Galaxy S8 owners see red as phones ship with tinted screens
The Samsung Galaxy S8 doesn’t launch around the world until Friday, but some in South Korea are already finding an issue with it.
Some customers in the country who preordered the phone received their units early. Reports surfaced on social media soon after saying the display on some S8s had an odd, red tint.
Samsung has reacted to the matter, with a spokesman telling South Korean media the tint isn’t a quality issue and that it can be fixed in the phone’s settings menu, reports ZDNet.
Pictures of the S8 and S8+ phones with reddish displays have been posted to Instagram, as well as South Korean tech forums like Ruliweb and Ppomppu, where customers are claiming they can’t fix the issue in settings.
Samsung was contacted for comment.
The phone is the first to use “Deep Red” OLED tech, which Counterpoint Research analyst Neil Shah suspects is the problem, saying it can “make the usual whites look reddish” and calling it a “software calibration issue.”
The full details aren’t yet known, but it could be a bad look for Samsung with the company already under the microscope following last year’s Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. After several Note 7’s around the world started overheating and catching fire, the electronics giant was forced to recall millions of units.
It also comes as Samsung Electronics’ de facto head, Jay Y. Park, stands trial in a political corruption scandal, where he’s accused of bribing the suspended South Korean president, Park Geun-hye.
The phone will no doubt sell millions of units upon its release, with it being even more preordered than last year’s S7 and S7 Edge.