Burn-in on PenTile Screen


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Hey guys,

I've had a Galaxy Nexus for just over a year now (Just outside of warranty) and I've found that there is some burn-in on the display. A feint qwerty keyboard shows all the time on my screen, and the whole display has a sorta greyish tint to it. I had no idea you could get this problem on LED displays. I thought it was limited to Plasma only.

I now I can't really repair this unless I replace the entire screen, which will probably cost an absolute bomb, but has anybody had this issue before with these types of screens?

My phone uses a HD Super AMOLED with PenTile screen, which I thought was meant to be the most high-end kind of mobile display you could get.

My theory is that the actual phone itself can get quite hot sometimes, and this is the reason why there's burn in. I'm thinking the heat could have scorched the white piece of paper used in the display? Or am I completely on the wrong track here?

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Is it really burn in or just image retention? All OLED screens have problems with image retention. I've had my GNex since it came out and don't have any burn in, just image retention that lasts for a few seconds.

Also, I won't claim to know everything about displays, but what "white piece of paper" are you talking about?

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I can't see it being image retention, as the same thing has been on my display for weeks now.

Also, displays are normally made up of a few different layers.. one is just a sheet of white paper so the backlight can shine on it. But I have no idea if this can be affected or not.

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I've never heard of white paper being used on LCD displays :|

<snip>

Nor on OLED displays in which there is no backlight as they are "organic light-emitting diodes" after all. But again, I won't claim to know everything about displays.

But back on topic, screen burn in is still possible with OLED screens, but I haven't heard many complaints about it with the GNex. I wouldn't think the phone getting hot would have any impact on anything, though.

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Anyway,

I tried to take a photo of the display but you can barely see it through a camera lens.

post-154856-0-97057100-1356951161.jpg

You can sorta see a keyboard.

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I'll assume you didn't just have the keyboard up right before switching to that white screen then? That's pretty crappy.

Edit: Actually, after looking really, really hard at mine on a white screen I can very slightly see my keyboard as well. I can't tell if I'm not really looking for it, though. Might be because I keep mine at at around 75% max brightness.

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Nope it's been there for weeks. It is pretty crappy.. Especially since it started happening right after the warranty has ended. :(

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Does your keyboard have white lettering on the keys ?

If so, it's simply the OLED cells dying.

As for ambled beeping the most advanced, not really, it has the highest dynamic contrast, super IPS has better real contrast and truer colors. In practicality they're not much different.

And LED can have burn in as well. Tough it takes longer, but modern plasmas take just as long. Moot point on a cell phone anyway, specially since the screens usually aren't on long enough for burn in.

But OLEDs have limited life, which is the primary reason they're not on tv's yet. And every time an OLED is on, it burns itself out a bit.

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Yes the lettering is white, but the background of the keyboard is a dark grey, and that too shows up on my display all the time, and that represents itself as a lighter tint.

....It's hard to describe in text.

So this is just completely normal? I can understand the OLED cells dying. I can assume that the entire display won't just go kaput on me one day though right? If so I'll just live with it for another 10 months or so until I replace the phone.

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It is common among SAMOLED screens. I had 2 screens for an Omnia 7 and both shared the same burden. After a while you could see the faint outlines of the bottom round buttons that presumably imprinted from the use of IE.

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All Samsung AMOLED screens have it indeed. We have a Galaxy S2 demo model in the store that continuously runs through the same video, and you can now sort of almost see the most-used still image in the video.

Nothing you can really do about it, and I don't really think this is covered under warranty since it's pretty normal with regular usage.

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Anyway,

I tried to take a photo of the display but you can barely see it through a camera lens.

SAM_0542.JPG

You can sorta see a keyboard.

You can see it better now

My Transformer used to do it if you left the same image on the screen for too long, but it would disappear after a while of using the screen with something different

Weirdly enough, since updating from Honeycomb to ICS to JB it doesn't happen any more

Or maybe once the screen reaches a certain age it doesn't retain the image as much

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Yes the lettering is white, but the background of the keyboard is a dark grey, and that too shows up on my display all the time, and that represents itself as a lighter tint.

....It's hard to describe in text.

So this is just completely normal? I can understand the OLED cells dying. I can assume that the entire display won't just go kaput on me one day though right? If so I'll just live with it for another 10 months or so until I replace the phone.

The brighter the cell the faster it dies. so cells on the screen that are white a lot(ie keyboard keys) will die fast, while the grey keyboard cell will die slightly slower since they are less bright. meanwhile everything else on the screen will die slower because that part of the screen will sometimes be black sometimes white, effectively on average those cells won't e on as bright as much as the keyboard cells.

You can see it better now

My Transformer used to do it if you left the same image on the screen for too long, but it would disappear after a while of using the screen with something different

Weirdly enough, since updating from Honeycomb to ICS to JB it doesn't happen any more

Or maybe once the screen reaches a certain age it doesn't retain the image as much

You're confusing image retention with cell burn out.

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oh heck I get stuff like that on my S-IPS LCD screens, it's almost like the crystals get stuck... on OLED though you can burn them in like in plasma, and deminish the OLED capabilities (OLED does deteriorate easier)

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oh heck I get stuff like that on my S-IPS LCD screens, it's almost like the crystals get stuck... on OLED though you can burn them in like in plasma, and deminish the OLED capabilities (OLED does deteriorate easier)

I think my Transformer has an IPS LCD, the one that has a 270dg viewing angle or something

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never had an issue with burn in on a pentile display however, i have experienced issues where the corners would darken over time.

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oh heck I get stuff like that on my S-IPS LCD screens, it's almost like the crystals get stuck... on OLED though you can burn them in like in plasma, and deminish the OLED capabilities (OLED does deteriorate easier)

As has been said, on the IPS screen it's image retention that goes away, and can even be prevented with pixel "Shaking" or a built in blanking routine. though phones usually don't do it because retention isn't supposed to be a problem on them due to the short usage times. of course a lot of people now are using phones for a lot longer periods than the designers intended.

retention will generally appear the opposite of OLED burn out though. as in the letter would appear as "light" ghosts on black backgrounds, whereas burn outs appear as "dark" ghost on lighter backgrounds.

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Just a FYI, because I'm about to leave the house that's all I can contribute after having had a quick skim through some posts:

SAMOLED is not the most high-end mobile display technology you can buy right now, that would be IPS as can be found in iPhones.

They have the best viewing angles (~178?) and the iPhone 5 for example has incredible color reproduction values for SRGB (100% gamut).

Of course the quality of a display may vary depending on your needs.

If viewing angles are not an issue for you, you might well prefer the SAMOLED over an IPS panel or if you need more then 326ppi, although that's not an IPS limitation afaik, so you could theoretically get a full HD on 5" screen with IPS as well I guess.

(correct me if I'm wrong)

Disclaimer: I don't try to troll this thread chipping in non-Android talk, in case any mod thinks that. >_>

Glassed Silver:mac

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A possible solution would be to take a screenshot of your display while you have the keyboard open and invert the colours. Simply leave it on for a few days and all the other cells will hopefully fade to the same level :rofl:

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Just a FYI, because I'm about to leave the house that's all I can contribute after having had a quick skim through some posts:

SAMOLED is not the most high-end mobile display technology you can buy right now, that would be IPS as can be found in iPhones.

They have the best viewing angles (~178?) and the iPhone 5 for example has incredible color reproduction values for SRGB (100% gamut).

Of course the quality of a display may vary depending on your needs.

If viewing angles are not an issue for you, you might well prefer the SAMOLED over an IPS panel or if you need more then 326ppi, although that's not an IPS limitation afaik, so you could theoretically get a full HD on 5" screen with IPS as well I guess.

(correct me if I'm wrong)

Disclaimer: I don't try to troll this thread chipping in non-Android talk, in case any mod thinks that. >_>

Glassed Silver:mac

I don't think you're trolling, it's just good old technical info. :rofl:

Quality of the screen is not the most important factor for me, but it is up there. The reason I would never use an iPhone again is because I just don't like iOS. I'm very pleased with Android 4! My eyes are on the Nexus 4 for a replacement (or whatever Nexus device is new in 10 months time).

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