A dead pixel is a picture element in which all three RGB (red, green, blue) sub-pixels are permanently turned off, which creates a black spot in the display.
A dead pixel is like a popcorn hull in your gums: It's not going to kill you, but once you've noticed it, you'll probably never manage to un-notice it.
THE CAUSE
Your device's display is made up of millions of pixels. Each pixel is a group of the colors red, green and blue subpixels that combine to make any color needed and they create the images you see on your computer screen.
Dead pixels occur when a single pixel in a display stops lighting up, causing a persistent black dot on the screen. It's fairly difficult to fix a dead pixel, and often requires replacing the screen.
Malfunctioning transistors and manufacturing flaws can result in dead pixels. Dead pixels are often confused with stuck pixels, which have a different cause and effect. Each pixel in a display is made up of three sub-pixels: one red, one green and one blue. In a stuck pixel, one or more of the three remains turned on so that the pixel displays consistently as a particular color rather than refreshing along with other display content.
STUCK PIXEL VS DEAD PIXEL
A stuck pixel occurs when one or two of the color subpixels remain activated even when they're supposed to be off. For example, the blue subpixel might get stuck so the entire pixel will display a different color than what is intended.
A dead pixel occurs when an entire pixel or a group of subpixels remain dark even when they're supposed to be on. Since this implies that the pixel or group of subpixels are no longer powering on, they're harder to fix than stuck pixels. In most cases, dead pixels are lost forever.
Depending on their number and position on the screen, dead and/or stuck pixels can impact the user experience. Both dead pixels and stuck pixels have been reported to disappear (and sometimes reappear) over time. Although stuck pixels are thought to be easier to address than dead ones, a number of DIY fixes and software products offer help for both issues.
"Dead" and "stuck" aren't interchangeable names. Dead is dead. They're purely black or white spots, and are rarely resurrected. Stuck is just stubborn—these sometimes respond to remedies (which we'll get to in a moment). A stuck pixel can show up as any color of light, but is most often red, green, or blue.
How to Fix a Dead Pixel on Your Monitor, Smartphone, or Tablet
I. Use your warranty
If you are within your display's warranty period and you have detected stuck or dead pixels, it's recommended that you have the manufacturer replace it.
Most monitor manufacturers have a return policy for dead and stuck pixels and they'll usually replace a monitor if it has more than several pixels stuck in a single color or brightness setting. Additionally, since dead pixels are difficult to fix, replacing your monitor via the manufacturer's warranty is your best route.
II. REPLACE THE SCREEN
The most reliable way to fix a dead pixel is to replace the screen. Many manufacturers have warranties that cover dead pixels, so check your device's warranty to see if this situation applies to you.
Most display manufacturers require a minimum number of dead pixels before the screen can be replaced. For a display the size of a computer monitor, the minimum is typically four to eight dead pixels. Smaller displays have lower minimum requirements.
Unfortunately, a small number of dead pixels are expected, and one is rarely enough for replacement. At this time, only Dell and BenQ offer a screen replacement for just one dead pixel. You can examine the dead pixel policies of Acer, Asus, Apple, BenQ, Dell, LG, and Samsung, but the best source will always be your device's specific warranty documents.
III. WAIT FOR THE PIXEL TO DISAPPEAR
You can try waiting for the dead pixel to go away on its own. This has been known to happen, but no one can say when. You might have the dead pixel for the remainder of the device's life, or it might go away in a week. It's impossible to say.
Backlight bleeding is a problem that occurs in LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays) because they use an active backlight system. Basically, the entire surface of the LCD panel is lit up by a light source, and the LCD blocks out the light that isn’t necessary for displaying a particular image.
Backlight bleeding occurs as a result of light not being completely blocked in certain areas of the screen, resulting in bright spots that ruin your visual experience.
There are two major ways in which backlight bleeding can manifest, flashlighting and clouding. Generally, clouding is more prevalent in larger displays while flashlighting can occur in both larger and smaller ones. Light bleeding along the edges is also common, although far less noticeable.
HOW TO FIX BACKLIGHT BLEEDING
I. DON’T FORGET TO CHECK YOUR WARRANTY
If you spot this problem on a monitor that you bought recently, you can probably get it fixed or replaced under warranty. However, this might not always be the case. It mainly depends on the warranty policy of the display manufacturer.
Make sure not to try fixing it yourself in case you still have a warranty. This is mainly because your seller will make your warranty void if they see any signs of tampering.
II. LOOSEN THE FRAME SCREWS
Sometimes, backlight bleeding happens if the panel is screwed on too tight, causing it to warp the display. Use your screwdriver to loosen the screws that hold the frame. However, make sure not to loosen them too much as the display can fall out of the frame and break.
III. SLIGHTLY TWIST THE DISPLAY FRAME
In other cases, the display isn’t sitting properly inside the frame. As a result, extra light is bleeding through the edges.
Turn on your TV or monitor to check if the bleeding is still there. In case that loosening the screws and twisting the frame doesn’t work, move onto the next step.
IV. USE THE MICROFIBER CLOTH ON THE BLEEDING SPOTS
The backlight could be bleeding because the display isn’t completely flat. Grease and dust are the most likely causes in this case. You can fix this by gently rubbing the bleeding areas with a microfiber cloth. Rub the bleeding spot in a circular motion and make sure not to use too much pressure.
Finally, give your display a few days to settle and repeat these procedures if there were no immediate results.
How To Avoid Backlight Bleeding In The Future
Sadly, backlight bleeding will always occur in displays that use an active backlight, so the only way to avoid it entirely is to invest in an OLED display. Of course, this is not an option for everyone, seeing as OLED displays are very expensive and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
So, rather than thinking about how to avoid it entirely, think about how you can get your hands on a display with minimal backlight bleeding. This is as simple as reading reviews, customer and professional alike, of the monitor/TV that you intend on buying.
CONCLUSION
Although backlight bleeding isn’t a serious problem, it’s quite annoying and affects many displays that use an active backlight. Make sure to check with your seller about replacing the faulty display before attempting to fix it, in order to avoid losing your warranty. If the method we provided didn’t work either, your last hope would be to lower the brightness.
There was once a time when smartphones were a luxury; now they are a necessity. Almost everywhere you look you will find somebody casually swiping through their screen. People have incorporated these gadgets in such a way into their lives that a day without a smartphone might be hard for some to get through. A phone is no longer looked at as a device just to make and receive calls but more as an essential to do more than anybody had ever imagined.
With time as the smartphone market has grown and developed, so has people’s awareness and involvement in it. In today’s day and age you are not going to find somebody who is just blindly going to buy a phone. Everyone looking to buy one goes through the same process, reviews practically the very same things. Screen size, battery, OS, Memory, Megapixels, it’s almost like a checklist that every phone is made to go through.
While we agree that these are all critical things, today we would like to direct our readers to consider another important factor which most people completely ignore, the screen type of a smartphone. It is something so important to your device but is also very easily overlooked when going through that list of specifications. The main reason for this ignorance being that not many people know the different screen types, their benefits, and their shortcomings. So, today we bring you a comprehensive study about the three major types- LCD, OLED and AMOLED screens.
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)
LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display. As you may have known LCDs have been around for their fare share of time and deservingly so. An LCD is made up of some liquid crystals that get illuminated by a fluorescent backlight.
There are mainly two types of LCD displays used on smartphones:
TFT LCD: very popular among smartphones, provides better image quality than earlier generation LCD displays but ends up consuming a lot of power hence reducing battery backup.
IPS LCD: relatively expensive hence usually found on high-end devices only, provides better viewing angles and consumes less power than TFT LCD displays.
Advantages
Comparatively better display under direct sunlight.
Consistent consumption of power, not affected by color on the display.
Disadvantages
Blacks tend to appear gray, lack of contrast.
Comparatively lower picture quality.
Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED)
OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. It is a thin-film display technology that contains OLED, an organic material which emits light when current is passed through it. OLEDs display much better blacks and consume less power when displaying darker colors since OLEDs are always off unless electrified individually.
There are primarily two types of OLEDs:
PMOLED: Passive Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode uses a simple control scheme in which each row in the display is controlled sequentially. PMOLEDs are easy and cheap to fabricate but they are not efficient and their lifetime is usually less. They are typically used in smaller displays of up to 3 inches.
AMOLED: Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode is mainly driven by a TFT, which contains a storage capacitor and can hence support larger displays. AMOLED displays have no size restrictions and work on the same fundamental principles of an OLED display.
Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED)
AMOLED or Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode is more of a step forward from the OLED display technology. TFT technology is very crucial to AMOLED. An active matrix of OLEDs are deposited on a TFT plane which activates on receiving electrical currents, these TFT arrays act as switches for each pixel and also contain the storage capacitor which allows for larger displays.
Typically an AMOLED display would consist of two TFTs at each pixel, one to start and stop the charging of storage capacitors and the other to provide a steady voltage of current to the pixel.
Advantages
Thinner and more flexible than LCD displays
Faster refresh rate
No restriction on size of display
Higher contrast ratio
Consumes less power when darker colors are displayed
Disadvantages
No backlight hence poor display under direct sunlight
Consumes more power when brighter colors are displayed
Organic material is used hence it has a shorter lifetime
Conclusion
LCDs have been around for a while now while AMOLEDs are currently the new play things on the market. AMOLED is essentially a type of OLED and a better version of OLED so there is no question there as to which one is better. The real question arises on comparing LCD to AMOLED. Which one is better than the other since they both seem to have their own pros and cons. Honestly, in our opinion AMOLED beats LCD display on any given day. It offers a better picture quality, faster refresh rates, higher contrast, more brightness, higher resolution, better viewing angles and it’s also more flexible and lightweight.
A screen protector is an additional sheet of material—commonly polyurethane or glass—that can be attached to the screen of an electronic device and protect it against physical damage.
A screen protector is a sheet of clear plastic you adhere to your device's screen (smartphone, table, pc, ...). The plastic is cut to fit the exact shape of your device along with holes for buttons and the speaker — that’s why you buy different screen protectors for different devices.
Different Types of Phone Screen Protectors
I. Glass Screen Protectors
Glass screen protectors are usually 0.3 mm to 0.5 mm in thickness and usually scratch resistant. Glass protector saves the phone’s real screen in case of accidental drop. They sit comfortably on the screen and look and feel like a real phone screen.
Pros
Replacing the glass screen protector is easier and cheaper than replacing the phone’s real screen.
It’s sturdy and feels like original screen.
Cons
At times, glass protectors might look a little raised from the sides and this is true, especially with iPhone5. Users, too keen on the aesthetics looks should opt for other kinds of protectors.
II. Clear Screen Protector
These are also known as invisible protectors, due to its thickness of only three mm. Clear protectors are transparent and give the phone a very clean look. The protector neatly rests over the phone thus there is a minimal disruption when you are looking at the screen.
Pros
Clear screen protectors are easily available and very economical.
It prevents the device against any scuff and scratches and the stay clean edges prevent the dirt settling in the corner of the phone.
It’s very easy to apply the protector on the screen.
III. Plastic Screen Protectors
With the basic purpose remaining the same, the plastic screen protectors can also protect the phone well. Based on your personal preference; you will find the protectors in various price ranges starting from a pack of 3 or 5 for a dollar.
Pros
Much cheaper than glass protectors.
Cons
Difficult to install the plastic screen protectors into the phone.
Not as strong as the glass protectors
IV. Anti-Glare Film
An anti-glare screen protector with a matt finish is a great accessory for your phone if you spend several hours in the outdoors. It is very easy to install the anti-glare films and keeps the phone free from fingerprints and scratches.
Pros
It protects the phone against scratches.
Since the anti-glare screen prevents the sunlight to reflect from the screen, you can increase the battery life by decreasing the brightness of the phone.
Cons
The Anti-Glare screens require frequent changing due to fingerprint and scratches to the screen itself.
Air bubbles moving down the screen reduces the clarity and gives an unappealing look.
V. Privacy Screen Protectors
The Privacy Screen Protector is about 8 mm thick and is great if you need to stop the prying eyes from looking through the screen. These protectors darken the screen, thus making it difficult to look into the screen from different angles.
Pros
The privacy screen protector stops people from looking into your typed messages or pictures.
It protects the screen in case of accidental drop-offs.
Cons
The protector does not aid in case someone is trying to look through the screen right from the back.
It may sometimes reduce the screen clarity and brightness depending on the quality of the protectors.
DO YOU NEED A SCREEN PROTECTOR FOR YOUR SMARTPHONE OR TABLET?
It depends entirely on you. A screen protector won't protect your device from everything and is not unbreakable. But it will add a layer of protection for your phone, which, in turn, will help avoid costly screen repairs and a scratched touch screen. After all, it is easier (and cheaper) to replace a screen protector compared to a display.
The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by different factors in cathode ray tube (CRT) displays, flat-panel displays (including liquid-crystal displays) and projection displays using fixed picture-element (pixel) arrays.
It is usually quoted as width × height, with the units in pixels: for example, "1024 × 768" means the width is 1024 pixels and the height is 768 pixels. This example would normally be spoken as "ten twenty-four by seven sixty-eight" or "ten twenty-four by seven six eight".
One use of the term "display resolution" applies to fixed-pixel-array displays such as plasma display panels (PDP), liquid-crystal displays (LCD), Digital Light Processing (DLP) projectors, OLED displays, and similar technologies, and is simply the physical number of columns and rows of pixels creating the display (e.g. 1920 × 1080). A consequence of having a fixed-grid display is that, for multi-format video inputs, all displays need a "scaling engine" (a digital video processor that includes a memory array) to match the incoming picture format to the display.
For device displays such as phones, tablets, monitors and televisions, the use of the word resolution as defined above is a misnomer, though common. The term "display resolution" is usually used to mean pixel dimensions, the number of pixels in each dimension (e.g. 1920 × 1080), which does not tell anything about the pixel density of the display on which the image is actually formed: resolution properly refers to the pixel density, the number of pixels per unit distance or area, not total number of pixels. In digital measurement, the display resolution would be given in pixels per inch (PPI). In analog measurement, if the screen is 10 inches high, then the horizontal resolution is measured across a square 10 inches wide. For television standards, this is typically stated as "lines horizontal resolution, per picture height"; for example, analog NTSC TVs can typically display about 340 lines of "per picture height" horizontal resolution from over-the-air sources, which is equivalent to about 440 total lines of actual picture information from left edge to right edge.
Below are common display resolutions by international standards.
i'm an online tool for instantly checking screen's display resolution and screen's health (for 'Dead Pixels' and 'Backlight Bleeding') of any display device. i'm totally free for everyone.
myscreenchecker.com
By using myscreenchecker.com, you can instantly check resolution of your monitor, iPad, tablet, iPhone, Android smartphone, MacBook, Smart TV (Tizen, webOS, ...), and any other device with internet connection.
The Screen resolution is generally measured as width x height in pixels. For example, resolution 414 x 896 (as tested on iPhone XS Max) means the 414 pixels is width and 896 pixels is height of the screen.
Please be noticed that your current screen resolution may be less than maximum supported screen resolution (native or physical resolution). So you can change your screen resolution from your device setting for an appropriate one.
how to check my screen's health?
By touching on available colors, using specific one (black, white, ...) or random test, then observing with your eyes, you can detect if your display screen is still good or not. This method can help you to detect 'Dead Pixels' and also 'Backlight Bleeding' on the screen.
Full-screen mode is supported by default for checking screen's health, you can also rotate your screen while using this method to make sure this screen is good enough for your daily use.
Believing in your eyes for screen checking with myscreenchecker.com is the best way to verify, understand and enjoy your device's screen. You are the person using the device, nobody else.
questions?
What is my screen's resolution? How is my screen's health? Is there any dead pixels on my screen? Does my screen get backlight bleeding? Find out instantly for free right on the web with myscreenchecker.com ;)
