Even OLED is a flawed technology

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Gawd
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I’m sure we all know this because of the organic decay and temporary image retention, but I wanted to point out two other things that I’d never heard of but am experiencing now.

See, I just got a new iPhone, and it’s my first device with an OLED screen, period. There are two issues I’ve noticed right away that I’ve not once seen mentioned here when debating about with display technology is the best.

1. Blue shift
2. Trailing/ghosting/stuttering on text scrolling

The first one is what initially caught me off guard. The phone turns very, very blue and angle, and this starts pretty early on. If I’m tilting the phone away from me a little (which I do while typing), the top of the screen starts to turn blue and be cooler than the rest.

The second is harder to explain, probably because I’m too much of a noob to use the right terms to describe it. But eventually, when I scroll through text rapidly, the text seems to leave a trail behind it. And unlike the smooth natural blur my eyes perceive in moving objects in real life (and text in LCDs), this trail is awfully discrete and stutter-y. I don’t tend to consider my eyes good enough to see this stuff usually, but this stuck out like a sore thumb.

I doubt either of these drawbacks are enough to make me return the phone and give up the contrast of this display, but I have to ask: is this normal for OLEDs? And if so, why does everyone look at it like it’s the savior of LEDs, with only the issue of decay?

EDIT: Watching some YouTube videos, and the stutter/trailing whatever is also present in people moving their hands. I’m beginning to wonder if I have a faulty unit.
 
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This sounds like a faulty unit to me. I've got an iPhone XS that doesn't suffer from this as far as I can tell.
I should mention that I definitely spoke too soon on the hands thing. That was one particular video that also suffered from a similar issue on my old 8 Plus. Something about the recording I guess.

I’ve gotten used to the text scrolling in only a few hours of usage. Though it’s still there if I pay attention. I suppose it could be a faulty display, but I’ve looked up thread on Reddit over the last 2 years with people complaining of the same thing, and respondents saying it’s typical of OLED.
 
I have an iPhone 8+ and it has no noticeable off angle blue shifting — absolutely zero to my eyes.

And I can’t see any text shifting/blurring when scrolling fast. What you are describing sounds textbook like a VA panel characteristic - not an OLED panel.
 
Buys Iphone.....makes sweeping generalization towards entire technology
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My iPhone XS Max also has the blue shift at angles most noticeable on whites. Don’t think your unit is faulty. I noticed it immediately as well but then got use to it over time as it’s been almost 1 year since I’ve had this phone now. Disappointed as well. Maybe not all OLEDs are the same? That’s like saying all IPSs or all VAs are faulty? It could just be how it was made for the iPhones but maybe other products like TVs or whatnot don’t suffer with the same issues.
 
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I have an iPhone 8+ and it has no noticeable off angle blue shifting — absolutely zero to my eyes.

And I can’t see any text shifting/blurring when scrolling fast. What you are describing sounds textbook like a VA panel characteristic - not an OLED panel.
The 8 Plus is what I’ve upgraded from. It’s an IPS panel, and it has none of these issues. It’s what I’m comparing the 11 Pro Max (great name Apple) against.
Buys Iphone.....makes sweeping generalization towards entire technology
View attachment 189746
It’s not like Apple’s the one making the panels, and they get the best Samsung OLEDs behind Samsung’s own flagships. Maybe phone OLEDs (read: 95% of them) just suck compared to the other OLEDs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My iPhone XS Max also has the blue shift at angles most noticeable on whites. Don’t think your unit is faulty. I noticed it immediately as well but then got use to it over time as it’s been almost 1 year since I’ve had this phone now. Disappointed as well. Maybe not all OLEDs are the same? That’s like saying all IPSs or all VAs are faulty? It could just be how it was made for the iPhones but maybe other products like TVs or whatnot don’t suffer with the same issues.
I sure hope so! I was thinking about picking up the 30” Dell OLED for my PC setup. This hasn’t changed my mind. The contrast just trumps everything else.
 
I have had an 65" LG E6 OLED for 3 years. Mother used it 12 hours a day before her passing. No image retention, and color temp can be adjusted to eliminate blue tint. Same with Iphones. True Tone puts the warmer temp on it as does night mode. Image retention is a very small problem as the only complaints on forums are about that and a very small amount of users report it, regardless of long forum posts. If people used the screensaver on OLED TV's, it keeps burn in from happening. Oled is by far and away the best picture quality period. It's why Samsung is now shifting to QLED OLED production. LG DISPLAY (not LG the TV/appliance company) has almost every major company buying panels from them from Philips to Sony and built new OLED plants and increase production. OLED/MicroLED will hopefully run shitty LCD out of the market place in a couple of years. LCD is why I left desktop gaming behind and went to DLP TV then to now DLP/Lcos projection and very soon laser projection.
 
I picked up a Samsung G9 two months ago and its perfection looks like nothing I ever seen or used before its Amoled. I just picked it up for Wizards Unite which I no longer play or even played outside of maybe a week.
 
Granted I’m partially color blind...


But I can’t see any color shifting at all in my XS at any angle. I think you have a bad unit.

Same with my LG 55” - no shifting at any angle

Text scrolling going fast... not sure if that’s the screen or the software/hardware because it’s a bit jumpy on my iPad as well.

I can see the iPad IPS shift at some extreme angles.
 
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Every OLED screen that I have seen on a phone have had very noticeable blur/smearing in certain dark transitions. Not sure what's the main cause of it but yeah, that is annoying. Same goes to non-rgb subpixel layout and colour uniformity (especially when you start lowering the brightness and without PWM).
 
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If you run an OLED with very low brightness they do tend to smear -- like when using the phone at night with the brightness all the way down. However in normal use during the daytime, it's not an issue. I have had 5 OLED phones since 2012, the Atrix 2, Note 4, S7 Edge, Note 9, and Note 10+ and they have all been similar. Honestly the screens on the last 3 (S7, Note 9, Note 10+) have all been very similar but the quality increased a lot from the Atrix 2 -> Note 4 -> S7 Edge. I would definitely NOT say it is a flawed tech -- they are much better than LCDs for phones and you can do cool stuff like the Always On Display that Samsung has where there is always a clock showing and it uses very little power as it only turns on the pixels needed to display it.
 
I went from a Nexus 6P to a Pixel 3, and the image quality decreased.

Not all OLEDs are the same. In my case, the newer tech took a step backwards.

That said, image quality is subjective.
 
Some OLED exhibit more of a tint off angle than others. The LG OLEDs have a slight color shift but it’s very minor. Vast improvement over LCD in that regard. I haven’t seen the OLED on an iPhone though.

The smearing - haven’t noticed that on the LG TVs but it was an issue on the Galaxy S8 phone I had. It was more noticeable at certain brightness levels. Motion on the LG looks a lot cleaner than a 60Hz LCD
 
I'd say that I've seen a hint of what might be smeering on my Pixel 3a, but otherwise, I don't notice the difference between the display on it and the OG Pixel it replaced. Both OLEDs, neither the XL variant.

Can't say that there isn't an off-angle color shift, I haven't noticed it so it is likely to be minor or only exhibited at extreme angles.


And to add to the OP: yes, OLED is a flawed technology. So is every other display technology yet conceived.
 
I have had an 65" LG E6 OLED for 3 years. Mother used it 12 hours a day before her passing. No image retention, and color temp can be adjusted to eliminate blue tint. Same with Iphones. True Tone puts the warmer temp on it as does night mode. Image retention is a very small problem as the only complaints on forums are about that and a very small amount of users report it, regardless of long forum posts. If people used the screensaver on OLED TV's, it keeps burn in from happening. Oled is by far and away the best picture quality period. It's why Samsung is now shifting to QLED OLED production. LG DISPLAY (not LG the TV/appliance company) has almost every major company buying panels from them from Philips to Sony and built new OLED plants and increase production. OLED/MicroLED will hopefully run shitty LCD out of the market place in a couple of years. LCD is why I left desktop gaming behind and went to DLP TV then to now DLP/Lcos projection and very soon laser projection.

LCD is shit. I think it's had its run in the sun. Time for the world to move on...
 
LCD is shit. I think it's had its run in the sun. Time for the world to move on...

Yet they keep making them. AOC just announced a 32" 1920 x 1080 monitor due next year... yes, that's right, a 32" 1080p LCD panel in 2020... I despair, I really do, but it is the way of things, sadly. :cry:
 
What's the cheapest way to stop burn in on an OLED? I was thinking, would a cheap USB Windows 10 stick work? You can just set it up so it's always running a screen saver, and just change inputs to it whenever you need to idle the display.
 
What's the cheapest way to stop burn in on an OLED? I was thinking, would a cheap USB Windows 10 stick work? You can just set it up so it's always running a screen saver, and just change inputs to it whenever you need to idle the display.

on a LG? Don’t crank the brightness or turn off the built-in screen saver.
 
This sounds like a faulty unit to me. I've got an iPhone XS that doesn't suffer from this as far as I can tell.
I agree OP’s phone sounds faulty. I’ve never had any of those issues on either of my oled iPhones.
Get a RMA it shouldn't be like that.
It would be quite the hassle for me to return this machine for such a minor “issue” (put in quotes because I’m already almost completely used to it after 3 days) because I bought it from a retailer that’s out of stock until Apple’s restock half way through October.

That said, I wanted to be sure this is just me, since I’ve gotten mixed feedback above. So as a test, can you guys come onto any thread on [H] on your phones and make sure you’re using the dark theme? Notice the black border between each post? Slowly scroll the page up and down, sort of “shaking” it back and forth. On my screen, that black line lags behind the rest of the content. It’s almost looks like jelly wiggling around.
 
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Maybe you should've said OLED is a flawed technology......for phones?
I happen to scroll a lot on my desktop computer too. The issue persists there. Fine for gaming and movies, of course.

That being said, when I looked at my LCD iPhone 8 Plus, it looked like shit. It was actually hilarious how bad it looks after only 3 days of OLED. Point being, while I still see the drawbacks, I’m a believer. I’ve never wanted an OLED laptop screen and monitor more than I do now. Maybe I should just splurge and get Dell’s old one, but it’s $3000 wherever I’ve seen it for sale for only 60Hz
 
I can explain issue two. (Issue one is just a common trait of OLED, not all color channels project equally and more blue travels at wider angles)

Mobile OLEDs mostly rely on PWM for their illumination and brightness modulation. Samsung Display most often uses 240Hz for their panels, and that’s what the iPhone OLED displays use as well. Now because OLED has sub 1ms response times, actually measured in microseconds, each flash of that 240Hz strobe is very clean and distinct. Since frames are rendering at 60Hz, each frame is repeated 4 times to fill out the 240Hz PWM. In fast motion, such as scrolling, you’re seeing the image very rapidly and briefly break up into four distinct images. It’s an unfortunate side effect of having such fast response times and using PWM.

PWM is not a requirement for OLED driving however, although it’s almost exclusively used on smartphone OLEDs for power savings vs direct current (flicker free). LG’s OLED TV panels for instance do not use PWM and instead use DC for illumination, so they are 100% flicker free and do not exhibit any kind of breakup in fast motion. (although they do still have full 60Hz 16.7ms blur as a result) A small handful of smartphones now offer a DC mode for their OLED displays, such as the OnePlus phones, but it is off by default as the DC mode tends to be much dimmer and exhibit image artifacts.

Your 8 Plus, and virtually all LCD phones for that matter, are DC and flicker free so they do not exhibit any breakup in motion. Furthermore their pixel response time is vastly slower than OLED, often 20-40ms, so each frame is “blending” into several previous frames. Ironically, this can actually make fast motions look somewhat smoother than the way OLED is currently driven.

Here’s a couple of images to compare:

60Hz with 240Hz PWM (OLED phones look like this)

60Hz with flicker free DC (LCD phones look like this, and OLED TVs)


At 100% brightness and 50% brightness (but not lower or higher than those values) is where the amplitude (spikes between the strobes) is most flat, and where you’ll notice the least Iarge breakup in fast scrolling as a result. Below 30% brightness is where it’ll be most apparent.
 
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there is no perfect display technology...but OLED is currently the best...until MicroLED hits
 
It would be quite the hassle for me to return this machine for such a minor “issue” (put in quotes because I’m already almost completely used to it after 3 days) because I bought it from a retailer that’s out of stock until Apple’s restock half way through October.

That said, I wanted to be sure this is just me, since I’ve gotten mixed feedback above. So as a test, can you guys come onto any thread on [H] on your phones and make sure you’re using the dark theme? Notice the black border between each post? Slowly scroll the page up and down, sort of “shaking” it back and forth. On my screen, that black line lags behind the rest of the content. It’s almost looks like jelly wiggling around.
It is going to lag a bit. Part of it being an oled. Especially with dark black colors. Mine doesn’t look bad, and is not distracting to me. I’m on a xs max. I’ll have my iPhone 11 pro max tomorrow and I’ll test it.
 
models with aggressive BFI and dejuddering for 60fps can neutralize the stuttering/trailing , and audio inside hdmi is part of the problem

oled's burn in problem is just too much hassle
 
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models with aggressive BFI and dejuddering for 60fps can neutralize the stuttering/trailing , and audio inside hdmi is part of the problem

oled's burn in problem is just too much hassle
OLED burn in is not a hassel. It can happen but very unlikely. Under normal use and allowing the TV to do it's pixel refresh with null burn in. Reason you see it on display tv at stores is cause they run the same images all day with the brightness cranked all the way up. None of them are shutdown properly at the end of the day either. They just cut the power at the main break for the rows of TVs which doesn't allow it to do the pixel refresh since TV has no power.
 
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I’m sure we all know this because of the organic decay and temporary image retention, but I wanted to point out two other things that I’d never heard of but am experiencing now.

See, I just got a new iPhone, and it’s my first device with an OLED screen, period. There are two issues I’ve noticed right away that I’ve not once seen mentioned here when debating about with display technology is the best.

1. Blue shift
2. Trailing/ghosting/stuttering on text scrolling

The first one is what initially caught me off guard. The phone turns very, very blue and angle, and this starts pretty early on. If I’m tilting the phone away from me a little (which I do while typing), the top of the screen starts to turn blue and be cooler than the rest.

The second is harder to explain, probably because I’m too much of a noob to use the right terms to describe it. But eventually, when I scroll through text rapidly, the text seems to leave a trail behind it. And unlike the smooth natural blur my eyes perceive in moving objects in real life (and text in LCDs), this trail is awfully discrete and stutter-y. I don’t tend to consider my eyes good enough to see this stuff usually, but this stuck out like a sore thumb.

I doubt either of these drawbacks are enough to make me return the phone and give up the contrast of this display, but I have to ask: is this normal for OLEDs? And if so, why does everyone look at it like it’s the savior of LEDs, with only the issue of decay?

EDIT: Watching some YouTube videos, and the stutter/trailing whatever is also present in people moving their hands. This is hilarious! :ROFLMAO:
I’m beginning to wonder if I have a faulty unit.
The blue shift may be due to a PCVD coating. If you wear glasses with anti-glare you'll recognize it, though it is more purplish on eyeglasses.
 
Unfortunately, if you're buying an OLED phone from anyone other than Samsung, you have a chance of not getting a Samsung-built screen. LG's portable screens are a lot crappier than their TVs, (because they don't use a color filter on white OLEDs).

You have to be careful which panel you get. I bought my Pixel 2, and not the Pixel 2 XL because the OLED is AMOLED made by Samsung. The XL is pOLED by LG, and is pretty shitty.

LG's quality is better now, and has been approved for a second-source for iPhones as a result. Unfortunately, "better" still lags far behind Samsung in build quality. See here where they were still trying to get the second-source:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/20/17261008/apple-iphone-x-lg-display-oled-supply-rumors

You still have panel lottery if you buy an iPhone, because they are too high volume. I would imagine as demand for OLED phones goes up, this lottery will affect more phones, but hopefully more competitors will enter.
 
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OLED burn in is not a hassel. It can happen but very unlikely. Under normal use and allowing the TV to do it's pixel refresh with null burn in. Reason you see it on display tv at stores is cause they run the same images all day with the brightness cranked all the way up. None of them are shutdown properly at the end of the day either. They just cut the power at the main break for the rows of TVs which doesn't allow it to do the pixel refresh since TV has no power.

So long hours of gaming w/ hud on at good brightness on oled will cause burn in issues!
https://hardforum.com/threads/oled-burn-in-is-real.1980422/
https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/real-life-oled-burn-in-test

Burn in and degradation, that's just too much hassle.
 
Doesnt that screensaver only kick in for the TVs internal apps? I'm going to run nvidia shield, cable TV, and ps5/ps4 mainly.

Good point, I'm not sure on that. I thought i had seen it pop up on my PS4 (about the only thing I use an input for), but couldn't swear by it.
 
So long hours of gaming w/ hud on at good brightness on oled will cause burn in issues!
https://hardforum.com/threads/oled-burn-in-is-real.1980422/
https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/real-life-oled-burn-in-test

Burn in and degradation, that's just too much hassle.
I'm sure it's a real issue. That said, I still own a 720p Plasma TV and love it to death. I've used it for 10 years to do little more than watch cable TV. Live TV channels have static logos. They burned into my screen frequently, and they'd stay around a while, but always disappear the next time I'd turn it on. And mind you, I'd watch the same channels 90% of the time.

I don't know how OLED burn in differs from plasma burn in on a structural level, but if it's anything like plasma was, I'm sure I can deal with it.
 
So long hours of gaming w/ hud on at good brightness on oled will cause burn in issues!
https://hardforum.com/threads/oled-burn-in-is-real.1980422/
https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/real-life-oled-burn-in-test

Burn in and degradation, that's just too much hassle.
The 1st is a 2017 model and had more issues then the 2018/19. The rting testing is not normal daily use case. If you plan on watching/gaming 20/7 then yes OLEDs are not for you. So basically the test simulated over 5 years of tv use before substantial burn-in occurred. Which still doesn't represent normal use. 5 year is pretty reasonable life for TVs nowadays and more then likely you will still get a lot more out a OLED. I don't baby my c9 and haven't changed my viewing habits and will enjoy the beauty of this TV. If I have issue after a year I will eat my words.
 
The 1st is a 2017 model and had more issues then the 2018/19. The rting testing is not normal daily use case. If you plan on watching/gaming 20/7 then yes OLEDs are not for you. So basically the test simulated over 5 years of tv use before substantial burn-in occurred. Which still doesn't represent normal use. 5 year is pretty reasonable life for TVs nowadays and more then likely you will still get a lot more out a OLED. I don't baby my c9 and haven't changed my viewing habits and will enjoy the beauty of this TV. If I have issue after a year I will eat my words.


A PC is used VERY differently to a TV though. The amount of time many people spend sat in front of a PC monitor for work (Photoshop, video editing etc.) dwarfs what anyone spends sat in front of a TV. They aren't comparable, and people don't want to have to worry about ensuring screensavers pop up almost immediately when they step away from their screen, turning it off frequently. etc etc. OLED just isn't practical as a PC monitor, and manufacturers know this. EIZO have just announced a 21.6" OLED monitor, with the specific warning in their specs stating: "If the monitor is left on continuously over a long period of time, dark smudges or burn-in may appear. To maximize the life of the monitor, we recommend the monitor be turned off periodically."

I think OLED is fantastic, but it has no future in PC's outside halo products and crazy priced showboating from manufacturers. It will never be mainstream in the PC monitor market.

The ONLY hope is if LG's 48" OLED next year sells exceptionally well, and they then decide to put out a 40-43" model... that would then offer something more practical for PC users. With HDMI 2.1 the standard by then, people should be able to enjoy OLED for PC use without incurring insane costs, therefore mitigating fear of burn-in somewhat.
 
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