Samsung Galaxy S24 may suffer from more display issues

Despite the Galaxy S23’s boring upgrades, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is already shaping up to be one of the best Android smartphones to launch this year. However, phones aren’t perfect. Many of his early S24 owners complained that the display colors were washed out. Samsung is reportedly working on a saturation slider to solve this problem. But this isn’t the only display flaw in Samsung’s 2024 flagship Galaxy phone. Apparently, the Galaxy S24 lineup’s ultra-bright display is marred by several issues.

Many Galaxy S24 displays appear to have a grainy texture, which is especially noticeable on dark or gray backgrounds. There have been several reports about this issue on Reddit, and a survey with over 350 responses shows that most Galaxy S24 and S24+ owners are facing this issue. When one Redditor put his Galaxy S24 Ultra under his 400x OM microscope, it became clear that at 10% brightness, the subpixel intensity was not uniform. Uniformity improves at 30% brightness, but almost disappears at 50% brightness.

Apparently this is a hardware issue. Many customers have been able to obtain replacement units without this issue. Some people were denied a replacement and had to escalate the issue to get a new unit.

Admittedly, you might not notice the grainy texture of the S24’s display unless you look closely. Still, considering the Ultra’s $1,300 price tag, you’d expect this phone to be free of such flaws.

As if the grainy texture issue wasn’t enough, some Galaxy S24 users are reporting three horizontal bars appearing on the display in low brightness. Unlike the grainy texture issue, this issue seems to affect a limited number of units. Some users have reported seeing excessive banding when viewing gradient images. It’s unclear whether these are hardware or software flaws, but one post on Reddit suggests that this is a software issue and should be resolved soon.

Google editor Manuel Vonnau also faced a similar issue with the display on his Honor Magic 4 Pro. He noticed that the dark gray background had a mottled color pattern with vertical stripes running along the screen. This indicates that the problem may be specific to his OLED panel and not the S24’s screen.

OLED displays in smartphones have improved dramatically over the past few years, but they typically suffer from uniformity issues at low brightness levels. However, this is not a problem, especially since the Samsung S24’s display has some major improvements.

Apart from a peak brightness of 2,600 nits, Samsung’s 2024 flagship uses a display with a higher pulse width modulation (PWM) refresh rate of 492Hz. This is more than double that of the Galaxy S23 and should be beneficial for users who are sensitive to PWM flicker. On the S24 Ultra, Samsung uses Corning’s Gorilla Armor Glass, which significantly reduces reflections.

We contacted Samsung regarding the S24’s display issue.

Thank you: Ricardo!