The Galaxy S24 phones appear to have a display issue – but Samsung is fixing it

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
The Galaxy S24 Ultra (Image credit: Future)

It's quite rare these days for new phones to launch without any bugs at all – see iPhones and Pixels past – and Samsung has now acknowledged a display issue on its new Galaxy S24 handsets, promising users that a fix is on the way.

The problem, as reported by SamMobile and others, is that the vivid color profile that you can get to through the Settings panel isn't actually that vivid at all. In fact, it's rather washed out compared to previous Samsung Galaxy phones.

While the issue is being widely reported, it's not something every reviewer and phone owner has mentioned – see our Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review, for example. The threads on Samsung's forums and Reddit are pretty busy, suggesting that it's affecting quite a few (if not all) handsets.

A screenshot posted to Reddit shows a Samsung chat support representative acknowledging that the Samsung team is "working now to fix this issue" and that a "coming software update" will bring the vividness back.

Please wait

Galaxy S24 support chat

Samsung is on the case (Image credit: Reddit)

The semi-official response by Samsung doesn't mention a timeframe, unfortunately, but it's reassuring that this is something that can be changed via a software update – so there's no need to return your phone if you've spotted the problem.

Being able to switch between the Vivid and Natural color modes is a feature that Samsung phones have had for years, giving phone owners some flexibility when it comes to how true-to-life they want the colors on the screens of their handsets to be.

There's no real workaround for this at the moment, as far as we can tell, so if you picked up a brand new Galaxy S24 there's nothing you can do except sit tight and wait for the software update to show up. Your phone should automatically prompt you when it's ready to be downloaded and installed.

It's another issue to add to the list of early bugs spotted on flagship phone launches, though thankfully they have been more minor in recent years – it's been a long time since we've had to deal with phones catching on fire.

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David Nield
Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.