iPhone 12 OLED Screen Issue

About the 'hardware issue' who has informed you? Service centre guy or Retail store or someone from the customer support?

Because I too have enquired about this issue and the reply was that it's a software issue, and I have been closely monitoring macrumors as well as this forum, even the latest batch iphone's have this issue.

I hope Apple come to the conclusion soon, and put all the theories to the rest.

I bought a second iphone 12 pro for my girlfriend, 49 week of manufacturing. And the display shows pure black, but! I was still able to reproduce the issue.

The display glows very slightly gray in the range of 15-25% brightness, in all other cases it's perfectly black. But still it is much better than mine, I have a reproducible problem at all brightness ranges except 100%

It is really frustrating that there are nothing from apple not even an update with even unofficial changelog about addressing the issue.

The display calibration must be updated this really should never come out of such great corporation

Update

iPhone 12 Pro Received it in beginning of November F17DN can refund before Jan 8

Pitch black room

playing pure black video at brightness 0 or 10 %

shows green

but No blinking

my wife phone x all black not green

either i live with it since it’s not bothersome or I return it because it’s not true oled at this price and go back to my XR and wait for 13, 3 months after it comes out

Alright, bad news again. After receiving the new device on saturday, I tested it extensively and concluded that it was perfectly normal. After 1.5 days of use, this evening something felt off again and I tested again under a blanket and there it was, a slightly lit, grey, flickering panel. I tried all the tests again with true tone and night shift combos, but yes, I don’t have the green tint, but I now have the grey flickering issue on all brightness levels (including 100%) . At 100% it stays pure black until I touch the screen, as soon as I touch it, a grey layer appears and disappears a few seconds later. Now with this I don’t even know what to think of it. During this one and a half day period, I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary that I can think of. So I don’t know what kind of issue is this anymore. Maybe hardware, maybe software, maybe combined.. it is truly a lottery at this point. I don’t think I will return as I absolutely hated the green tint, now at least it is not any other color and it is not as bothersome, but apple better fix this soon with a software update.

Actually the gamma values are the best of any smartphone tested almost 2.2 from 0 to 100 which is probably only reason people are even noticing anything since most other phones crush detail near black so called black crush!

  iPhone 12 Pro Max Image Contrast and Intensity Scales   https://www.displaymate.com/Gamma_58P.html

I also posted pics from my older LG phone in previous post showing how it failed to even show few black squares above black in my own testing. Personally I prefer the extra detail in shadows that are supposed to be there than not seeing anything at all like other reviews also confirm iPhone 12 better at showing detail in shadows.

"The OnePlus 8 Pro and Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G (Exynos) did not render dark detail very well, as seen in this photo illustration from a video of glass blowing." https://www.dxomark.com/apple-iphone-12-pro-max-display-review-bigger-and-still-near-the-top/

This green glow only seen on pure black background AFAICT should be fixable by Apple since it probably just being caused by how they handle the green pixels at low power or near 0% black as someone already stated.

The flickering caused by PWM and weird rainbow effects I just noticed today caused by non-RGB pixel layout used on phones is probably main reasons I"m gonna return it. Pretty sure it's already been giving me headaches looking at the screen to long with the strange flickering! No fix for the RGB pixel artifacts issues since it's due to the pentapixel layout all AMOLED phones use nowadays to save money and power. Like the green tint near blacks not supposed to be noticeable 99% of the time I"m guessing it's worth cost savings though to go with non-RGB pixel layout on OLED phones anymore.

Okay I definitely had the problem at first, this is my 4th iPhone and I had the problem in the beginning but it looks like the problem is getting resolved. I am on 14.4 beta 1, I had flickering yesterday but today I have no flickering in the videos and the black wallpapers that showed the glow yesterday doesn’t have them today. It looks like the software is learning??? Don’t know what’s going on here. I got my iPhone yesterday. I will keep checking in the following days and report again but for now I am happy that at least true blacks are showing on all brightness levels.

I want to ask

if you downloaded a dark grey background how uniform the display is ?

also is there a green tint or cast(not on black background on grey or dark colors in general) when you lower the brightness to minimum ?!

This display issue has been annoying, but it’s not the end of the world to me. The vast majority of time my screen is not pure black anyway.

Having said this, I did spend some time testing different brightness levels along with various True Tone and auto brightness settings. I found that roughly above 90% brightness setting I get true black, but the green tint returns if I cover the notch WHEN AUTO BRIGHTNESS IS ON. At this point I’m 90% convinced that it’s a software/firmware issue, with 10% speculation on a display-related chip.

However, I’m not entirely sure that a fix is coming. I’ve seen several pictures where 2 iphone 12 displays look different at the exact same setting, probably because one is Samsung and the other is LG. If the software delivers true black to one display but not to the other, it may not be possible to bring true black to both without breaking other functions.

I visited the reseller today and could reproduce the problem there but they did not see it as an issue and refused to refund or replace (green tint at low brightness-glow at startup-flickering)

I am really sad as I upgraded to the 12 pro max I do regret it so much

I am not waiting for Apple to release a fix because I am 100% sure they will not

This will be my last device from that company

I have similar issue with my iPhone 12 mini. The best visible when on lowest brightness, night shift and True Tone are on and on grey background. Most affected areas are down right corner and right edge

Well it seems to me most these reviewers are bothered more by lack of always on display, higher refresh rate and notch than any of the issues discussed in this thread!

If the majority of iPhone 12 owners also feel this way probably gonna be waiting long time for fix if it is software related but guessing it's a combination of controller chip, also same reason for lack of high refresh rate screen, and QC issues as mentioned already! Anyways, already said I'm gonna return mine and stick with iPhone SE till they work out issues although going to miss night mode the most on the iPhone 12. But yeah green tint at lowest brightness unacceptable in current state since just noticed last night when I had the iPhone 12 next to the iPhone SE how much worse and dull the colors looked on the iPhone 12 compared to the SE just using Apple's own apps like the timer as you can see in picture below! Totally unacceptable having worse image quality on a phone that cost like 3x as much! The iPhone SE on right displays the correct or at least I"m guessing correct orange ring color around the time vs the yellowish ring on left of iPhone 12 due to green color mixing! and can't see it too good in this pic but the grey bar around when timer ends text also has noticeable green hue on left compared to perfectly grey looking bar on right.

Then again it's just like the higher refresh rate people are complaining about I"m sure 9/10 users won't notice difference unless they know what to look for or have another phone to compared right next to iPhone 12. My LG phone had always on display and overrated IMO never had any use for it myself. And tbh the notch on the iPhone 12 didn't bug me as much as I thought it would since only really notice it if you are looking at pics full screen. Videos and other apps won't use part of screen with notch so don't notice it 99% of time.

I'm really picky about my colors though and have all my monitors hardware calibrated and even the off supposedly minor axis color shift of OLED, is really annoying and noticeable. So basically love everything else about phone but the display with wrong colors, non-RGB OLED display with noticeable rainbow fringing chromatic abberations and flickering at low brightness. Uniformity was actually pretty excellent but didn't help fix the wrong screen colors though and not related to this thread at all like others noted. Guessing most won't be as bothered but OLED on phones pretty underwhelming after hearing how much better it's supposed to be than latest LCD tech.

@amabile288

all i can say is that the 1st one got a yellow tinit and not the other two i just got , the first one had the grey LCD panel in a pitch black room when brightness was set from 0 to 99%/// cos at 100% brightness the screen was always black and i couldnt see it in the dark at all ...

so to me it have always been a software bug but related to some panels manufacturers...

on the new 2 iphone 12 pro max i got , they were on the latest IOS 14.3 and the issue is quite hard to reproduce, in fact and to be precise , bth behave the same , If broghtness when in pitch back room and looking to the black FALD HDR vieo or ain photos apps to a pure black picture , from brightness 1% to 100% perfect black no matter what ... but the weird thing is that at the minimum brightness i see a little bit of grey on both screen but it is totally acceptable cos u really need to look for it and i'm quite sure now it is software as apple said in an internal memo... i'm sure all of this will be fixed in the next betas... like they did on iphone 11... who had the same issue in summer.....

i'm currently restoring both phones from my imac pro but it will take some time , and it will eb interesting cos my backups were on 14.4 public beta , so i will see if something changed....

i'll kep you posted.

i'm gonna install windows and get their panels manufacturer... the weird thing is that the iphone i got day one start with F2, and both of the new ones too...

I don’t think they’re doing it so apple knows about the problem… the’re doing it to see if they’re lucky enough to land a perfect one. 9 phones returned are irrelevant to the total volume of sales…

I think that after 3 replacement units it’s pretty obvious that almost every phone has the issue.

You are right, it’s unnaceptable, I was just saying that some people in the thread are overthinking and they obfuscate the useful posts.

Also, the screen is able to represent true black… with 100 perc brightness. I think the problem is in either the hdr support or the screen controllers. I hope they get their sh**t toghether and give us a solution.

The best way to check for "green tint and raised blacks" issue is by reducing the brightness to 20%, enable the dark mode and then open the settings>general>software update and on this page itself check for green tint and if the blacks are pitch black or if their is any glowing affect.(Perform this test in pitch dark room and let your eyes adjust for few minutes).

You could also perform this test on clock app, you will be able to notice the above symptoms, if the panel is faulty.