iPhone 12 Pro Yellow Screen/Tint? Display seem "Warm"? Check here first!

[Fred Zed]

I know this might not be the best news for Pro/Pro Max owners, but take a look at this post I came across on Reddit today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/kv1fz3

Might offer the slightest bit of hope. I really hope Apple has fixed it since the late December production units began to roll out.

One of my units was according 3utools manufactured 12/26 it was affected.

 

[Wags]

Had exactly the same issue, so made a ticket @ Apple, got eventually a senior technician on the phone, he asked me to upload my videos to their portal (I got an email with a link to upload). As result he saw the massive flicker himself during our call. One week later he had feedback from "the engineers in the US", the flicker was due to (my) indoor artificial lighting. Some artificial lights seem to do this to iPhone 12 (Pro Max in my case) at 60 FPS. Flicker is not there at other FPS settings. They recommended not to make any indoor video recordings with the artificial lighting on (really!!) or go outdoors. I was speechless for a few seconds as you can imagine ..... They had no explanation as to why the flicker was not there (or at least massively less noticeable) on older iPhone's in my family at 60 FPS. I must say this flicker is not there with all artificial lights in my house, only some. In one I replaced the LEDs with halogen, problem solved .... Still, this was (next to green/yellow screen) one of the reasons why my 12PM has gone back to Apple.

So it’s our lighting fault? We are using it wrong? Lol

 

[Fred Zed]

So it’s our lighting fault? We are using it wrong? Lol

Makes sense. I’ve noticed all led lights flickering when I watch for example an edition of Top Gear on tv.

 

[Corgirat]

Interesting suggestion from the engineers...

I noticed as well that if I change the setting the flickering disappears, it’s indeed the kind of light bulb. Other lights don’t have that behaviour..

I sort of found a way to fix the outdoor flickering when moving the phone with the sky, clouds etc in the background... it’s by turning off the option “auto FPS”.

How do we turn off auto FPS?

 

[418608]

How do we turn off auto FPS?

Settings, camera, record video, see at the bottom
Clearly it’s a workaround as you might not be getting other benefits of FPS (whatever it is supposed to do, it’s not working well)

 

[Jutah]

Yes that’s the case. Of course the screen is less yellow without True Tone indoors, but still a bit on the warm side, warmer for example than with True Tone outdoors in bright daylight. Edit: I’m actually unable to get a colder tint with True Tone. TT on or off doesn’t make any difference in broad daylight on my unit.

There are units that are close to the standard 6500 K color temperature (cf. the measurements on the previous page of the 12 mini — mine is similar) although very slightly on the warmer side, but all units seem to have too much green in their RGB balance, which in combination results in a warmish-greenish tint. It tends to become more pronounced in darker colors, e.g. in dark gray like this forum’s dark-mode background.

Color perception varies between individuals, so not everyone will notice it, describe it in the same terms, or see a problem with it.

thats supposed to work. In the broad day lightl the True Tone gives a very cold display, if you switch it off you may note a pinky/ red dominant

 

[gtg465x]

Either iOS 14.3 made a small tweak to screen calibration or my iPhone 12 Pro Max is getting better just due to aging. It looks like green level is a little lower and red level is a little higher in the 5%, 10%, and 15% gray levels I measured today. The target whitepoint error is also much reduced, from 2.25 to 0.87. Measurements were taken with the exact same settings... auto brightness off, True Tone off, night shift off, brightness set to 42% via Siri. Can anyone else with a colorimeter take some new measurements and compare them to your old measurements from November?

iOS 14.2 - November 24, 2020

iOS 14.3 - January 11, 2021

 

[gtg465x]

My colorimeter arrived. All with true tone auto brightness night shift and whatever available. Measured at nights with lights turned off.
Not any scientific measurements, but just for comparison between my devices.
Not much needs to be say.. These are 12 minis. See that green bar sticked out at both minimum and maximum brightness?
View attachment 1710245View attachment 1710253

That's way worse than my iPhone 12 Pro Max, which has a little too much green at min brightness, but is basically perfect at max brightness. In DisplayCal, you selected RGB OLED family in the Correction dropdown, right?

 

[appleincognito]

[removed]

 

[Jutah]

Is there a limit in the returns?

 

[Corgirat]

Either iOS 14.3 made a small tweak to screen calibration or my iPhone 12 Pro Max is getting better just due to aging. It looks like green level is a little lower and red level is a little higher in the 5%, 10%, and 15% gray levels I measured today. The target whitepoint error is also much reduced, from 2.25 to 0.87. Measurements were taken with the exact same settings... auto brightness off, True Tone off, night shift off, brightness set to 42% via Siri. Can anyone else with a colorimeter take some new measurements and compare them to your old measurements from November?

iOS 14.2 - November 24, 2020

View attachment 1711048
View attachment 1711049

iOS 14.3 - January 11, 2021

View attachment 1711050
View attachment 1711052

I don’t have colorimeter but on my 12 pro max, I noticed the screen became much less yellow after I fresh installed 14.3 using MacBook last week and I was really pleased with that.

 

[klasma]

I‘d like to add two caveats regarding the measurements.

1. The i1 Display Pro is not the most accurate device (but inexpensive), and accuracy varies from one unit to the next. This site compared 14 different units, and you can see that there is a variance in the low single digits of deltaE.

2. The OLED profile in DisplayCal may not 100% match the iPhone 12 panels.

To ensure highly accurate measurements, one would need to profile the specific i1 Display Pro unit against the specific panel type using a pro-level spectrometer (~$10.000, can also be rented for a three-digit sum) to create a corresponding profile (correction matrix).

Lacking that, I wouldn’t place too much weight on sub-deltaE deviations in the absolute values. Relative differences and changes over time (e.g. November vs. now) are probably accurate though (unless it’s years between measurements, because colorimeters also drift over time).

 

[Robbosan]

“Some people have no idea”.

disagreements can happen, no need to be rude

Stop making false statements then

 

[Fred Zed]

Either iOS 14.3 made a small tweak to screen calibration or my iPhone 12 Pro Max is getting better just due to aging. It looks like green level is a little lower and red level is a little higher in the 5%, 10%, and 15% gray levels I measured today. The target whitepoint error is also much reduced, from 2.25 to 0.87. Measurements were taken with the exact same settings... auto brightness off, True Tone off, night shift off, brightness set to 42% via Siri. Can anyone else with a colorimeter take some new measurements and compare them to your old measurements from November?

iOS 14.2 - November 24, 2020

View attachment 1711048
View attachment 1711049

iOS 14.3 - January 11, 2021

View attachment 1711050
View attachment 1711052

I‘d like to add two caveats regarding the measurements.

1. The i1 Display Pro is not the most accurate device (but inexpensive), and accuracy varies from one unit to the next. This site compared 14 different units, and you can see that there is a variance in the low single digits of deltaE.

2. The OLED profile in DisplayCal may not 100% match the iPhone 12 panels.

To ensure highly accurate measurements, one would need to profile the specific i1 Display Pro unit against the specific panel type using a pro-level spectrometer (~$10.000, can also be rented for a three-digit sum) to create a corresponding profile (correction matrix).

Lacking that, I wouldn’t place too much weight on sub-deltaE deviations. Changes over time (e.g. November vs. now) are probably accurate though (unless it’s years between measurements, because colorimeters also drift over time).

Me neither. But my eyes don’t lie when I see green tint. Lol

 

[gtg465x]

I‘d like to add two caveats regarding the measurements.

1. The i1 Display Pro is not the most accurate device (but inexpensive), and accuracy varies from one unit to the next. This site compared 14 different units, and you can see that there is a variance in the low single digits of deltaE.

2. The OLED profile in DisplayCal may not 100% match the iPhone 12 panels.

To ensure highly accurate measurements, one would need to profile the specific i1 Display Pro unit against the specific panel type using a pro-level spectrometer (~$10.000, can also be rented for a three-digit sum) to create a corresponding profile (correction matrix).

Lacking that, I wouldn’t place too much weight on sub-deltaE deviations in the absolute values. Relative differences and changes over time (e.g. November vs. now) are probably accurate though (unless it’s years between measurements, because colorimeters also drift over time).

I agree with your caveats, but have a couple things to add.

1) Those measurements were taken with an i1 Display Pro Plus, which should be a bit more accurate than the non-Plus, especially when measuring at very low and very high brightness.

2) The OLED profile in DisplayCal lists Galaxy S7, and I did at least confirm that both the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 12 have Diamond PenTile subpixel matrixes, so even if the spectral correction isn't perfect, I think it should be good enough for decently accurate measurements.

 

[418608]

Stop making false statements then

“False statements”, also known as “opinions Robbosan disagrees with”.

 

[CuteLittleMiku]

That's way worse than my iPhone 12 Pro Max, which has a little too much green at min brightness, but is basically perfect at max brightness. In DisplayCal, you selected RGB OLED family in the Correction dropdown, right?

View attachment 1711070View attachment 1711064

yes

 

[CuteLittleMiku]

I agree with your caveats, but have a couple things to add.

1) Those measurements were taken with an i1 Display Pro Plus, which should be a bit more accurate than the non-Plus, especially when measuring at very low and very high brightness.

2) The OLED profile in DisplayCal lists Galaxy S7, and I did at least confirm that both the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 12 have Diamond PenTile subpixel matrixes, so even if the spectral correction isn't perfect, I think it should be good enough for decently accurate measurements.

Yes. We are not doing color calibration here， what we did is simply measure the white relative to each other. OLED are chosen for three of the phone displays. The the one for IPS (WLED) was chosen for iPad Pro. Even people argues about the accuracy, the panel on 12 mini and XS shouldn't differ from each other too much thus the comparison is valid. My colorimeter is i1 display studio, yes it's not the most accurate thing. But that's not the point. (Even I buy a spectrometer which probably doesn't do that well in the lowest brightness, they will always find excuses that it's us, the crazy users look at the device wrong. ) The difference in graph just shows that one out of those two have a good white then the other doesn't. And I, believe it's the 12 mini. Maybe it's both my eyes and the one colorimeter I bought are broken in a way that perceives color green too much. Because the sample size is me, a single person (nope I didn't have anyone to ask "oh is my screen green”) with a single colorimeter, I can't deny the chance of both broken in a single manner is not small.

 

[Fred Zed]

Yes. We are not doing color calibration here， what we did is simply measure the white relative to each other. OLED are chosen for three of the phone displays. The the one for IPS (WLED) was chosen for iPad Pro. Even people argues about the accuracy, the panel on 12 mini and XS shouldn't differ from each other too much thus the comparison is valid. My colorimeter is i1 display studio, yes it's not the most accurate thing. But that's not the point. (Even I buy a spectrometer which probably doesn't do that well in the lowest brightness, they will always find excuses that it's us, the crazy users look at the device wrong. ) The difference in graph just shows that one out of those two have a good white then the other doesn't. And I, believe it's the 12 mini. Maybe it's both my eyes and the one colorimeter I bought are broken in a way that perceives color green too much. Because the sample size is me, a single person (nope I didn't have anyone to ask "oh is my screen green”) with a single colorimeter, I can't deny the chance of both broken in a single manner is not small.

No it’s not you. It’s green.

 

[klasma]

The problem I personally have is that I’d like to check the possible bias of my subjective impression by using objective measurements, and I’m limited in that by the possible inaccuracy of my i1 Display Pro. Actually I have two units, an older one and a new one, which give somewhat different results. I suspect the new one is more accurate, but that is mere speculation. I have no way of knowing if the colorimeter just happens to have a bias in the same direction as my own color perception. Simply assuming that it doesn’t might just be confirmation bias and wishful thinking. If I simply assume that my perception is right, I wouldn’t need to measure in the first place, except maybe to convince others that I’m right — and that in turn would be questionable if I don’t know whether my measurements are actually accurate. So, it remains a bit unsatisfactory.

 

[jordysak]

but

Finally my 3rd 12 Pro Max replacement unit today is uniform blue matches the same screen colour as my iPhone 11 Pro and Macbook air 2019......

First phone arrived with yellow screen true tone turned off with a dust under camera lens....

Second phone arrived with scratches on the side of the phone screen had a couple of dead pixels on the screen...

Third phone arrive everything perfect...

Apple Quality control is shocking

did they give you replacement models or brand new iPhones?

 

[jordysak]

Guys, my brother has a new iphone 12, and 4 friends more with iphone 12 and 12 pro, all with yellow tint or green tint. it can't be so much coincidence, i mean 12 different iphone 12 and all with different color tint, one more green or yellow. I will still keep it until mid january or february with color filter on (btw i'm ok with that, the screen looks ok, except for the famous oled smearing or bleeding when scrolling with color grey over true blacks) and see if anything regarding to new manufactured iphones has changed.

Just to check in , this is still an issue correct? Because I am here stuck with these things too

 

[jordysak]

A success story for those interested:

launch day 12 Pro Max (Gold, 256), yellow screen, low contrast, raised blacks

was able to start return until 8th January, so thought I’d wait until then and order another one.

new one arrived yesterday, same config, week 50, serial G0ND

it’s like a yellow sticker had been peeled off the screen. Brighter, higher contrast and reduced yellow screen. Raised blacks issue also barely present, only very briefly and faintly on the boot screen.

only issue with this phone is minor imperfections on the gold edges (a few dots where the coating was scratched)

summary: phone with bad screen replaced with good screen

did you still keep it even if the coating was peeled?

 

[fernando7]

Saw this today as well - does anyone here have a late December unit with the issues mentioned in this thread?

Yes, few people commented that their latest production week(51 and 52) has this issue.
you can read about it here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251997533?r_s_legacy=true&page=71

Issue I am talking about is:-Raised blacks, flickering and green tint.

 

[jordysak]

Yes, few people commented that their latest production week(51 and 52) has this issue.
you can read about it here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251997533?r_s_legacy=true&page=71

Issue I am talking about is:-Raised blacks, flickering and green tint.

what do you think apple will do about it? Will there be a big recall and will it replace all iPhones? I dont think they can be fixed via software