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Extreme viewing angle color shift on X

chfilm

chfilm

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Nov 15, 2012
3,469
2,270
Berlin
Hey,

I realized in a couple of reviews that they mentioned that the OLED screens tend to have viewing angle issues- but I’d never expected for it to be this bad to be honest.

As soon as I tilt the phone for maybe 10 degrees, a color shift to an oddly cold/blue/greenish color starts to occur.

It’s a pretty extreme effect, far outweighing the benefits of the nice display for me, in comparison to my old 7+.

Is my device broken? Or is this considered normal behavior? Especially with True Tone Tuning the Display to a kinda warmer color in many situations, this effect is awful!
 
Waiting for mine but my friend has it - From what I saw, there was a color shift but I wouldn't characterize it as 'extreme'!
Obviously, I do not know if yours is extreme but we lot on this forum are extremely sensitive to these things as we read and live this thing.
Objectively, it is a thing of beauty in a form factor that is to be enjoyed...
 
It’s quite bad on mine too. Disappointing but hopefully I’ll get used to it.
 
welcome to the world of OLED.

not too sure how the rest of the world managed to tolerate with mentioned display technology.
 
chfilm said:
Hey,

I realized in a couple of reviews that they mentioned that the OLED screens tend to have viewing angle issues- but I’d never expected for it to be this bad to be honest.

As soon as I tilt the phone for maybe 10 degrees, a color shift to an oddly cold/blue/greenish color starts to occur.

It’s a pretty extreme effect, far outweighing the benefits of the nice display for me, in comparison to my old 7+.

Is my device broken? Or is this considered normal behavior? Especially with True Tone Tuning the Display to a kinda warmer color in many situations, this effect is awful!
Click to expand...


Turn off True Tone and the color shift goes away
 
It's not as bad when you use the phone for a while... but once you go back to the LCD screen of a different iPhone you see how bad that OLED panel really is.
 
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To be as honest as I can, I don’t really notice any viewing issues what so ever. I keep True Tone on( prefer it on) and brightness set to a little less than half.

I can view the screen at any angle on white web pages and can’t see any display color changes.

In fact the screen is one of my favorite features, it just always looks good.
 
Diorama said:
Until you see literally anything that is supposed to be ‘black’ on the LCD.
Click to expand...

I've not seen the X screen, but I love this argument .... the screen looks naff "by design" but as long as you stare at a black screen it's awesome compared to LCD.

The downside of a better screen is that when you look at it (which, TBH is the point of it), it looks worse.
 
MrGimper said:
I've not seen the X screen, but I love this argument .... the screen looks naff "by design" but as long as you stare at a black screen it's awesome compared to LCD.

The downside of a better screen is that when you look at it (which, TBH is the point of it), it looks worse.
Click to expand...
Are you hot-shot lawyer ? :p
No, seriously the OLED screen really does look beautiful because of the contrast. Even on TVs, a 1080p OLED screen looks better than 4k LCD screen
 
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Diorama said:
Until you see literally anything that is supposed to be ‘black’ on the LCD.
Click to expand...

Blacks looked better to me on my 6S+... I loaded up some demo pictures and my 6S+ showed more details. For example, in one picture the dark black night sky... On the X you couldn't see the stars, on the 6S+ they were very obvious
 
Diorama said:
Until you see literally anything that is supposed to be ‘black’ on the LCD.
Click to expand...

MrGimper said:
I've not seen the X screen, but I love this argument .... the screen looks naff "by design" but as long as you stare at a black screen it's awesome compared to LCD.
Click to expand...

Agreed. When iOS 11 beta first came out they released a simple black wallpaper and I didn't understand why but now that the OLED iPhone X is here I had an ah-ha moment. Staring at that same black wallpaper on iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone X just really show how gorgeous black looks on the X. I literally find myself sitting and staring at the black screen on the X. It's just incredible.
 
MrGimper said:
I've not seen the X screen, but I love this argument .... the screen looks naff "by design" but as long as you stare at a black screen it's awesome compared to LCD.

The downside of a better screen is that when you look at it (which, TBH is the point of it), it looks worse.
Click to expand...

This makes you sound very silly. The OLED on the X is objectively the better panel. It looks much better. Colours, contrast, accuracy, resolution, all better.

If your hobby is looking at screens at a 40 degree angle then by all means go with IPS because that’s the main strength of the tech.
[doublepost=1510143855][/doublepost]
mazdamiata210 said:
Blacks looked better to me on my 6S+... I loaded up some demo pictures and my 6S+ showed more details. For example, in one picture the dark black night sky... On the X you couldn't see the stars, on the 6S+ they were very obvious
Click to expand...

Lol, no.

Any other opinion you have on anything can now be safely ignored.
I’ve gone from a 6S+ to a X and still have both phones.
 
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Diorama said:
This makes you sound very silly. The OLED on the X is objectively the better panel. It looks much better. Colours, contrast, accuracy, resolution, all better.

If your hobby is looking at screens at a 40 degree angle then by all means go with IPS because that’s the main strength of the tech.
[doublepost=1510143855][/doublepost]

Lol, no.

Any other opinion you have on anything can now be safely ignored.
I’ve gone from a 6S+ to a X and still have both phones.
Click to expand...
Seriously. It’s not even close.
 
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Rob198612 said:
Turn off True Tone and the color shift goes away
Click to expand...
No, the color shift mentioned in the OP does NOT go away just by turning off True Tone. If you actually read the post and/or owned the X, you would know that.
 
It's normal. I don't really look at my phone from angles so I haven't seen it unless I purposely look for it. I don't really see it as a negative.
 
Diorama said:
Until you see literally anything that is supposed to be ‘black’ on the LCD.
Click to expand...

I know what black on a display is supposed to look like. I have other devices with OLED displays. However, I find white uniformity to be much much more important than black being as black as the material of the display will allow (which is actually not quite as black as you can get). Why? Because iOS is like 99% white or some variation of that. Same with most webpages. My 8+ has exceptionally good white uniformity and doesn’t turn into a rainbow when I tilt the display. The difference between display off and black is minimal at normal brightness levels. It’s almost the same color as the black bezel. Can I see it if I crank up the brightness and walk into a completely dark room? Heck yeah. No argument whatsoever. It’s nowhere near black at that point. But I don’t use my phone at max brightness in the dark. Who does? Heck, I completely avoid using any display in the dark for more than a couple of minutes. It’s just not good for my eyes.
 
I use my phone in the dark more often than I use it at an angle. It’s almost always pointing at my face because that’s where I keep my eyes*.




*i use these to look at the phone.
 
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People saying it goes away or it’s normal haven’t the slightest idea of what they are talking about, because they aren’t seeing what someone who has it is seeing. It’s extremly annoying, I’ve used countless oled screens on phones and this issue is extremely annoying because the whites constantly shift back and fourth between slight pale yellow, white, and cool (classic oled) blue.

The bluish white tones should be present throughout the entire screen. So no it’s not supposed to look like this or behave like this. Even my fathers X screen is one color throughout with the slightest bit of blue when tilted which is normal for an oled screen and seen on Samsung phones a lot. The calibration of whites is off on the X. Software? I don’t think so, this may be something that needs to be done individually to each of the phones that show signs of this issue.

The tech sites are beginning to report it and it’s not on just a small hand full of phones. Maybe Apple goes the route of saying sorry your looking at it wrong, which is most likely to happen! And than push out an update to try and mask it.

Either way it definitely is an issue for some users like myself and should not be present on a phone that’s hovering into $1300 territory.
 
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