I’ve read about how oled displays start to degrade over time, so as a brand new owner of an Xs and this being my first oled, I am curious- should I expect any noticeable degradation in display quality after 2-3 years? If I want a display to look as good in three years as day one, should I have considered the lcd display of the Xr instead?
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iPhone XS Will Xs screen look as good in 3 years?
- Thread starter jm31828
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Try looking for a used Samsung Galaxy Note 5
Or Galaxy Edge 7 or 7 Plus they are 3 years old or so now and the same OLED displays made in the same plants just different sizes and resolutions for Apple by Samsung.
I can say my old Note 5 looks Brand spanking New.
This actually isn’t true. Because those OLED panels don’t nearly have the brightness as they age and the calibration settings are completely different in terms of the iPhone X. Also, blue pixels fade with continual usage, which will also affect the color tone.
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In 3years, it is gonna degrade a little, I see it in older Samsung phones, after several years, screen hue changes to somewhat warmer color, you can say that screen gains slightly yellowish tint, because blue pixels degrade quickly.
It is probably gonna be noticeable, but mostly with white backgrounds, you might notice they are not truly white anymore.
This process is happening gradually, so you might not notice it, but after three years, if you put your XS beside new iPhone, set the white background(255, 255, 255) on both of them, you are gonna see the difference.
This is gonna be true for all OLED phones, until they figure out how to make organic component on blue LEDs last longer.
It should be noted that Apple's pentile OLED display is different from Samsung's pentile OLED display, despite being made by Samsung. Apple's is a custom design.
I don't know if that will affect colour shift and degradation rates though.
So it wouldn’t be looking obviously bad in three years, you’d have to be really looking for it?
Hard to say for sure, but my guess is it will look just fine in three years.
One should also note there is variation in screen calibration anyways among individual units. So, even if there is a shift, that shift might just make it look similar to another unit new off the shelf.
My own worry is not any of the above. My main worry is PWM. However, I don't know if I'm susceptible or not to it. I've only ever tested the XS/Max at moderate to full brightness since the room was bright. From my understanding, Apple doesn't use PWM until under 50% brightness. (Or was that 35%? I can't remember.)
Yeah, the article I read said PWM is an issue below 50% brightness. I'm trying to figure out if I am affected by it or not- I am prone to frequent headaches over the last couple decades, and have been in a period this week where I've had sort of an ongoing low grade headache or pain behind my left eye. That somewhat corresponds with getting my Xs, though when I first got it last week I was on it for probably 2 hours straight setting everything up and didn't notice any negative effect- even on very low brightness. But the timing has me worried given that I'm only a couple days away from the closing of my 14 day return window, with the added complication being that we bought two of them on the BoGo $700 off deal, and my wife loves hers so we wouldn't just go and return both.
I love my Xs, it's amazing so I hope this is not related to PWM and I hope the display looks pristine for at least 2-3 years.
