Samsung Galaxy S8 was just recently released in the market, but several users have already come forward to complain about their screen having a distinct red tint.
According to customer complaints, their phones displayed a reddish screen. Adjusting the settings to turn down the red color didn't do anything. It is unknown just how widespread the issue is.
Samsung has subsequently owned up to this problem, although it downplayed the issue, insisting that there was no problem with the units themselves. A company representative spoke with The Korea Herald to say that a software upgrade will be released to eliminate the problem. The company stated, "We will upgrade the software because of some dissatisfied customers although there is no problem in the phone itself."
The spokesman said that a fix will be rolled out within the next few days, and an additional update will be released by the end of April to address the concern "more minutely," although the exact date of the rollout was not given. Samsung has also already alerted its service centers regarding these updates.
While the company insists that the issue is due to software issues, unnamed experts interviewed by The Investor say that this may be due to a hardware issue. However, while all three of the expert interviewees agree that the issue lies in the OLED panel, they all gave varying reasons for the cause of the issue. One said that it lay in the uneven deposit of luminescent organic materials on the panels, leading to discoloration. Another said that it was due to "cross-talk" of the sub-pixels. The third said it could be due to high driving voltage for the red sub-pixels, causing the reddish display. The publication also interviewed a plant employee and a professor, who both said that it would be unlikely for a software update to fix this issue.
Whatever the reason, Samsung would need to address this as soon as possible, especially since the company is on an uneven standing following last year's Note 7 fiasco. The Korean corporation got into trouble last year after some units of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 exploded without warning. It was subsequently discovered that this was due to a battery issue. However, all units had to be pulled out of the market and the line was discontinued because of the safety issue.
