FP5 doesnt seem to turn OLED pixels off when displaying a black image/video

I do hope you got my emails, I never got a reply so I can only ask

Can somebody who is NOT using FPOS chime in whether this issue also exists on other OSes, or if itā€™s a fpos thing?

Edit: maybe I should switch to Lineage aready

2 Likes

Iā€™ve got CalyxOS installed and I donā€™t have this issue, atleast on the latest version. I do remember noticing it, but now iā€™m looking for it and I dont see it.

2 Likes

An update from Fairphone Support with my reply below:

///

Dear Srootus,

Thank you for your message and your patience.

The software team are still working hard to identify the root cause of this issue but there arenā€™t any updates as of yet.

That being said, we can try to change the display to see if this resolves the issue. We cannot guarantee that it will resolve the issue, but it will still help with the investigation.

If you are interested, please let me know.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards,
Kalam

///

My reply is as follows:

///

Hello, thanks for your reply, and thank you for the offer.

However I strongly believe this is a software issue, when booting into the AOSP fastboot menu or before the fairphone boot logo appears (the 4 spinning dots, to the blue Fairphone boot screen) the OLED screen behaves normally, it only has the behaviour henceforth.

I have also heard from the community thread I began that according to someone not running stock software, they do not have this issue, see post 82 and 83 of this thread: {link to this thread}

///

2 Likes

Implying they have been hard at work actively troubleshooting this.
Whichā€¦ I doubt.
Kind of a nothing burger. But itā€™s nice of them they offered a sceeen replacement.
Iā€™ll open a bottle and celebrate, when they push an update that fixes this.

1 Like

Update: Fairphone have decided to send me a replacement display, I told them that Iā€™m almost confident that it isnā€™t a hardware issue, alas they wanted to send me on anyway just in case, I will let everyone know the outcome of this.

3 Likes

The standard when they are out of ideasā€¦ Wondering how much hardware is wasted by this approachā€¦

7 Likes

Strange, that the support team doesnā€™t know itā€™s a common issue, while the software team seems to have given up on it altogether by just killing AoDā€¦ Sad!

2 Likes

hmā€¦ a way to source free replacement screens? :thinking:

NO! BAD!

4 Likes

My screen replacement came today, Iā€™ve just fitted it in, Iā€™ll let you people and fairphone know tonight if thereā€™s any improvement

5 Likes

The results are in, and its a mixed bag. The behaviour of light being shown is still present post FP bootlogo but it doesnā€™t seem to be as much, only centering around the camera, the bottom area of the screen seems to be behaving pretty normally, maybe FPOS has seme sort of anti burn-in feature thatā€™s causing this?

I really need to see a non stock OSā€™s view on this, reply 83 says there isnā€™t any light bleed and i do believe them, only thing I can think of trying is flashing a custom ROM onto a FP5 to see if there is truly 1,000% a FPOS issue, thing is thatā€™s something Iā€™m not very experienced with, Iā€™ve tried and failed to flash lineage on an S10e. Maybe one day Iā€™ll give it a go, but honestly Iā€™m sorry but im just not comfortable with doing that currently, especially for something somewhat minor, maybe years down the line when the support for this device is finished.

Iā€™ll let FP support know about this update. If they request the screen back or my old oneIā€™ll gladly send them. Iā€™m sorry this isnā€™t the solution some are patiently waiting for.

4 Likes

Honestly, this is exactly the outcome I expected. Iā€™m sad, but not surprised.
Iā€™m in the same boat as you. I sooo want to test other roms. But itā€™s just too big of a risk, and Iā€™m not confident in my skills to do it.

Honestly, itā€™s just plain sad that you as the customer now have to be sitting here and consider ways how to replicate and research the problem. This should not be your responsibility, and I have no idea why FP isnā€™t able to either do a test like that in no time, or to be more transparent about their findings if they have them already.

1 Like

Iā€™m still convinced that this has something to do with HDR. If I start an HDR YouTube video, or a file through VLC, the entire screen alltogether dims. And itā€™s a funny way to spot hdr content on the Fairphone. The brightness of the video will be simply not enough even at max screen brightness.
And it also draaaaasticly reduces the glowing blacks of the screen. But if your eyes adjust to the darkness, and you squint hard enough, you will see it still glowing ever so faintly.

A minor side tangent, but the FP5ā€™s color accuracy and general vibrance of the screen has always been pretty subpar in my opinion. My work issued dinky little Galaxy A series had a ten times more vibrant and rich amoled screen. My old blackshark 2 is also just a hint more vibrant, and due to itā€™s correct black levels, contrast feels better too.

Why am I saying this? Because when you play HDR content on the FP5, I swear the quality of the screen suddenly skyrockets EXCEPT for the low screen brightness. Movie watching in the dark on this phone is genuinely a joy. And your eyes have no time to adjust mid movie watching, to spot the black glow. I literally needed to pixel peep to see it still being there while displaying hdr content.

But during daily use, thereā€™s no reason to set a black wallpaper. To use dark mode. To maximise pitch black ui elements on your screen. Because the dang pixels are not off, and theyā€™re blatantly visible during an SDR youtube video, or on your home screen.

2 Likes

Have you received any feedback on this yet?

Nope, radio silence :-/

Hi all,

We are looking into this issue as a high priority, since we donā€™t know what the problem is yet. We will let you know once we know more.

12 Likes