According to a recent report from South Korea, LG customers who have had the opportunity to purchase the LG V30 after its September 21 debut in the country have started raising complaints in regards to the quality of the display. Apparently, the issue lies in the P-OLED panel’s inability to distribute colors and brightness evenly across the entire surface, resulting in an undesirable effect similar to the so-called “light bleeding” usually exhibited by backlit LCD panels.
The light bleed effect can be a real issue for LCD panels but technically speaking, this should not be the case for OLED screens simply because OLED displays don’t require a backlight. Instead, each individual pixel carries its own light source and can operate independently from other pixels. This allows for technologies like Always-On displays and can result in lower energy requirements, as pixels can be shut off entirely in order to reproduce true blacks. However, according to several user reports from LG V30 owners in South Korea, the smartphone’s 6.0-inch P-OLED display appears to suffer from uneven brightness and color distribution.
According to BusinessKorea citing an unnamed LG Electronics official, the company doesn’t consider this to be a product defect, but rather a normal byproduct of how OLEDs work. On the other hand, industry watchers cited by the Korean publication say that the issue could stem from LG repurposing OLED TV panels and using them for the LG V30. This would reportedly be the first time for LG do apply this strategy for one of its flagship phones, and because of this, some industry watchers and analysts are also said to be raising concerns regarding LG Display’s OLED manufacturing capacity. Spec-wise, the LG V30 features a 6.0-inch P-OLED panel with a resolution of 2,880 x 1,440 and a pixel density of 537 ppi, as well as a protective sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass 5 that curves slightly around the edges. The current state of affairs is somewhat similar to complaints about screen imbalance issues on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus which Samsung debuted earlier this year, with that particular phenomenon also being described by the manufacturer as natural behavior of its panels and not a defect.