Yellowing and burn-in. Not temporary image retention, but actual real genuine burn-in (well, burn-out, but it amounts to the same thing - just unusable black pixels instead of unusable white ones). The technology is fundamentally flawed. Don’t trust the tech reviewers who claim it’s a solved problem, because it’s not, and will never be. All the display manufacturers can do is hacky workarounds to slightly delay the inevitable. IPS displays like on the lowest-end Steam Deck and the original Switch and Switch Lite may not have the deep black levels of OLED, but the technology is immune to OLED-style burn-in and yellowing. Of course from the phone manufacturers’ perspective this means OLED is better than IPS because it’s one more reason to encourage people to buy new phones more frequently.
Anecdotally, OLED also gives maybe 5-10% of the population headaches to varying degrees due to the use of something called “pulse width modulation” (or PWM) to control the pixels. I’m not one of them fortunately but I do have several relatives and friends who straight-up cannot use OLED Apple or Samsung or Google phones (which is almost all the phones they make) because they get headaches within minutes of using those screens. Those three manufacturers also supply most of the phones available on contract from Canadian mobile carriers. Many times I’ve had someone I know call me while almost in tears about how their expensive new phone gives them a headache and they can’t return it because it’s leased through a carrier, they’re locked into a contract, and the carrier refuses to make a swap.
Many times I’ve had someone I know call me while almost in tears about how their expensive new phone gives them a headache and they can’t return it because it’s leased through a carrier, they’re locked into a contract, and the carrier refuses to make a swap.
I can see this being a big concern for something like a living room TV purchase where the screen is the entire device and very expensive. And it’s obviously a much bigger issue for those personally affected by these specific kind of headaches. But otherwise for a handheld device? I imagine it will become a lot less usable in other ways before burn out renders it fully dead. Battery life and wear on the buttons, triggers, and pads would be of higher concern to me, not to mention the joysticks which aren’t Hall effect and will drift inevitably. Anyway, all of these components are technically replaceable, including the screen. As much as I despise e-waste and rapid obsolescence of tech, I’m not convinced OLED isn’t worth it for smaller devices.
Because there will always be parts that eventually fail. It’s important that those parts be repairable or replaceable because you can’t count on the whole thing lasting forever. Nothing does.
I still fret over the lifetime of my belongings. When I hear a mouse is tested and guaranteed to function up to several million clicks, I think of that like an approaching deadline. In reality, that many clicks would take decades on average. Ideally that’s the kind of lifespan we’re talking about when we purchase a product. Personally, I’ve never had an OLED phone burn out to the point of unusability or even minor annoyance after years of heavy use, more use than my Steam Deck will ever likely see. But if/when it does happen, it’s good to know that I could replace that component.
What is it about OLED screens that makes them planned obsolescence? Just curious, not challenging this statement. Burn in?
Yellowing and burn-in. Not temporary image retention, but actual real genuine burn-in (well, burn-out, but it amounts to the same thing - just unusable black pixels instead of unusable white ones). The technology is fundamentally flawed. Don’t trust the tech reviewers who claim it’s a solved problem, because it’s not, and will never be. All the display manufacturers can do is hacky workarounds to slightly delay the inevitable. IPS displays like on the lowest-end Steam Deck and the original Switch and Switch Lite may not have the deep black levels of OLED, but the technology is immune to OLED-style burn-in and yellowing. Of course from the phone manufacturers’ perspective this means OLED is better than IPS because it’s one more reason to encourage people to buy new phones more frequently.
Anecdotally, OLED also gives maybe 5-10% of the population headaches to varying degrees due to the use of something called “pulse width modulation” (or PWM) to control the pixels. I’m not one of them fortunately but I do have several relatives and friends who straight-up cannot use OLED Apple or Samsung or Google phones (which is almost all the phones they make) because they get headaches within minutes of using those screens. Those three manufacturers also supply most of the phones available on contract from Canadian mobile carriers. Many times I’ve had someone I know call me while almost in tears about how their expensive new phone gives them a headache and they can’t return it because it’s leased through a carrier, they’re locked into a contract, and the carrier refuses to make a swap.
I’m not a primitivist, but
I can see this being a big concern for something like a living room TV purchase where the screen is the entire device and very expensive. And it’s obviously a much bigger issue for those personally affected by these specific kind of headaches. But otherwise for a handheld device? I imagine it will become a lot less usable in other ways before burn out renders it fully dead. Battery life and wear on the buttons, triggers, and pads would be of higher concern to me, not to mention the joysticks which aren’t Hall effect and will drift inevitably. Anyway, all of these components are technically replaceable, including the screen. As much as I despise e-waste and rapid obsolescence of tech, I’m not convinced OLED isn’t worth it for smaller devices.
I don’t believe in disposable technology. Why shouldn’t I be able to use a device with no consumables other than electricity for decades if need be?
Because there will always be parts that eventually fail. It’s important that those parts be repairable or replaceable because you can’t count on the whole thing lasting forever. Nothing does.
I still fret over the lifetime of my belongings. When I hear a mouse is tested and guaranteed to function up to several million clicks, I think of that like an approaching deadline. In reality, that many clicks would take decades on average. Ideally that’s the kind of lifespan we’re talking about when we purchase a product. Personally, I’ve never had an OLED phone burn out to the point of unusability or even minor annoyance after years of heavy use, more use than my Steam Deck will ever likely see. But if/when it does happen, it’s good to know that I could replace that component.
OLEDs don’t burn in, they burn out, which is much worse, since you can’t prevent it from happening by shifting static content around on the screen.
All OLEDs will eventually fail or look so bad that they become unusable.