More quality control issues with Samsung Galaxy S2 displays?
I just posted another example photo of the issue in a new post.
***************
I’ve been a pretty happy owner of a Samsung Galaxy SII since April. I’ve especially been pleased with the excellent display that is able to deliver true blacks while being one of the brightest screens out there.
Imagine my horror then when the display broke. It looked like something was leaking inside it. It started as a minor pink hue in the edge of the screen and in a couple days had turned into a bruise covering one fourth of the screen. All the pixels seemed to work but there was a shadow with distinct edges clouding the picture.
The issue
Luckily the warranty covered this and the service point returned my phone with a note: “Display module replaced“. Little did I know that not all Super Amoled+ screens are created equal. After a minute of using the serviced device I noticed that the screen was somehow dark – noticeably darker than before. I checked all the settings – everything was set up the way it had been before with the auto-brightness set on. It just wasn’t the screen I had come to know. We have two units of the SGS2 at home and so I compared the serviced one with the other original unit. The display in the original (reference) unit was noticeably brighter than mine. The difference was even more apparent in the dark shades – where the reference display separated several different shades of dark grays mine only displayed black. The original screen on the reference device delivered the same quality as my ‘pre-serviced’ unit. Then I turned off the auto-brightness on both devices and cranked up the brightness to the max. Again the serviced unit was visibly dim compared to the reference unit. Even the color space between the devices are different – the original quite natural and a tad warm and the serviced one distinctly cool with whites tilted towards blue.
Next I borrowed a couple of other S2′s from colleagues at the office and it turned out their devices were just as dim as my serviced one – one even dimmer! I guess this explains why some reviewers and users have judged the display on the SGS2 to be too dark – something that I always thought to be a silly complaint. It seems that the display quality between devices varies greatly. I’m currently expecting a reply from my service point as to what I should do with my ‘faulty’ screen – I’ll let you know how this pans out.
I tried taking photos with the reference unit and the serviced unit side-by-side. If you think the differences are small and to complain is silly you should know that the real life effect is that taking photos and watching videos is now a pain because every shadow is just a solid black area and when you go into a dark room the auto-brightness drops the brightness way too low. So if you own a Samsung Galaxy s2 with a dark screen – you are one of the unlucky ones.
Below are the comparison shots. If you suspect you have one of the dark screens feel free to leave a comment below.
Color bars. In the overlay I’ve split each bar in two – right half of each color is the serviced unit.
Contrast and gamma. For better comparison I’ve copied parts of the other screen over the other.
Difference in brightness. Both screens are showing the same color.
brother,
its no matter.. brightness effet has three catagories on SGS 2:
Dynamic
Standard
Movie
Screen color will be different …
Eh… brother. Nope. No matter what settings you have the diffence is the same. And it’s not a question of different hues. When you compare the different screens side by side with a picture that has darker areas my screen shows them all as solid black. Consistantly. In real use this means that every movie with a night scene means you get to stare at black screen most of the time and every photo you snap looks underexposed. The difference between the good display and mine is insane.
How to set the display mode?. I try to find it but i can’t. Please teach me how to go on display mode setting. Thanks.
I have just noticed exactly the same problem with my S2… I can only hope that it will be fixed with icecream sandwich
very dissapointed
Check out the latest post – there’s a new demo pic. Let me know if yours performs the same way.
I’ve just checked it…Mine is a lot worse…I can barely see the first one in the last row even if I turn the brightness up to the max (pure black in the other rows). This is just…sad
btw mine was bought on 3rd July (in the UK) and has always been this dark. i thought this was how it supposed to be (did not understand how people can get on with it though) until i checked a couple more. Beyond this so far I’ve had red spot, yellow spot, colour banding, background “waving”, etc… well done samsung i’m so “pleased”. True professionalism.
I’m guessing only the first batch of devices had good quality displays but when they accelerated the rate of production the quality dropped drastically. If the first reviewers would’ve had devices with screens like these there wouldn’t have been too many good things to say about them. The screen quality now seems to be good enough for phone use but watching videos and taking and reviewing photos is now a really frustrating experience – especially because I’ve had a good display before and the SGS2 of my better half is a painful reminder of how the display should perform. And the supposed excellence of the Super Amoled Plus display is one of main selling points of the product.
You’re absolutely right. I think I’ll try to send mine back and get it replaced… :/ (btw I did a factory reset as well but did not help.) Is there any other option we could try?
Hi Markus, just a quick one. There is an app on the market called “screen adjuster” that can resolve this annoying problem. I’ve just installed it an it’s *** amazing… I can finally set custom brightness / contrast / RGB values. Also the device does not have to be rooted!
Only problem is that it doesn’t fix the auto-brightness issues and it’s bypassed when watching videos with the native player, probably because it’s hardware accelerated. Otherwise it seemed that dropping the contrast -30 made the whole scale of boxes in the black level test visible.
Yes you’re right it’s not a proper solution for the problem but at least now I can take a look at the screen with a slight smile on my face instead of getting frustrated. Btw after I played a bit with this program I had to realize that on mine it was not just the darkness but the lack of blue colours. I got nearly perfect results when I pushed them up a “bit” (+20…).
Did you get any reply from the service? I’m thinking of sending it back but to be honest I reckon that these problems (along with the color banding issues) are caused by a faulty driver and will be fixed with the new kernel (ICS) in the near future.