will be fully satisfactory, because on my A43 the amount of light leakage is really big. By the way, I posted a new version and source, and renamed the project to SuperDim. I also added a toggle for the power LED, since they made it green rather than red. Click to expand... Click to collapse Hmm. That's good to know for the A43. I'd like to know what you think of the night mode in chainfire, just because there aren't many other people who worry about this topic. I live in St. Louis, a big city, so you probably have less ambient light, but I also wonder if my A101 gets darker than the A43. Even at night, I can turn it down to the point that I really can't read a damn thing. Great idea with the Power LED. Once again, I don't think light levels drop low enough in St. Louis for it to bother me, but I hadn't even thought of disabling it.
To really be dark adapted, you need to be away from white light for about 45 minutes. (Though I find that after 15 minutes the payoff diminishes.) It's not going to happen outdoors in a big city. I added profiles (three night, two day), and integrated SuperDim with ChainFire3D, so if you have ChainFire3D installed, you can control its night mode directly from SuperDim, and even include its night mode setting in a profile. For my own use, I wanted a red screen dim profile for astronomy, a green screen dim profile for reading books in the dark, a dim full color profile for other night use, a bright green profile sometimes for reading books in the day, and a full color bright profile. But you can save whatever you want in the five profile slots. I've been using figuring out the light control stuff for SuperDim as an opportunity for learning how to program for Android in preparation for writing (not from scratch--I got a donation of the AstroTools source code under the GPL to start with, and I may port some code from open2sky and AstroInfo for PalmOS) a high-end astronomy app. (I'm an experienced PalmOS developer, but quite new to Android.) I'm actually quite pleased. I was dreading java (I've usually developed in C), but I am finding Android development, especially with Eclipse, surprisingly pleasant.
arpruss said: To really be dark adapted, you need to be away from white light for about 45 minutes. (Though I find that after 15 minutes the payoff diminishes.) It's not going to happen outdoors in a big city. I added profiles (three night, two day), and integrated SuperDim with ChainFire3D, so if you have ChainFire3D installed, you can control its night mode directly from SuperDim, and even include its night mode setting in a profile. For my own use, I wanted a red screen dim profile for astronomy, a green screen dim profile for reading books in the dark, a dim full color profile for other night use, a bright green profile sometimes for reading books in the day, and a full color bright profile. But you can save whatever you want in the five profile slots. I've been using figuring out the light control stuff for SuperDim as an opportunity for learning how to program for Android in preparation for writing (not from scratch--I got a donation of the AstroTools source code under the GPL to start with, and I may port some code from open2sky and AstroInfo for PalmOS) a high-end astronomy app. (I'm an experienced PalmOS developer, but quite new to Android.) I'm actually quite pleased. I was dreading java (I've usually developed in C), but I am finding Android development, especially with Eclipse, surprisingly pleasant. Click to expand... Click to collapse Yeah, my point exactly. I'm about 15 miles away from the city when out on the river, but that's not really far enough to get out of the city's light pollution. Great work integrating with Chainfire. I'll give it a try next time I'm out. It should be nice having everything in one place. I'll be looking forward to the astronomy app. It's been a looong time since I've worked on one, but I still have the DOS version of CyberSky I helped develop, so I guess I still have a fondness for them.
I posted 0.23, fixing a bug that made day2 = day1. And I posted 0.30, adding support for toggling keyboard and button backlight on devices that have them.
I use screen filter to make my screen dimmer.. its in the market..
1. As far as I can tell, Screen Filter doesn't adjust the backlight--it only lowers the LCD pixel intensity. As a result, even if you turn Screen Filter to something really low like 2%, if you take your device to a dark area, you'll see a grey glow coming from the screen, because the backlight leaks through the black pixels. To remedy the grey glow issue, you need to turn the backlight down, but the OS only lets you turn it so far down (10/255 on my A43; some phones only allow 20/255) without directly writing to /sys/class/leds/lcd-backlight/brightness (which needs root, and is what SuperDim does). I also suspect that in a dark area, with brightness set to a low value, lowering backlight will produce a more visually attractive image than Screen Filter, because lowering the backlight will make a black background be fairly black. That's all for backlit LCD screens. OLED screens are a completely different kettle of fish, and SuperDim won't help you much there (though it'll still let you set themes controlling LEDs and ChainFire3D nightmode). 2. I generalized the code a little so it should let you control whatever LEDs your device has, as long as they have a /sys/class/leds/*/brightness interface. 3. By the way, ChainFire3D's nightmode is a touch imperfect: if you set it to red, I think it just turns off the green and blue channels. That means that green and blue visual elements cease to be visible. A somewhat better nightmode would convert the image from RGB to grayscale, and then turn off the green and blue channels. I don't know how easy to implement that would be--I don't know enough about GL blending (I tried to google but couldn't find an answer simple enough for me to understand).
arpruss said: 1. As far as I can tell, Screen Filter doesn't adjust the backlight--it only lowers the LCD pixel intensity. As a result, even if you turn Screen Filter to something really low like 2%, if you take your device to a dark area, you'll see a grey glow coming from the screen, because the backlight leaks through the black pixels. To remedy the grey glow issue, you need to turn the backlight down, but the OS only lets you turn it so far down (10/255 on my A43; some phones only allow 20/255) without directly writing to /sys/class/leds/lcd-backlight/brightness (which needs root, and is what SuperDim does). I also suspect that in a dark area, with brightness set to a low value, lowering backlight will produce a more visually attractive image than Screen Filter, because lowering the backlight will make a black background be fairly black. That's all for backlit LCD screens. OLED screens are a completely different kettle of fish, and SuperDim won't help you much there (though it'll still let you set themes controlling LEDs and ChainFire3D nightmode). 2. I generalized the code a little so it should let you control whatever LEDs your device has, as long as they have a /sys/class/leds/*/brightness interface. 3. By the way, ChainFire3D's nightmode is a touch imperfect: if you set it to red, I think it just turns off the green and blue channels. That means that green and blue visual elements cease to be visible. A somewhat better nightmode would convert the image from RGB to grayscale, and then turn off the green and blue channels. I don't know how easy to implement that would be--I don't know enough about GL blending (I tried to google but couldn't find an answer simple enough for me to understand). Click to expand... Click to collapse I assumed it did convert to greyscale first before tinting, but you may be right. I'll have to think how to test that.
msticninja said: I assumed it did convert to greyscale first before tinting, but you may be right. I'll have to think how to test that. Click to expand... Click to collapse Quick test: If you set CF3D to blue, anything that's pure yellow goes black. For example, if you go to SuperDim, the left half of the brightness adjustment bar is yellow and disappears completely. Another test: go with the browser to http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colors.asp in red mode. Notice that the blue 0000FF and green 00FF00 samples can't be distinguished from 000000 black, while the red FF0000 can't be distinguished from white FFFFFF.
arpruss said: Quick test: If you set CF3D to blue, anything that's pure yellow goes black. For example, if you go to SuperDim, the left half of the brightness adjustment bar is yellow and disappears completely. Another test: go with the browser to http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colors.asp in red mode. Notice that the blue 0000FF and green 00FF00 samples can't be distinguished from 000000 black, while the red FF0000 can't be distinguished from white FFFFFF. Click to expand... Click to collapse Seems like pretty clear results to me. I wonder if converting to greyscale first would even be feasible, from a coding, and from a processor cycle standpoint. It would have to use extra power, but I wonder how much. It doesn't really matter for me, everything I need to do is doable, but interesting nonetheless.
msticninja said: Seems like pretty clear results to me. I wonder if converting to greyscale first would even be feasible, from a coding, and from a processor cycle standpoint. It would have to use extra power, but I wonder how much. It doesn't really matter for me, everything I need to do is doable, but interesting nonetheless. Click to expand... Click to collapse There may be a way of hardware accelerating this.
Another form of banding. Can you replicate?
Set wallpaper to black or go to a pure black screen with no icons on it. Bring up the "recent apps" and clear it out so that the overlay is blank. I notice heavy banding when the app is brought up over a pure black screen. Anyone else notice this? it's hard to notice in a lighted room. go into a very dark room and you should see what I am talking about.
I've noticed this on transparencies. Could be a low quality image they used. Google has been known to limit the colors available to specific apps. Gallery and the Browser usually display crappy gradients. Perhaps this is another form of lowering the image quality so it loads faster. As far as what your talking about, yes I can replicate it. Horizontal "sections" about equal distance apart. Hardly noticeable. I have to turn the lights off to really see it. As long as the screen looks amazing when I'm using it and not in a dark room at weird brightnesses, I'm happy. This screen is super vibrant and bright. Who cares about a little banding on an almost black transparency that is requires a pitch black room to see.
[Q] How to avoid burn-in?
Hi guys. I'm the proud owner of a Galaxy Nexus with no screen defects (except for black splotches that only show up on black screen in a pitch dark room, so that doesn't matter). My brightness usually remains around 15%. It's been only 2.5 months, and I've noticed something. If the screen is displaying WHITE (with the top bar and the navigation keys hidden), the top-right of the screen has a slightly blue tint (at the place where the clock, WiFi, and the signals are displayed, and these elements are usually blue as you might know). I know I'm acting like a little OCD, but that's what my observation is. I don't want my beautiful screen to depreciate this way My question is, how do I avoid this burn-in? In addition to that, I also want to hide the on-screen navigation keys (but that's not a priority right now, would be good if you could help with that as well). In short, I want to avoid all sorts of burn-in to this AMOLED screen due to elements that are constantly displayed on the screen (like the navigation keys area, the status bar (and the clock, battery etc.). Sorry if this is a repeated post or if this isn't the correct section. I've searched the forums but didn't find a solution. Thanks in advance...
There really isn't much you can do about the burn in, specially on SAMOLED displays, it's part of their life cycle. One thing that does come to mind to slow down the burn in is to use something like PA's PIE, which turns the nav and status bar areas into usable real estate.
All apps are show notch, running granular immersive mode. Still bar above.
So i just got the phone last night and i applied both to try and force any and all apps to show notch so i can enjoy all of my screen. Idc how i have to do it but for whatever reason when i open certain apps, they still overlay a gray, white, black, empy bar where my notifications would normally go and its very frustrating. I gave granular permission, put full screen on every app and even told every app to show the notch... Is there any other way to bypass this issue so i can get any app regardless if it likes the aspect or not to show the notch and remove this bar?
Could still use help with this https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/471469010672812033/544203189558181900/Screenshot_20190210_120903_com.facebook.katana.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/471469010672812033/544202874637385748/Screenshot_20190209_162949_com.square_enix.android_googleplay.mobiusff_ne.jpg https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/471469010672812033/544202873907707944/Screenshot_20190209_182153_com.bandainamcoent.saoifww.jpg Are just some examples. White bar is where it should show the app and if it were digital, my notch
I have this problem with certain apps even forcing show notch just turns in showing a white bar instead of black in landscape. I don't think there's something we can do about it atm, I guess it's more of an app incompatibilities with notch since it works perfectly with some apps and not the others. Not sure if it's on Huawei or Dev's app side. When it doesn't work It's better to let it black than white for your screen.
Thankfully I'm glad I'm not the only one and it's not just a me problem. Thing is. IDK how to force a certain color up above. Like for example if I use Nova to swipe up as search, it will just put a white bar up there... And you can see someone else is doing it cause for a split millisecond it shows the operation as intended with just the search box. Quickly after though it sticks that bar. Same thing with for example Sao internal factor (game) When you start up the game it'll give you the entire screen, but soon as you check your mail or news and close them, the white line takes over where the notch is. Very frustrating and I feel like it's in the system, not the game... But who knows I could be wrong I just hope a mod or fix is made soon because if I had know I would not be able to take advantage my entire screen, I would never have bought the phone
Question wash out/fade across the top of the homescreen display
So ever since I have had my 6 pro I notice that when I have a black wallpaper or a dark colour set the top last maybe centimetre from across the top of the display washes out/ fades out Into grey and I have noticed that changing between different colour profiles either makes it less apparent or more worse. I'd like to think it's software as I don't think it's doing it anywhere else but the home screen but I could be wrong.
I think this is a thing to show the QS panel, we had a bug on the betas where there was a line up at the top of the screen to show it too. IIRC that one occurred only on lockscreen though.
That's actually part of the pixel launcher. I hate it with a passion. My mod, which is available now, removes it by default. If you are not rooted you have to use a 3rd party launcher. If you are rooted but don't want to use my mod you can edit the image. Its called workspace_bg.9.png.