Galaxy S9+ Black Crush and Gradient Banding Issues

[Chris_c81]

A sidebar on defects and this phone, if you purchased directly from Samsung, they aren't doing exchanges. Had two reps tell me that today. That is, frankly, a joke.

Day 1 firmware can be found on SamFirm app or XDA:

X-U is the Carrier FW where X is equal to the specific carrier.

U1 = Unlocked

You'll need patched Odin and the proper firmware.

I think that may depend on where you are from. I was told by Samsung shop online that exchanges were accepted within 28 days of purchase. I was offered an exchange but declined as I don't believe a replacement handset would be any better.

 

[TiCuS_]

Thank you for testing this out. Has anyone tried the Display Tester app and check the banding test and swipe until you see the black saturation test? At 30% and 100% brightness, I can see only up to boxes 8 and 5 respectively (i.e. 7 and 4 and below show up as black to me). I wonder if there is any consistency to this in which case an easy fix may be devised by Samsung...

Otherwise I guess we have to wait until the s10

Same results as you here

 

[Garret1976]

Did a test with Display tester and box 7 and 5 are black in a completely dark room.

 

[Squarrow]

After using the Screen Balance app to futz around with the settings, I was at one point able to see until box 2 at max brightness. Interestingly enough I kept testing against the iPhone X and using the Last Of Us 2 trailer. Two things of note here, one iOS gets access to 1440 resolution on the YouTube app, while Android gets only 1080 so I dropped the iPhone down a...notch. Second at one point on the X the clip buffered and low and behold there was crush. So I watched the clip a few more times. It's my belief that Apple has implemented some software wizardry that is very good at "blending" or "hiding" the presence of crush. I start to consider this when using a crush chart and got similar results despite the videos on S9+ being clearly more crushed. How could that be. I remember or at least I think I remember hearing on either the iMore podcast or perhaps The Talk Show that Apple does indeed mitigate OLEDs deficiencies with software and perhaps even a few hardware tricks. What it appears to be is a slight "give" on the part of the true black and a small "take" on lighting those pixels up a small amount because if you stop the video on a X and identify a spot with BC you also may notice a "greyishness" there as well, though ever so slight. It's my understanding that this occurs when OLED panels are not allowed to completely turn off certain pixels, which is the methodology used to attain true black. True black also seems to be a major contributing factor in black crush, so perhaps Apple prevents true black when the display detects a certain percentage of darker pixels overall on the display.

More than likely I'm completely wrong.

 

[Reuben Chew]

Check this out: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12520/the-galaxy-s9-review/7

Seems like we sort of have an explanation for this phenomenon, and why the X performs better than the S9 in this regard.

 

[Chris_c81]

Check this out: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12520/the-galaxy-s9-review/7

Seems like we sort of have an explanation for this phenomenon, and why the X performs better than the S9 in this regard.

Great article. Explains a lot.

 

[Reuben Chew]

I have 2 S9+s at home (the other belongs to my sister) so I did the Display Tester test on her phone too.

At 30% and 100% brightness, square 7 and 4 are very visible on her phone respectively. Meanwhile, on mine, square 7 is barely visible at 30% and I cannot see square 4 at all, even at 100%. When I take a camera photo of my screen and bump the exposure and shadows, I can see a very slight shadow on Square 4. So yes, there is some element of variability in screens.

However, whatever applies to her screen applies to mine too--same black crushing and gradient banding issue.

I mentioned black crushing on a Netflix show, Friends From College, where there were black dots dancing and the entire sky was crushed in one scene. But I believe that those are due to compression artifacts, perhaps in HDR mode. I know this because I connected my phone up to my monitor through a Type C to HDMI cable, and saw the same dancing dots (though the blacks did not crush so badly). On other shows, I do not see any dancing dots.

In any case, the solution as of now is same as the Pixel 2 XL: Get the Screen Balance app. For me, only a minor adjustment is needed; in the Pro version (a $2 purchase), simply set R, G and B to 255, contrast and brightness to 100%, and set Strength to 2%. Black is still black (as far as I can tell), I can't discern any difference in normal situations, but black crushing is reduced.

I think if S9+ units are consistently showing black crushing more than the S9, an easy solution on Samsung's part would be to programme RGB strength +2% in a future software update.

 

[Michaelegypt]

Great article. Explains a lot.

I read it but did you think it will be fixed

 

[Robbie Freeman]

After using the Screen Balance app to futz around with the settings, I was at one point able to see until box 2 at max brightness. Interestingly enough I kept testing against the iPhone X and using the Last Of Us 2 trailer. Two things of note here, one iOS gets access to 1440 resolution on the YouTube app, while Android gets only 1080 so I dropped the iPhone down a...notch. Second at one point on the X the clip buffered and low and behold there was crush. So I watched the clip a few more times. It's my belief that Apple has implemented some software wizardry that is very good at "blending" or "hiding" the presence of crush. I start to consider this when using a crush chart and got similar results despite the videos on S9+ being clearly more crushed. How could that be. I remember or at least I think I remember hearing on either the iMore podcast or perhaps The Talk Show that Apple does indeed mitigate OLEDs deficiencies with software and perhaps even a few hardware tricks. What it appears to be is a slight "give" on the part of the true black and a small "take" on lighting those pixels up a small amount because if you stop the video on a X and identify a spot with BC you also may notice a "greyishness" there as well, though ever so slight. It's my understanding that this occurs when OLED panels are not allowed to completely turn off certain pixels, which is the methodology used to attain true black. True black also seems to be a major contributing factor in black crush, so perhaps Apple prevents true black when the display detects a certain percentage of darker pixels overall on the display.

More than likely I'm completely wrong.

Is your screen resolution set to WQHD+? I've heard that could be a possible reason why you are not seeing the 1440p option in YouTube (even though I just tried it myself and was still saw the option for 1440p while my screen resolution was set to 1080p) Also funny thing my friends wanted to see what screen gets brighter amongst our phones so we laid out the s9+ (tmobile variant), iPhone X, iPhone 7 plus, and an iPhone 7. We set them to max brightness and played a scene from daredevil (I believe season 1 episode 2 on netflix). Obviously the s9+ was the brightest of the bunch but my friend pointed out "isn't my blacks (the iPhone X's) more black than yours?" He was referring to the scene in which a guy was sitting in a chair and on his you could barely make out any detail of the guy's face or his clothing while on the s9+ you could quite easily. I did have video enhancer on so maybe it could've been that... also side note I just came from the iPhone X as well. It was a great phone I just missed android too much lol!

 

[Squarrow]

I read it but did you think it will be fixed

I wouldn't hold my breath as the article states "hopefully" and "future generations" as a best case scenario. I have certainly been getting an education in display tech over this and realized that one of the things I like most about Android is how it can lead to a good bit of technical learning. Not good for everyone but I actually kind of appreciate it.

 

[Toss3]

For me personally the issue isn't so much the black crush, but the total lack of colour depth once you set the brightness under a certain level (issue cannot be solved with screen balance as you'll just end up with a completely green screen). If you use the full RGB chart I posted earlier on a decent screen you'll still see the different shades of the squares even at lower brightness levels, while on the S9+ they all look exactly the same: it goes from bright bright to black which causes a horrible clipping like effect and makes the screen look like you set the color depth to 256 or something. Tried to adjust the channels individually and noticed that the green channel is the likely culprit (there could be an issue with the panels themselves failing to produce the brightness levels between black and visible). You see if you adjust the screen using the screen balance app you'll end up with 28 bright green squares when in fact they should be all different shades of grey. I'm beginning to suspect the panels themselves are to blame (especially considering the S9 doesn't suffer from the same issue). Wish they had just reused the panel from the Note 8.

 

[Reuben Chew]

For me personally the issue isn't so much the black crush, but the total lack of colour depth once you set the brightness under a certain level (issue cannot be solved with screen balance as you'll just end up with a completely green screen). If you use the full RGB chart I posted earlier on a decent screen you'll still see the different shades of the squares even at lower brightness levels, while on the S9+ they all look exactly the same: it goes from bright bright to black which causes a horrible clipping like effect and makes the screen look like you set the color depth to 256 or something. Tried to adjust the channels individually and noticed that the green channel is the likely culprit (there could be an issue with the panels themselves failing to produce the brightness levels between black and visible). You see if you adjust the screen using the screen balance app you'll end up with 28 bright green squares when in fact they should be all different shades of grey. I'm beginning to suspect the panels themselves are to blame (especially considering the S9 doesn't suffer from the same issue). Wish they had just reused the panel from the Note 8.

Where is this RGB chart you are referring to?

Just a quick survey here to examine the quality of the s9+'s screen. I created the following PNG files with screen balance at 2%:

1. Open Https://www.describee.com/b.png in a dark room with brightness set to max and tell me which squares you can't see.

2. Then open Https://www.describee.com/c.png in same dark room with brightness max, zoom in until your whole screen is black. Look carefully to see if there is any backlight (you can do an a to b comparison by pressing the power button to turn off the screen). Let me know if there is.

3. If there is, repeat the test with Https://www.describee.com/d.png and Https://www.describee.com/e.png respectively. This is the same as b and c just that now the RGB strength is reduced to 1%. Thanks!

 

[Toss3]

https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=875471&p=6195179&viewfull=1#post6195179

 

[new2tec]

I definitely see it now. Now I need to figure out what I want to do. I have a week left before I can return it. Everything else is great.

 

[vwite]

damn I couldn't notice this until watching it at 0% brightness and in a completely dark room is so evident that way but looks like software indeed for example in the lockscreen it starts normal then I swipe and then is messed up, on YouTube when I pause the video it changes if I tap to show controls or if I tap again to hide controls (video still paused, exact same image). Also when I press home button it changes for a few milliseconds

 

[Toss3]

Created some more test images that clearly show us that something is wrong with our panels (sorry for the large image size, but wanted them to be the exact resolution of our S9s), and as you'll come to notice the issue for the display lies with the shades between RGB (0,0,0 -> 15,15,15). Thus I've separated each channel to see which one was causing the issue in this range, and noticed that when I turned down the red channel the separation between the rectangles became more evident using the Screen Balance application (Red (0), Blue (255), Green (255) and RGB strength to 3%):

 

[waveuk]

Created some more test images that clearly show us that something is wrong with our panels (sorry for the large image size, but wanted them to be the exact resolution of our S9s), and as you'll come to notice the issue for the display lies with the shades between RGB (0,0,0 -> 15,15,15). Thus I've separated each channel to see which one was causing the issue in this range, and noticed that when I turned down the red channel the separation between the rectangles became more evident using the Screen Balance application (Red (0), Blue (255), Green (255) and RGB strength to 3%):

https://abload.de/img/screen_testz3sun.png
https://abload.de/img/screen_test_channelse0nsqx.png
https://abload.de/img/screen_test_channelsedgsap.png

Something wrong you mean software or hardware related?

I would assume is software as with screen balance we managed to fix it.

 

[Toss3]

Something wrong you mean software or hardware related?

I would assume is software as with screen balance we managed to fix it.

You can fix the black crush at least, but the rest I'm not so sure about. People don't seem to mind the horrible clipping so I'm sure Samsung are just going to ignore it.

 

[Chris_c81]

"Dear Mr. F,

Thank you for your email. Your customer reference number is ***

Further to your email, we already escalated your concern to our software engineers and they are already working hand in hand to develop a software fix to rectify the display issue, we sincerely apologise for inconvenience that this matter has caused you, rest assured that we will resolve this issue as soon as possible.

If you require additional support, please contact us on 0330 726 7864 (UK) or 0818 717 100 (EIRE), or respond to this email and I will be more than happy to help.

Alternatively, you can visit our Support website where you will find FAQs, How-To-Videos and other useful information for Samsung products.

Kind regards,

Jaden M.
Customer Service Representative"

 

[Hunan]

I don't think that there should be any light leaks as oled screens do not have a backlight.