With so many special errors, Samsung phones are dubbed 'king of screen stripes'

According to statistics from the Consumer Association of Singapore (CASE), in November, the number of complaints about screen stripes on smartphones doubled compared to last year, at 31 complaints. In 2023, they received 14 complaints and in 2022, it was 4.

Of the 49 complaints it received over the past three years, only one was not about a Samsung phone, the agency said. The only complaint was about China's OnePlus.

In addition to the green stripe, some consumers have also reported seeing pink or white stripes on their screens, said CASE President Melvin Yong.

In September, a similar issue led to a class-action lawsuit against Samsung in Thailand. The Consumer Council of Thailand, along with 119 individual consumers, filed a class-action lawsuit against the Korean phone maker. The plaintiffs alleged that Samsung Thailand refused to compensate or repair defective devices.

In Vietnam, the reputation of screen stripes on some Galaxy phone lines also makes some users, especially Samsung smartphone fans, worried before making a purchase decision.

Currently, there are no specific statistics worldwide about the phenomenon of screen stripes on Samsung phones, but the reputation of this phenomenon seems to be popular not only in some Southeast Asia, but also popular all over the Internet. Even the query "samsung vertical lines on screen" also suggests many results indicating that this phenomenon often appears on Samsung TVs and computer monitors, not just smartphones.

CASE's president said users complained of green stripes appearing on their screens after they updated their software. TechRadar said the green stripes could be related to a hardware issue such as a faulty connection to the screen.

Some others claim that the software update can cause the phone to overheat leading to hardware failure or worsen an existing issue, causing color streaks to occur.

According to media reports from earlier this year, the bug appears to primarily affect Samsung's Galaxy S21 series phones, with the Galaxy S21 Ultra and S21 FE models being the most prevalent.

Screen stripes are a "horrifying" keyword for Samsung fans. The group "Screen Stripes Association..." currently has more than 7,000 members, regularly discussing and buying and selling Samsung phones with this error.

SamMobile, a Samsung-focused site, said the issue has also been reported on models including the Galaxy A73, Galaxy M21, Galaxy S22 series, and Galaxy Z Flip 3. Meanwhile, tech news site Android Authority said phones made by brands like OnePlus, Oppo, realme, vivo, Xiaomi, Huawei, and Apple have also suffered from screen stripes in the past, with the same main cause believed to be a hardware fault.

" The only thing that all the reports of screen streaking issues on smartphones have in common is that they have AMOLED displays ," the site said. They also noted that phones using LCD or liquid crystal displays do not seem to have this problem.

This error is especially noteworthy, because Samsung not only uses screens produced by the corporation itself, but also sells a large quantity as components to many other major brands, such as Apple, Xiaomi, or even Sony.

Objectively speaking, Samsung has pioneering screen technology and has always been known for its beautiful, high-quality display... So it is even more confusing that the company lets its own "chicken" have frequent errors.

The story that the Samsung community seems to hear the most about this "screen stripe nightmare," and also the biggest worry, is that it can happen completely unexpectedly, for no reason at all, as YouTuber Tech Takeaway experienced below:

" I've owned the S20 Plus for two years now, and its WQHD display is one of the best I've seen on any device. But that was until this happened.

Yes, for no reason at all, I saw a green line on the screen. I had just sat down to eat breakfast, put the phone on the table and when I picked it up, it was there. At first, I thought it might be a bug so I restarted the phone 2-3 times. Strangely enough, the green line appeared right from the start screen.

I tried booting into safe mode to rule out any software issues. It was pretty obvious right away that it was a hardware issue. Heartbroken, I immediately took it to a Samsung Service Center, explaining that the problem happened suddenly and there was no physical damage to the phone.

This is where things started to get bad. The Service Center team took pictures of my phone and sent them to Samsung Customer Care India. Since my phone was out of warranty, they just asked me to pay 15,000 Rupees to replace the screen .

In the video about this experience, he shared that he tried to convince that this was a common manufacturing defect in the S20 Plus line (reported by many other customers), but Samsung still refused to support.

When the screen turned to "white noise" at the airport, he was forced to buy another phone to continue his trip. After returning, he used Samsung Dex to back up his data and finally agreed to replace the screen at a 10% discount. However, the replacement screen only came with a 3-month warranty, leaving him deeply disappointed.

He believes Samsung should have taken responsibility for manufacturing defects instead of blaming customers. Although the issue is not about cost but about transparency and responsibility, he decided to switch to an iPhone or another Android brand.

Up to now, Samsung has not yet spoken out about the cause and how to completely fix this phenomenon, although that is probably what many Samsung fans are waiting for.

Quartz

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