Samsung Galaxy Note7 fiasco has raised questions over safety of Samsung phones, but the company tried to overcome those tough times with the launch of Galaxy S8. To a large extent, Samsung has managed to convince users that it is still the leader of top premium smartphones, but it looks like there is some trouble waiting for the Korean tech giant.
Samsung started shipping the pre-ordered Galaxy S8 to buyers in South Korea on Tuesday. With a grand opening of 720,000 pre-orders for Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ in just seven days, Samsung is targeting a million in its home country. But the early users of the Galaxy S8 have reported a minor yet serious issue with their handsets.
The local tech community sites Ppomppu and Ruliweb had multiple posts with images of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ having excessive red tints on the screen. The issue quickly escalated and became one of the top searched terms on South Korea's largest search engine Naver, ZDNet reported.
Due to the rising of the issue, Samsung was quick enough to acknowledge the problem. A company spokesperson was quoted as saying that the red tint has nothing to do with a faulty display or another hardware issue. In order to deliver an instant fix, Samsung advised users go to the phone's settings menu and change the configuration.
Since the quick fix did not satisfy some users due to the pre-optimised display panels in the phones, owners of the new phones are left puzzled.
"After I read articles that there are many reddish panels, I checked mine. I was also unlucky. Should I change it?" one user said, according to Korean Herald.
What might have caused the issue?
One industry analyst has a theory that suggests Samsung rushed into producing enough phones to meet the strong demand, resulting in some units left with a reddish tint on the screen. Samsung uses deep red OLEDs to balance the sub pixel colours evenly.
If owners are unable to fix the red tint issue on their Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, Samsung suggests the phones can be changed at the service center. This certainly doesn't look good for Samsung after last year's Galaxy Note7 debacle.
Whether the issue is a widespread problem or not, we will only know when the handset goes on sale globally. Samsung will be launching the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ in India on April 19, and we'll be sure to check if the red tint issue appears in the handsets outside South Korea.
