Reddit users have reported a “faint ghosting to the edges of the screen” when horizontal black lines are displayed on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+, which I can’t replicate on an S7.
Some Reddit readers who own S8 and S8+ models are wishing they hadn’t seen the post about claimed black line image ghosting or bleeding when black lines are displayed.
At this Reddit page, a user named retnuh730 said: “I notice in apps when there's a completely white background and horizontal black lines. There's what I can only describe as faint ghosting going to the edges of the screen. Essentially like the lines continue to the edge of the screen in ghost form, even when the black lines stop in text.
“Not completely distracting, but something if you notice you kinda can't not notice. This moves with the text around the screen, so it is not just one location.”
The image being referred to is here.
{loadposition alex08}There does not appear to be a huge outcry about this issue since it first appeared on Reddit and then on Phandroid here, which has a close-up of the claimed image ghosting/bleeding in question.
User Retnuh730 admits he doesn’t have “the most recent edge colour update,” which presumably refers to the update that helps users recalibrate their screen colours for those facing the “red tint” issue.
One user named Sephr stated: “I think this is an intrinsic limitation of current Samsung OLED panels due to their use of LTPS TFTs. Once Samsung switches to IGZO TFTs with higher electron mobility, this issue should be drastically reduced.
To this, user reductase said: “Wow, an actual real answer in this thread”, which was followed by user MagDandies retorting “Cool, now I need to research what these words mean.”
Various users in the Reddit thread say they can see the ghosting, too, while others say they can’t.
There are also some users who wish they hadn’t read this thread, as what has been seen cannot be unseen, and until they were notified of the ghosting issue, they hadn’t yet noticed it.
Some users also claim that they can see the ghosting when looking at the image linked above, but cannot reproduce the alleged ghosting when they look at their own Gmail emails.
I have viewed the image linked above on last year’s Samsung Galaxy S7, and cannot see the claimed ghosting on its AMOLED panel.
Given the widespread rumours that Apple will be using Samsung AMOLED panels in its iPhone 8 (or X or Edition) model that is supposedly going to be released alongside this year’s iPhone 7s and 7s Plus, one wonders whether any such image ghosting or bleeding might affect iPhones equipped with similar AMOLED panels.
As noted, there is no major outcry about this issue, especially seeing as most people are not looking at masses of black horizontal lines on their S8 and S8+ screens.
It is, however, yet another interesting adventure into the unexpected ways technology can surprise us, while delivering things hardware makers need to look out for so they don’t occur again in the future.