Why is my iPad M4 screen so grainy?
Why is the screen so grainy on the m4 13 inch ipad
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iPad Pro, iPadOS 17
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Welcome to Samsung's new OLED technology. S24 line has it, Pixel 8 line has it, Steam Deck OLED has it, Switch OLED has it, now the new iPad has it, and you can bet the iPhone 16 will have it. It's called the "mura" effect and it's a product of poor manufacturing practices. These screens are supposed to undergo a de-mura process before release,
Not all panels have this issue but some have it worse than others and some people are more sensitive to it than normal. So if you lose the screen lottery and Better return the device.
It's a hardware problem, so it will always be there unless you replace the screen. But it can be remedied with a post processing filter. Like if the software knows a specific pixel is a little more blue than it's supposed to be, then it will subtract some blue from that pixel in a frame or image before it's rendered. It then does this for every pixel. This is something Nvidia Steam has done for the Steam Deck OLED. But the downside is that it crushes near-black colors and messes with color accuracy. There's no perfect solution beyond replacing the screen with a perfect one.
OLED technology is not new and this is an old problem that was solved many years ago. Like 2015 era OLED phones.
The issue is now mainstream again because OLED technology has evolved to make these displays more color accurate, more power efficient, and cheaper and easier to manufacture. And for the most part, all of those goals have been achieved, but it has also caused mura to become common again.
What is happening is that the OLED panel is struggling to distribute current evenly and consistently to every pixel, which leads to a noticeable lack of uniformity in luminous output across each array of red, green, and blue subpixels.
Think of it like this: if you set your phone to 10% brightness, some subpixels will be at 8%, some will be at 9%, some at 10%, some at 11%, some at 12%, etc. It's more noticeable on darker gray colors because those colors are supposed to have even amounts of red, green, and blue. But because of mura, some of the pixels are a little more red, some are little more green, and some are a little more blue. So when you zoom out, instead of solid gray, it looks like a grainy gray-ish color.
If LG is copying this OLED design from Samsung, then the problem will occur in their screens too.
Tbh the source of the issue is cutting corners on the QA part of manufacturing these screens. It's not like the design is permanently flawed. There is a de-mura tuning process that they should be going through. We just don't know if they still are or if they're rushing through it.
