Hey there! Thanks for reaching out with your concern. At this stage, manufacturers are very aware of the potential issues and have already taken a number of intelligent steps to help avoid burn in. For starters, Samsung has been using its pentile subpixel arrangement in its AMOLED displays since the Galaxy S3. By making the blue subpixel larger, it requires less current to drive in order to provide the required light. Driving the LED with less current increases its lifespan, such that it takes longer for any noticeable color shift to occur.
This doesn’t directly address the issue of different parts of the screen aging at different rates, but it does mean that it will take significantly longer to notice than with older or cheaper OLED panels. More expensive and modern OLED panels are built with longer-lasting LEDs and well-designed layouts, meaning flagship smartphone displays age slower.
There are software solutions too. Android Wear product manufacturers can enable the OS’s “burn protection” option. This mode periodically shifts the contents of the screen by a few pixels, so that they spend more equal time displaying different colors. Smartphones equipped with Always-On display technology employ a similar tactic. Google also suggests a selection of design guidelines tailored to avoid any screen burn-in problems when designing for OLED watches. The move towards gesture rather than on-screen navigation controls is also helping to alleviate one of the more noticeable burn in areas.
Still, if you are concerned about the issue, there are a number of preventative measures that you can take to prolong display lifetime and help to prevent the dreaded ghosting effect:
- Keep your display brightness as low as is reasonable. Increased brightness requires more current and therefore shortens LED lifespans. Don’t crank up the brightness unless you have to.
- Shorten your screen-off timer. Turning the screen off when you’re not using it will prevent static images from being displayed.
- Use Dark Mode, if supported. Using a darker interface reduces the amount of illumination and helps LEDs last longer.
- Use Immersive Mode, where available. This hides the notification bar, so static icons won’t be displayed. Alternatively, pick a launcher that offers a similar feature, as well as a transparent navigation bar and app drawer options.
- Pick a wallpaper with darker colors and change it every now and again.
- Use keyboards that offer darker themes to prevent color degradation in the lower half of the display.
- If you use a navigation app regularly for long journeys, pick one that doesn’t have a lot of bright static UI elements.
- Switch to gesture navigation and drop the buttons, if your phone supports it. This helps to prevent burn in at the bottom of the screen.
Hope these helps you. Be sure to click " ✓ Accept as Solution" when you find an answer that works for you. 😊
