iPhone 12 OLED Screen Issue

@slooom98 sorry do not understand what i guess is Arabic, can u give us some context and what it says ?

thanks.

but to recap , all orders received after nov 10 Worldwide are eligible to a full refund until January 8 included.

like each year on Apple.com ...

so we can keep out phones and wait to see if they fix it before this timeline.

i think 100% of the phones are plagued with this, but most users do not notice it, cos i had to search for it, or being in specific conditions like reboot with apple logo in complete darkness to be able to see this bug.

And macrumors said more than a week ago that they found documents from Apple to their After Sales technician , Apple told them not to exchange the phone if possible cos they think this will be patched like what happened to iPhone 11 ( nearly the same issue this summer and they had fixed it via an IOS update.

As a Dev i've updated to 14.3 release candidate tat should be 100% the same as the public vers. and still no patch, the issue is the same... i just noticed that the speakers on the 12 pro max seems less loud compared to when i got it.

But i stil think it's software like Apple thinks so, cos they had this issue before on the 11 and a software update fixed it. check on google. it was the exact same issue...

for those who bought it directly on apple.com and got it since the 10th of november just remember that u have until the 8th of January to ask for a refund or return it and get an exchange. if it's not fixed, i'll ask for a refund and order a new one .

for those who sees lines that seems to be an hardware issue , no software fix for it i think.

So guys,

i have got my third iPhone thinking that i would get lucky but the problem still persists. but at least now i am completely sure that it is a Software problem. When you get it right out of the box, there is no tint while booting up. Try it!! Boot it several times and no problem. The problem only occurs after you have gone through the set up process. So waiting for a software fix is the best right now. If the problem still persists, i will try and get another phone on January 8th. After which i will give up if i get the same problem, but I am guessing that Apple should improve its production process by then(if at all it is a hardware problem) and take care of the screen, since they dont want this issue spreading any more.

For all those thinking that their phones are not affected, go in the dark with a black wallpaper and turn your brightness to at least half, while on the wallpaper, lock your device and unlock it and voila you will see the tint quite clearly. Problem is that when you are completely in the dark, your brightness level goes to zero and you are unable to see the tint. Therefore to see the tint, you need to increase the brightness to half.

We know it since like a week after the pro mac and mini got released and we talked about that here , macrumors got internal document from apple technicians telling them to say to customers to wait a bit for a softer fix by advising them to keep their IOS up to date. BUT they didn't gave any timeline.. but it seem's to be quite spread so i think they are working on it.

14.1 installed still the same, i think i'll ask for an exchange and if the exchange is the same, i'll ask for a refund , and wait a month or so... apparently from this thread and others some ppl got exchanged iPhones made at a later date and the issue doesn't exists on their units.

I've check this weird website given out here where u enter your Serial number and it tells you the week of production , mine is a 512 Gb Pro max Made week 43 so it was the first batch of units... yellow tint and weird OLED glitch where the screen flicker when moving brightness or watching HDR content.

Guys the flickering we are seeing/talking about here is not and has nothing to do with PWM.

The pixels are being kept active at low brightness to eliminate the smear effect cause by the delay turning them back on. At mid brightness, they activate only when there is motion on the screen. You can see this if you, for example, go into the dark mode notes app in a pitch black room at around 30% brightness. You'll see that every time you type on the keyboard, the whole screen "lights up" for about half a second then goes back to true black. Believe it or not this is actually a useful feature for things like gaming and watching HDR video at low brightness when the smear on fast moving black objects or pans across black areas in backgrounds would be far more noticeable and more detrimental to the experience than slightly raised blacks.

The problem is that whatever software is controlling this "feature" can't recognize when doing this is or isn't a good idea. Playing a racing game? Good. Reading? Bad. It also can't differentiate when PARTS of the screen move but others don't. ie: the sidebars of video.

The flashing in video is happening because the fact that a video is playing is registering as something moving on screen, but since every frame is pure black, it keeps trying to light up between frames and then turn back off for black, then light up again.

The OLED panels themselves are not faulty. If they can display true black at all (which they definately can. Restart your phone and you'll see true black for the first few seconds regardless of brightness) then the problem isn't the panel, it's the display controller. The fact that some people don't have the issue is probably related to different manufacturers of the display controller, not different screen manufacturers. We already know that Apple had issues sourcing display controllers this year, which is why the pro phones don't have adaptive refresh rates. It wouldn't be hard to imagine said controllers didn't get the best QA and testing.

Whether or not apple is able to OTA update the display controller firmware, or if it's hard-coded and would need to be physically replaced, is yet to be seen.

As far as I’m aware every iphone 12 (pro, max) is affected by this. People that claim they don’t have it probably can’t even see it or are testing it wrong or thinking that this is normal, especially coming from and LCD panel like the iphone 11 etc.

After different tests I still think this has to do something with the software since the panel itself is capable of displaying true blacks when setting brightness to 100% or when in sofware update menu and leaving it there for a few secs grey color turns to pure black and after touching it goes to gray again. That would suggest software. Also another thing I’ve noticed when staying in a bright room and going to a dark one and immediatey looking for the problem the pixels are being turned off faster compared to staying in a dark room all the time. This has something to do with the light sensor I guess.

But still if Apple is not fixing this in January ill try the repair centre if they tell me that everything is OK (which they will :D) i will probably sell the phone. Over 3 months are enough to fix an issue like this imo.

The green tint associated with OLED panels has been discussed by other Internet forums for their respective devices. Just google search green tint and you’ll see many internet search results and complaints about this since the s20 and oneplus 8 pro devices etc have had it. It’s most noticeable on dark gray backgrounds when viewing effected displays in a dark room with low to zero ambient lightening, and the devices brightness being turned to low or zero output. Aka minimum brightness.

here’s a great article describing green tint on OLED panels and how they were derived and came about.

https://techpp.com/2020/08/06/oneplus-nord-amoled-green-tint/

I downloaded this color #191919 and checked it out on my iPhone 12PM. Set the iPhone to min brightness in a dark room and it appears evenly lit greenish “glow”. Even on a low display brightness in a dark room it’s it noticeable.

I then conducted the same test on my other oled mobile devices using the same test card #191919 and it appeared as a grey color, but with no hints of a “glow” green tint.

my eyes also can pickup a slight green tint in the settings menu where dark gray areas are used so I wasn’t surprised with my results.

I can also see this green tint on this test card when ambient lightening is not pitch dark and display brightness is above min level compared to my other devices.

Using the pitch dark room and min brightness merely exacerbated the issue for me.

occurs with true tone on or off.

Update from my side. UPS arrived 1 hour ago with the 4. iPhone 12 Pro. But the new one is slightly better (less green-tint), but has still raised blacks and flickering when playing back videos with black content.

Display has an G9P serialnumber („poor“ Samsung Display).

4. iPhone 12 Pro

S/N: F17DT...

Week: 49

issue: raised blacks, flickering when playing back videos with black content

got Both Iphone 12 pro max i've ordered today , and they both start with the serial F2 production week 51... and it's so much better than my 12 pro max i got day one , no yellow tinit , not blue tinit , color accuracy is very similar between both and finally i do not have this issue when in itch dark where on the older iphone 12 pro max if it wasn't at 100% brightness looking at a black wallpaper i had this gray glow in the dark where i was able to see the screen in the dark which is not logical, with the 2 new iphone 12 pro max i had , the issue can only be seen when brightness is at ZERO... and it's less pronouced...

so i will choose the one i prefer , but both are near perfect.

does someone knows the name of the windows Program to know who manufactured the panel ? cos i do not find it , and the fact that i have for a few days 3 Iphone 12 pr max would be usefull to collect data about them for me and you btw...

i'm installing parralels again xD

Thanks for the person who can help.

Yeah about the flickering I aint sure. It surely has something to do with the pixels being lit on movement or smth. When you play a video the screen is not static. Go to youtube search “black screen 10 hours” then again go to dark room put brightness at 50% and play the video in landscape mode. It does flicker on and off. Now pause the video, wait a few secs and pixels do turn off. So yeah basically they wanted to prevent the purple smear but didnt test in on videos. At this point I dont think they will fix the blacks being lit but they will somehow fix video flickering. If they will make the screen act as normal aka turn off pixels all the time they will probably get more complaints about the purple smearing when scrolling compared to pixels being lit since the average joe cant see it or dont care.

Ofc for me and most true blacks would be better even with smearing because it will look better, prevent flickering and save battery. But who knows what Apple is thinking....

Thats really interesting as F17 serial number was notorious for having bad panels so they probably have corrected the issue. I am not sure if anyone has iPhone 12 mini with a good display, i have personally tried 6 of them and all of them have this problem, i am going to get my 7th one tomorrow after playing the return game for so long, i just hope that i get a good display already.

I want everyone to remember a green tint issue with iPhone 11, it was fixed with iOS 13.6.1: https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-fixes-iphone-11-green-tint-problem-with-ios-1361

Apple took a while to fix it but they did it.

I think it’s just a matter of time...

iOS 13.6.1 changelog

iOS 13.6.1 includes bug fixes for your iPhone.

• Addresses an issue where unneeded system data files might not be automatically deleted when available storage is low
• Fixes a thermal management issue that caused some displays to exhibit a green tint
• Fixes an issue where Exposure Notifications could be disabled for some users

I wouldn’t lose faith yet. I still think it’s a software glitch and the reasons behind my assumption are the following:

1) A similar, if not the exact same, glitch occurred last year with the 11 series, then it was addressed and fixed by Apple with iOS 13.6.1;

2) When “faulty units” get replaced or when we unbox a brand new phone, they perform flawlessly. After two-three weeks of usage the flickering gets worse and worse;

3) When we boot up our phones, for the first two-three seconds the screen is completely black, thus meaning that the problem arises when the OS is loaded.

There’s a good chance we’ll see the light sometime soon between now and the end of March/April, but don’t quote me on that.