S9 suddenly washed out colors, black crush

[xtexistenz]

Hi, I've bought this phone in 2018 with a pre-order before it even came out, I was really happy with this phone until now (I still think it's one of the best looking phones right now, no stupid punch hole, just a perfect design). It seems that there may be a problem with the display, the colors suddenly changed a bit right when I was using the phone, they were washed out and the display is somewhat brighter now at the same brightness setting, it looks like there's less contrast and the greys look very bad right now, they look a bit greenish and as I mentioned, brighter.

There also seems to be a problem with black crush now when the screen is at like 30% brightness or lower, it looks kind of pixelated and the gradients look very bad (gradient banding). I really loved this phone for the beautiful display but right now everything looks pretty bad.

I've never dropped the phone or anything like that, just used it normally. I don't believe that OLED screens only last for 2 years and I've always used it on low brightness (I don't even understand why a lot of people keep their phones at full or almost full brightness).

I'm actually not sure if this is a hardware problem or a software problem? It seems to be hardware because I didn't change anything software wise.

Is this a known problem and is there anything I can do to fix it or is the display toasted?

Thanks

[Gelo24]

Same goes for my galaxy s9 plus. Tried factory reset, but nothing change. Also I've never drop nor adjust the brightness to max. This happen 2 weeks after I updated.

[xtexistenz]

Is Samsung pushing a sneaky "update" on us to force us to buy their new phones? lol

Hey Samsung, give us an answer. This somewhat feels like a software issue and I haven't changed anything on my phone. I believe that displays should last more than 2 years of pretty low usage. My S5 which is more than 5 years old still works perfectly yet the S9 which was 1000$ cannot last more than 2 years? I won't be buying any more of your products if you don't help us out!

[xtexistenz]

Here is a photo of my S9 display. I would also like to add that the Android 10 update made my phone useless and missing some important features that Android 8 had (and was a lot smoother), the battery is draining super fast and the phone gets hot easily. I tried their support and they do not want to help me fix the phone unless I pay. Pay for what? To fix your problems? And I bought the phone with Android 8, not the cheap looking Android 10 with One UI which is not usable.

[xtexistenz]

Did the last Android update work for you?

[OwenJ]

This has just happened to me, bought it day 1 and seems in the past few months everyone else is having similar issues. The fact that its perfectly fine at some areas on the device seems to suggest its a software issue. The screen is more than capable of displaying perfect colours and black levels. 

Intentional or not It won't be a samsung I upgrade to next.

[k3vincho]

It is the black crush or color sweep (gradient), many of us are having this problem and Samsung still does not solve it. I've been waiting for an update for 3 months to solve it, just as they did in the first months of 2019 when this same problem happened (it is software), which with a security patch was fixed 😠😡

[xtexistenz]

Check out the comments, so many people have this problem, right after their warranty ended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0-npdV-U2c

[Robertcw_3rd]

It seems like a Korean cultural philosophy on longevity and warranty periods, in general.  It's highly conservative in South Korea, so helping out non-paying past customers is probably not something they want to do.  That said, Samsung still builds the best displays in the world.  They just need to lossen up a little bit and extend support for longevity on customers' products. 

[xtexistenz]

My display now. Thanks Samsung! I will post about this everywhere and I will avoid all your products from now on.