Samsung owns up to Galaxy S8 red screen issues and offers a fix

The Samsung Galaxy S8 has only just hit the market and already there have been complaints about it, with numerous users taking to forums to report a red tint to their screens. Fortunately, Samsung is already promising a fix, though doesn’t seem to be admitting that there’s actually any problem with the phones.

Speaking to The Korea Herald, a Samsung spokesperson said: “Because there are some complaints about the red-tinted screens, we decided to upgrade the software next week for all Galaxy S8 clients,” and that an additional update to “make color revisions more minutely” will be rolled out at the end of April.

Yet the spokesperson added that: “We will upgrade the software because of some dissatisfied customers although there is no problem in the phone itself.”

Credit: konanzzang/Instagram

Credit: konanzzang/Instagram

A simple solution

Which makes it sound as though Samsung is reluctant to admit any kind of fault, but at least this looks to be a much more minor and more easily fixed problem than the issues faced by the now infamous Samsung Galaxy Note 7. It seems that Samsung sees the issue as a matter of taste then – a color temperature tweak as opposed to a hardware fault.

It’s unclear exactly how widespread the red tinting "problem" is, but as it’s seemingly a software issue rather than a hardware one it should be completely solved by these updates, which will apparently expand the color range, so that affected users can further lower the red in the phone’s color balance screen.

With any luck the issue will be solved before most users even receive their Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus handsets. Samsung will surely be hoping so, as after the Note 7 it really needs the S8’s launch to be as smooth as butter.

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.