How to avoid pixel burn-in. Features of IPS and OLED displays in modern smartphones How to solve the problem of screen burn-in

The battle between LCD and OLED displays continues. At the same time, it is still unclear how soon OLED technology will be able to completely take the place of LCD, because the future in any case belongs to flexible smartphones, where the use of LCD panels is unacceptable. Currently, LCD displays in general still perform better than OLED. One of the reasons is pixel burn-in, which every owner of a smartphone with an OLED display faces. Let's determine what it is and how to deal with it.

What is display burn-in? It appears over time and is noticeable if you open the white background on your smartphone and examine the places where the navigation buttons and status bar are usually located. Typically, these areas appear lighter than the rest of the display area.

Why do OLED displays burn out? It's all about technology. The subpixels (diodes) of OLED displays (blue, red, green) have different lifespans. If you go deeper, the core of the problem lies in the blue subpixel, the brightness of which is significantly lower than the brightness of the red and green subpixels. Therefore, in order to maintain balance, it is necessary to increase the current supply to the blue diodes, this, in turn, leads to a decrease in their service life. Therefore, over time, the color rendition of the display will fade into green and red tones due to the gradual weakening of the blue diodes - this process is called burn-in.

OLED displays will burn out over time in areas where blue or White color, and in places where black color is used, on the contrary, subpixels retain their properties. An example is the navigation buttons, which are located on a black background, so this area of ​​the display does not lose its quality over time, unlike the rest of the screen area.

To avoid display burn-in, manufacturers use various methods. One of them is a periodic shift of the image by several pixels. This is necessary to ensure that the display burns out evenly (it will burn out in any case). The main thing is that during use there are no elements on the display that remain in one place for a long time. It could be an icon, an inscription - anything. Try to change the arrangement of icons sometimes, change your desktop wallpaper often. It is advisable to use dark wallpaper so that the display burns out more slowly.

To combat burnout, it uses PenTile technology, where the blue diodes are larger in size, which makes it possible to supply less current to them, and accordingly, the service life of the blue diodes will be longer.

Try not to use the maximum brightness of the display: the lower the brightness, the less current needs to be supplied to the diodes. Try not to leave your smartphone's OLED display on unless necessary. Use keyboards with dark themes, try to change the keyboard themes sometimes, if your smartphone supports themes, change them periodically. Try to use night mode in applications, this will reduce display burn-in.

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We love AMOLED displays. They are super clear, super bright and just awesome. But they have one big drawback - burnout. If you remember the days of CRT screens, then you remember the ghost images that appeared on the screen, and thanks to AMOLED, they are back. The good news is that it is fixable. Here's how to fix the AMOLED burn-in problem on Android displays.

What is AMOLED burn-in?

Younger readers may have never seen burn-in like this before because it doesn't happen with LCD displays (though it does happen with plasma TVs). If you're a little older, you know exactly what we're talking about. On cathode ray (CRT) monitors or televisions, in a place where the same thing is displayed every day, burn-in occurs and it remains on the screen. As a result, TVs had ghostly MTV logos burned into the corner that remained on the screen no matter what program you were watching. And on the monitor screens there was a constant reminder of the Windows menu or WordPerfect 5.1.

Burnout is the reason screensavers exist; for example, by replacing Microsoft Word with flying toasters or carousels in landscape photos, the risk of burnout is greatly reduced. People pay real money for screensaver apps. Seriously.

As you can probably tell by the fact that your phone isn't two feet thick, we no longer use CRT displays. But the same problem that affects phosphorus in cathode ray tubes also affects AMOLEDs. The reason for AMOLED is the letter O, which stands for organic. Over time, connections in AMOLED displays deteriorate, just like battery components, and when this happens, they can leave ghostly images in areas that experience the most electronic wear and tear. This is AMOLED burn-in.

How can I avoid AMOLED burn-in?

The easiest way to avoid burn-in is to make sure your display doesn't show the same thing in the same place for a long time. For example, if you leave the screen active while charging, it's likely that you'll see ghost icons on your home screen even while you're doing other things on your phone. It will take a while before this happens, and they will be very faint at first, but if this happens to your phone, you will notice it when you do something on a white background, such as working in a text editing application: the brownish spots where pictures burned through the display.

Charging isn't the only culprit. If you use Google Maps on your phone for hours on end, or use the same app for really long periods every day, then this can also cause burn-in. It's not as bad as it was in the bad old days of CRT, but obviously it gets really annoying very soon.

How can I solve the AMOLED burn-in problem?

The honest answer is no, but there is a BUT so big that Sir Mix-A-Lot could write a song about it. Thanks to someone's truly inspired thinking, there is an app to solve the problem of screen burn-in. This won't get rid of the burnt-in area, but it will force your device to make it disappear. It `s Magic!

Okay, it's not really magic. But it's a pretty smart thing. The app is called AMOLED Burn-In Fixer, and if your device is running Lollipop or later, it will be able to take advantage of a nifty system trick called inverted colors. By changing the color underneath the burned area, the app can actually make it disappear. It's still there, but the screen effectively does what noise-canceling headphones do: analyze the signal and suppress it with a mirror image.

AMOLED Burn-In Fixer does three things. One of them is to check your device to show any burnt areas. Second, it can hide parts of the user interface to prevent even more burnout. And third, it is able to invert the colors on the navigation screen and other elements to make the scorched spot disappear.

This does not work on every device. If you don't have Lollipop, then you're out of luck, and if the place is already very badly scorched, then no amount of useful apps will fix the situation, but given that it won't cost any money, it's certainly worth a try. The app currently has 4.1 out of a possible five stars on Google Play, suggesting it does a good job.

Have you experienced burnout on your phone? Have you tried using the apps and what was the result? Share with us in the comments below.

From possible display burnout. Now many consumers have begun to fear new problem. But is burnout really that bad? On what devices can such a disaster happen? And is there any way to protect the screen?

Modern screens consist of liquid crystals, which contain multi-colored pixels. Under the influence of electric current, the brightness of certain colors changes, due to which the desired picture is displayed by pixels. In the case of displays made using , PLS, TFT and some other technologies, LED backlighting is additionally used. This completely solves the problem of burnout. Something can happen to the pixels only after a very long time - the screen must be kept active for up to five years for at least some changes to occur. And there is a high chance that the backlight will fail faster.

Burnout can only happen to... The fact is that in such matrices the pixels glow independently under the influence of current. Over time, the brightness of the glow may decrease. The problem is that the brightness of pixels of one color decreases faster than the brightness of pixels of another color. If the screen is constantly kept active, then after a certain number of months certain areas of the display can actually burn out.

Maximum burnout

A good example is an old smartphone from the company, located in one of the British museums. Only one application was launched on this device - the first version of Google Wallet. The device almost never turned off, and the AMOLED screen was constantly on. Over the course of several years, the brightness of different pixels has changed quite significantly. As a result, application icons, numbers for dialing a PIN code, and the program logo seemed to be imprinted on the screen. But this is already an extreme case - none of them ordinary people does not use the smartphone in this mode.

How to protect your screen from fading?

If the device has an OLED screen, then protecting against burn-in is very simple. It is enough to follow simple rules:

• Do not keep the display active for many hours at a time. The exception is the display of videos, which can be played around the clock.
• Change your desktop wallpaper and lock screen from time to time. The ideal option is to install live wallpaper, but this has a detrimental effect on battery life. It is also recommended to use wallpaper with dark colors - for example, on the theme of space or night nature.
• The location of application icons on the desktop also needs to be changed from time to time.
• Try to use high backlight brightness less often. This should increase the lifespan of most diodes.
• Enable Immersive Mode if the firmware version you are using has one. In this mode, the notification panel and other static elements no longer appear. You can also install a launcher that has a similar mode.
• Reduce display turn-off time. This will reduce the duration of display of static elements.
• Install a virtual keyboard with a dark theme. This will slow down the degradation of pixels in cases where the smartphone is very often used for correspondence and typing. You can also sometimes change one keyboard to another.

Of course, it is not necessary to strictly adhere to absolutely all of the above rules. It is enough to follow only a few of them - this will definitely slow down the display burn-in. And if you never use one smartphone for more than two years, then you can safely not give a damn about any rules - any screen will last this long, even one belonging to one of the very first generations of AMOLED.

It's not all that scary

In fact, the smartphone operating system already combats screen burn-in quite successfully. For example, in the Samsung Galaxy S8, special software monitors how much the brightness of each pixel has decreased. If something happens, the brightness of other pixels is adapted to the readings of neighboring pixels. The system is also capable of regularly shifting some static elements one or two pixels to the side - it is almost impossible to notice this, so the user experience does not deteriorate. Most often, such a shift occurs in the time and notifications displayed on the screen in Always On mode. In short, if you have a smartphone with an AMOLED screen, released in 2017 or even later, then you don’t have to worry about screen burn-in - the system won’t allow it.

The user won’t even notice the time and date shift by a couple of pixels

Why did Apple have to notify consumers about possible problems with X? The fact is that the Apple giant is dealing with an AMOLED display for the first time. The smartphone entered the market in a great hurry, and therefore the developers from Cupertino simply did not have time to introduce the necessary innovations into iOS. At the time of the release of the iPhone X, the operating system did not learn to do anything to prevent display burn-in. However, this does not mean that owners of an expensive gadget should be afraid of such a problem. Place new wallpapers more often, and change the position of the icons - this will definitely protect the screen from burnout.

Conclusion

What to do if burnout has already occurred? Unfortunately, it is impossible to completely eliminate this effect. There are apps that claim to combat burnout. But in fact, they only send an increased current to the pixels located next to the burned-out ones, so that soon the brightness of their glow becomes equal. But in fact, this only reduces the service life of the device. Yes, and such programs do not work on all versions. operating system- It’s not without reason that many applications have already been removed from Google Play. In a word, there is no point in talking about them.

To sum it up, don't worry about display burn-in. If you follow simple rules, then such a disaster will definitely not happen to your smartphone. And you certainly shouldn’t expect problems if the device’s screen is active no more than three to four hours a day.

OLED degradation after 32 weeks of use. A photo of 100% red is compared on six new TVs and on them after a 32-week accelerated aging test with different types of content

OLED technology is considered the next "revolutionary" change for television screens. These TVs are much brighter and offer best quality images than LED-backlit LCDs, not to mention better black levels. But marketers and sales people in the store are unlikely to tell you about what you will have to face when actually using an OLED TV, namely, the inevitable burnout of the matrix, which will happen sooner than you thought.

• 50% gray
• 100% red
• 100% green
• 100% blue
• 100% cyan
• 100% magenta
• 100% yellow

Testing includes 20 hours of work per day, with breaks between five-hour blocks and launching LG's proprietary Pixel Refresher function after each session (that is, four times a day). This playback mode was designed to simulate watching TV for five hours a day.

Tests are still ongoing. The last published photographs were taken 32 weeks after the start of testing, but the difference with the original image, which was on the new TVs, is already clearly visible.

To the eye, it seems that the minimal difference in the image is in the blue fill, and the burnout is most noticeable in 50% gray, green and yellow fills.

During testing it turned out that different types content cause varying degrees of burnout. The worst thing for a TV is games and news when logos, maps or other elements of a stable form are constantly shown on the screen in certain places on the screen. It is in these areas that the artifacts are most pronounced.

RTINGS experts admit that test scenarios are extreme. However, such five-hour “thematic sessions” seem to be a completely normal example of real-life use of TV at home. Many consumers actually turn on the TV to a certain type of content and do not change it for five hours, be it a news channel or a computer game.

The recorded burn rate does not correspond to the manufacturer's claims. LG claims burn-in won't be an issue for at least 30,000 hours of use, but here we see obvious issues like screen logos after just 4,000 hours of use.

Judging by the test results, to extend the life of an OLED TV, it is advisable to vary the content that is displayed on the screen. The main enemy is the same logo or other element that is displayed in the same place on the screen. If you constantly watch one channel, then we can advise you to at least change the image scale. But of course, the best thing is to constantly change the content on the screen: play not just one game, but different games, watch movies after/instead of news channels, avoid prolonged display of tickers and logos on the screen.

Naturally, LG isn't the only company experiencing burn-in issues with OLED displays. The same problems with display burn-in were observed in Google Pixel 2 XL smartphones when it came out last year.

Google solved the problem software update, after which the navigation bar began to automatically disappear from the screen after a long period of inactivity. In addition, the maximum display brightness level has been reduced. Although Google initially claimed that such burnout was a normal phenomenon, it later extended the warranty period to two years.

It is more susceptible to burnout, and only careful handling of the smartphone can delay the occurrence of the problem.

What is screen burn-in?

Display burn-in is a phantom image of static elements of the picture. On OLED screens, burn-in is noticeable when the display shows for a long time the same elements are displayed. The matrix includes LEDs of three colors: blue, green and red, and the service life of blue LEDs is lower than others. This is due to the fact that the blue color is less bright, which means it requires more current and fails earlier.

Those areas of the display where the image is almost always static are most often susceptible to burn-in: the status bar, on-screen keys, and keyboard. The appearance of these elements against a light background, when they are not involved, is burnout.

Active use of images with predominant blue and white colors accelerates the process of burnout. Black color does not require subpixel illumination and does not affect the burnout time. Showcase samples of gadgets, which, as a rule, work all day long for several months, are most susceptible to fading. They display the same content every day, elements of which may be visible against a white background.

The reaction of smartphone manufacturers

Certain models of Samsung smartphones are equipped with PenTile technology, in which the blue subpixels are larger and therefore consume less current in relation to others. Due to this, their service life is extended.

Many manufacturers have decided to periodically move static images to the side to avoid burn-in. For the user, such movements are almost invisible, and the display wears out significantly less.

How to delay screen burn-in?

To extend the life of the matrix, professionals recommend not using light keyboard themes and activating the screen off mode in case of inactivity. If possible, you should change the screen saver and rearrange widgets.

Since LEDs cannot be restored, the solution to the problem would be complete replacement matrices. If the discomfort from using a smartphone with a burnt-out display has reached its peak, you will have to replace the matrix at a service center.