Continuing Controversy
As Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S8 has come under fire for a quality issue due to its reddish display, industry experts are bringing forward various reasons. Some customers who preordered the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus and had the phone delivered beginning April 13 wrote on online communities on April 18 that their new handsets have excessive red tints on the screen, causing controversy.
Information technology (IT) industry experts said on the 19th that there are four possible causes of the Galaxy S8 with the screen having an abnormally reddish tint.
Some experts said that a semiconductor which drives the display can be defective. In short, the deviation of some chips supplied by specific providers causes red tints on the screen. They said that the slight differences of an integrated circuit (IC), which adjusts colors on the screen, or a graphics processing unit (GPU), which controls graphics, can make some Galaxy S8 units' displays have a very noticeable reddish tint.
Other experts said that the standard DCI-P3 color gamut, which Samsung Electronics has been employing it from the Galaxy Note 7, is the main reason of the issue. Using the standard, Samsung has been able to provide rich and expressive colors. However, it can distort color coordinates and is tinged with red. In fact, the Galaxy Note7 also had the red screen issue last year but it was soon forgotten following multiple reports of battery fires.
The instability of new light-emitting diode can be another factor. Until now, a mobile AMOLED display has had a greenish tint. Samsung Electronics has used the deep red AMOLED technology to avoid the potential color balance problem of too much green. Some experts said that the red element which Samsung attempted to strengthen the red color on the Galaxy S8’s panel, can break the color balance.
In addition, the structure of new displays can cause the issue. Unlike liquid-crystal display (LCD) smartphone panels using three subpixels per pixel – red, green and blue, the Galaxy S8’s AMOLED panel can use two subpixels – red-green and blue-green. The size and arrangement of pixels should be adjusted according to the Pentile structure. Some said that the Galaxy S8 has a new 18.5:9 aspect ratio and the new structure can cause the problem.
Until now, a number of Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus owners have claimed that their handset’s display has a reddish tint. However, a Samsung spokesman repeatedly said that the red tint is not a quality issue, and that customers can simply go to the settings menu to change the configuration.
When the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus smartphones being supplied to the domestic and global market continuously have the same issue, the controversy over “red screen” will be around for a while. An official from a mobile carrier said, “Pre-ordered products were activated without a large-scale cancellation on the first day of activation. Samsung Electronics hasn’t made any movement to investigate and resolve the cause of its red screen.”