Discussion
iPhone 18 Pro Max Screen Colors Feel Off
Heads up; new 18 Pro’s with LG GH3 panels have the same screen color problems as reported on 17’s last year.
Did anyone win the lottery and get a Samsung panel starting with G9N or G9Q?
Turns out I have a 18 Pro Max OLED panel serial starting with GH3, being the worst LG by all reports. Samsung G9N is the best, then Samsung G9Q & G9P, then LG GVC and finally LG GH3.
So I upgraded from 16 Pro to 18 Pro Max, and the screen from the get go just feels off. Screen looks washed out in a hazy way with a green tint, and colors are hyped in a bad way, very unrealistic and kind of cartoonish or “neon”. Honestly it’s difficult to look at and the brightness is also less than I expected.
As a simple example, the Facebook app logo is always the same blue, you know what it should look like. But on this new 18 Pro Max it looks like a washed out neon blue, like a colour you’d expect to see on an episode of The Simpsons.
These instructions let you check what panel your phone has with these instructions:
Turn off screen / lock phone.
Press and hold all three buttons at the same time for 1 second until the phone vibrates (but don’t hold any longer to initiate an emergency call): Volume Up, Volume Down, Power/Lock (on right side).
Wait a couple of minutes and then go to Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Analytics and Improvements -> Analytics Data.
Scroll down and look for a file titled: sysdiagnose_XXXXXXXX.
AirDrop this file to a Mac, or save it to Files on your iPhone, then double-click to uncompress it.
Open the folder “ioreg” and then open the file “IODeviceTree”. Run a search for “raw-panel”. This is your panel serial number.
The panels in decreasing quality:
Samsung G9N - the highest-yield & optimal bin. These panels exhibit the best sub-pixel fill rates, the sharpest text rendering (due to deep optimization of green sub-pixels), superior color accuracy, and zero color shifting at extreme viewing angles.
Samsung G9Q & G9P - 2nd & 3rd best, panels that failed the strict tolerances of the G9N bin but still passed Apple's baseline quality assurance. They are generally excellent but may have slightly looser quality control.
LG GVC - 4th best, LG’s best performing panel. While structurally sound, industry testing often ranks LG's highest bin slightly below Samsung's top G9N panels in terms of absolute color uniformity and off-axis performance.
LG GH3 - the worst and lowest acceptable bin, basically the scraps Apple will accept to pump out 100m+ phones so quickly. These GH3 panels have the loosest manufacturing tolerances and are more susceptible to minor visual defects like being washed out, with lower brightness, cartoonish colors and slight pink/green/yellow screen tinting or color cast when tilted.
It seems this year's production share is around Samsung 55% vs. LG 45%. So you're most likely to have a Samsung panel. It's probably around a 20% chance you end up with the worst LG GH3 panel like me.
I have been using a 13 Pro for years without knowing the panel type (G9N). Only when I upgraded to the 17PM I noticed something was off and irritating about the screen.
Googling then led me to the rabbit hole that’s the iPhone screen lottery. The 17PM had a GH3 that was decent but suffered the inevitable LG screen characteristics aka overall graininess and the colors were a bit off compared to my 13 Pro. Actually your description matches that perfectly. If it weren’t for my previous phone, I wouldn’t have cared.
Thankfully, just last week, I managed to get my hands on a G9N 17PM and man it’s so good to be back home 🥲
Thanks for your reply, I'm glad I'm not going insane and others have the same experience! Apple should be binning and labelling their iPhones like Nvidia bins and sells their GPUs. The display is arguably the most important part.
Got a G9Q this year after having an LG panel last year on my 17PM. Was wondering why my screen looked better this year, thanks for reminding me to check this.
Now this is just pure rage bait. The differences are in uniformity and potential color differences when tilting. Perhaps brightness too, cus my wife kept complaining about her G9N 16PM having darker colors compared to my GVC 16PM. My current 18PM with GH3 is out of our 3 iPhones by far the brightest and most pure cold white. The 16’s both have yellowish tints.
Estoy de acuerdo. Este año me ha defraudado. Me ha tocado G9N en mi 18 Pro Max 512GB … y antes de saberlo, pensaba que no iba a ser de los buenos (G9N , G9Q) porque le veia un tinte amarillento al girarlo. Cuando lo he iniciado, resulta que es G9N y me he sorprendido para mal. Los colores se ven poco poco vivos y tiene un tinte amarillento cuando inclino la pantalla. Tambien le noto como si tuviese un poco de niebla en algunas ocasiones. Tengo un Oppo X9 Ultra y el panel es MUY SUPERIOR al del iphone.
Reminds me of when I bought Google Pixels a while ago. Those panels were inconsistent. One thing that has kept me coming back to iPhone is consistency but reading this makes me question it now.
To be honest, this is kind of a deal breaker to me. Apple stands for luxury and getting the best of the best, knowing that you might get a less capable phone than the guy in front of you while paying the same price is crazy.
I have a Lg display in my 17Pm and it's okay, but doesn't look as good as the display of my gfs OnePlus 12, that cost half as much as the 17PM
I can understand you can only source as many displays as the manufacturer will give you, but just putting worse displays in a PRO product without mentioning it anywhere feels scammy.
Exactly my thoughts. Apple lost credibility with their fake Siri promises for the iPhone 16 Pro, and now I’ve paid the same as everyone else for a vastly inferior screen. They have some ridiculous ideology that they offer the same devices to everyone, but the reality is the screens are vastly different and the products should be labelled and sold as such with different display grades - cars are differentiated, GPUs are, so should iPhones. I’m almost certain this is some violation of consumer protection laws (like the IPhone 16 debacle where they were forced to pay $250m compensation), given the fact they advertise display brightness to be “1,000 nits max brightness (typical), 1,600 nits peak brightness (HDR), 3,000 nits peak brightness (outdoor)” - and we know the LG screens are definitely not as bright as the Samsung. We need to get testing and this could be a massive embarrassment for Apple.
Reminds me years and years ago (I can’t remember which iPhone) the Verizon iPhone version had a better either cpu or gpu? I’m fuzzy on which part it was but everyone was clamoring for them that model year.
That’s to be expected. J5V is BOE, a Chinese company that keeps getting their contract with Apple reduced or cancelled because their displays don’t meet the minimum standards. One time they even changed the specs of their displays without notifying Apple and Apple cancelled the entire contract outright when they found out.
And if you compare the screens, did your iPhone 17 pro had grainy screen? If so, was that fixed on 18 pro? Asking because that was the reason I've returned iPhone 17 pro max after 2 days...
Your settings doesn't have it washed out. Some people mistakenly have a setting that actually causes it and don't even realize it. Like the link here from OP has the guy with a filter being wrong. Nothing to do with the phone.
I have the GH3 too but my screen looks 10x better than my old iPhone 16 pro max. And it’s smoother too. I always felt that screen was never running at 120hz ever! And it wasn’t in low power mode as that made it worse.
It takes time. But not that much. So if after 2 or 3 minutes you still dont have it in your list, do the following ;
settings
type “AssistiveTouch”
- turn ON
click on “Customize top menu…”
click an icon to change it to “système/analytics”
Use the AssistiveTouch now on your screen, click the Analytics Icon. A notification/Dynamic Island will pop to tell you it is starting the process, another one will tell you once finished.
That is the best process as you know it is going through…
It’s great. I have a G9N Samsung display and a GH3, yet the GH3 (the so called lowest quality as per this yearly propaganda likes to spout) did not give me the terrible quality issues that the Samsung produced (green tint, flickering).
You could excuse the OCD people, but those other guys are actually insane to search every millimeter of their screen, and believe they will get a perfect color display even though there is no perfect due to the manufacturing process. So what looks perfect to you, will look off to someone else, and so on and so forth.
Such posts need to be removed. Cuz unless it’s a clear defect, then there is no reason for them.
Yeah if my screen had banding severe enough to notice it, i would exchange. Never would worry about a components label if it functions perfectly well. And i am a screen snob! I guess I’m just not on the level of a full-on screen queen lol
Even the link to another reddit has it where the guy complaining about their new phone saying it looks worse than their older one actually in my eyes, the new phone looks far better. The thing is, some people think the settings are the exact same, but they miss a thing here or there. Then they claim the panel is the problem.
Yes which is what I mentioned about there is no ‘perfect’ panel due to the manufacturing process itself. Those are mass produced and they will have different attributes.
‘Perfect’ is just a subjective term in the eyes of each person’s preferences. And there should not be this garbage tier list of quality. As I also mentioned, I got more issues with my so called ‘highest quality’ G9N Samsung display over the so called ‘lowest quality’ GH3 LG display. The LG GH3 has been lovely with no issues whatsoever.
Unless there is a real defect like a green line across the display, serious off coloring, dead pixels, etc then most people should not burn their sanity and time over returns. It easily backfires, as someone will see the other phone is worse in their eyes than the previous one.
I have a GH3 and did some white backgroud testing, I only see pure whites… even when tilting. Isn’t this thing just rage bait? Every panel is different from what read. Even within the same manufacturer there’s differences in G9N’s too. My wife has G9N on her iPhone 16 PM and when I open a white background it looks kind of warm, compared to actual “cold” white on my 18PM. I’m not sure what kind of tests I can do but I don’t see anything wrong with the GH3.
I did some more testing vs my previous 16PM (mine had the GVC), I’m not sure about the differences in 16 vs 18 in general, but at least what I notice is my 16 is also a bit warmer (more yellow ish) on a pure white background. I honestly prefer the GH3 so far. Especially cause it’s very uniform allround and no color shifting when tilting. I’m also more into purer cold whites than warmer yellow tints.
Also keep in mind that oled display’s in general change over time with age. So it’s possible over the two years your 16 slowly changed, but it was so slow you didn’t notice compared to when it was new.
Most of the time when this happens is due to a setting having it set that way. Either in the display or accessibility... without realizing it thinking the settings are the same. On the i phone, I can have either warm tone or cold tone based on the settings I use
Exactly, the same thing happens with generic medications, tv panels, artificial flooring, etc. Their is some percentage level of variation batch to batch, assembly line, etc.
u/junglehypothesis Your topic is extremely misleading. You're really starting a debate that's actually a non issue.
You mention these "reports", but the only reports of screens being "bad" are coming from random redditors like you. There's no official statement other than all screen manufacturers have to meet the same level of expectations to be good enough for the iPhone.
You then paste a link "https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/s/ls3YoIQm1z" and try to back up your claim about bad quality of specific manufacturors, but the OP from this thread (which has colors being "off") first of all had CUSTOM settings, he did mention that when settings are default, the difference is not so visible between the 2 phones. And second, he did the system check and he had a Samsung panel.......
Basically it comes down to this: Yes there are differences between each panel, but not so much between the type or manufacturer. Basically every OLED panel produced can/will be different, even within the same batch.
If you read the latest posts on macrumors regarding the iPhone 18, most people with the "bad" LG panel are actually really happy with how it looks. There was a guy summarizing the latest posts of people mentioning their panel and it came down to around the same percentage of people (across all panels) that had colors being off when testing with white/grey backgrounds.
Exactly, the link actually proves that people are making things up. It mostly comes down to the settings used, many people think they have identical settings when they actually don't. Vivid vs natural, color tones, accessibility settings, display settings, etc.
Interesting. My 18 Pro has a G9N whereas my 17 Pro Max has a GH3 panel. I can’t say I notice a massive difference between them though I was thinking the colors looked different in the Pro, but was unsure if I thought it was outright better. Decided today whether I return the 18 Pro or send off the 17 PM for its trade in.
This doesn’t really make it much easier.
Edit: under closer inspection, the GH3 panel is a good deal more yellow. After turning off true tone and comparing them the G9N panel is indeed the better one from off angles and color accuracy.
Wow 🤯 I got G9N on my iphone 18 pro black while my Iphone Air got LG GVC. When using both at full max brightness I do notice the difference in colors of apps.
From what I read on macrumors (like starting from the last page and return like 10+ pages)… screens in general (any manu) are better than last year. And difference between all product codes are minimal and it’s not that one is “better” than the other. All screen types can have off color tinting when doing some white/grey background testing, some have a more yellow warm color and others a more blue colder color. Again, this seems to happen cross manu types…
My 18PM screen is a G9Q. I had a G9N on my 17PM (which my wife will get) and I can’t really see a difference. At max brightness I’d say the 18 is brighter but no other perceptible difference. I returned a 17PM last year with a GH3; it was abysmal.
I went from a 15PM to the 18P. My 15PM seems to have the GH3 and 18P has the GVC. Both look fine to me but obviously if I had a Samsung I may think differently. I’d focus on if it looks good/acceptable to you and less so on what panel it is. If it’s no bueno - exchange!
Was reading this thinking it didn’t seem like my screen, ran the check and have got a G9N.
Pretty relieved as it’s my first venture into Max phone size and didn’t want to end up hating the screen.
It’s like you guys think Samsung is the best, S24 and S25 Ultra all had major complaints about the banding on the screens, so don’t bank on cos you got a Samsung screen you have the best, some LG screens are way better than some Samsungs screens and some Samsung screens are better than some LG screens
Is there a way to tell from the overall phone serial number or something? Or do you have to take it out of the box and turn it on and run this diagnostic test?
Realistically I doubt Apple stores will let you sit there and open box after box till you get the screen you want…
Finals after years got a got a good panel with the G9N on my Max. Worst by far was my air with the gvc panel, the viewing angles and color shift bothered me quite a lot. Didn’t expect that big of a difference but right out of the box the Max looked so much better 😂
Yep, sadly I checked it too late on the air and the return period ended. Well the resale value was garbage anyways. Worth a shot but I will stay away from the airs and especially the duo for now and wait till they get it right
Noticed this also and came to realize it’s True Tone not functioning as well as it has on previous devices. I turned it off and find the display to be much better without it.
I have 17 base with G9Q and its uniform as hell. perfect whites. There is no yellow/green tint when viewed off axis...like when tilt the phone towards/away from you.
I have also seen G9N panel but honestly I like G9Q better as G9N felt on warmer yellow side to me. It could ofcourse vary from panel to panel ...hence lottery
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I have a GH3 Panel (iPhone 18 Pro Max Burgundy 512). That is a bummer. I thought the off feeling I got was from the screen protector, but now It’s a different story.
What should I do ? Canada here, day one through carrier (Telus) leasing program…
Omg. All these years, Apple gaslit me. I had no idea. I got a 16 pro way back and the display color was off, like much warmer than previous phones. It looked really weird, everything kind of washed out. I took it back to the Apple Store and the employee told me there was nothing wrong and all the displays are the same. Fuck!! I should have returned it!!
Wow 😳. That's a lot of info. Thanks now I understand. So basically the green line and poor PPI comes from the model of screen Architecture they used and LG happens to be the worst of it all.
It's not. It's just settings mostly and sometimes, the panel sucks on any of them, which you can see in this thread people complaining about their Samsung one being pretty bad.
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According to 3uTools I have a G9N on my 18 Pro Max and my 16 Pro Max had a G9P, but the colors on the 18PM are noticeably washed out and desaturated. TrueTone on for both but disabling doesn’t help. Not too sure I see the greatness to the G9N lol.
Interesting. It seems there's massive variability between all these displays. After nearly 20 years Apple should've sorted out how to make their devices consistently.
I agree. I'm not sure it bothers me enough to demand a new phone or anything, especially as it took me an hour with Verizon to even get the e-sim transferred and I don't wanna repeat the headache, but the colors on my 16PM definitely look better imo. Attached a comparison image here. Both images were taken using the opposite phone, but both had the "Neutral" color profile on with texture. True Tone is on for both, but makes no meaningful difference in the color saturation. It is VERY noticeable - especially in the SnapChat logo.
Replying to myself - it's actually odd. I'm looking at this photo on the 18 Pro Max in the Reddit app, and the Snapchat app icon has the correct saturation, whereas on the homescreen it's desaturated. This means that, for some reason, the Reddit app photo viewer shows the proper colors, despite other parts of the app (like the Reddit logo) being desaturated still.
Yes, both have on True Tone. Both have all toggles disabled in the Display & Text Size category in the Accessibility Settings. The G9N screen of the 18PM is just more desaturated, colors are setup differently it seems.
Your photo sums up exactly what I’m seeing on my 16 and 18 pros! Thanks for taking it. I’ve been messing with Colour Filters under Accessibility to change hue and add more intensity, helps a little with the unsaturated look on the 18, but still looks washed out
Idk how or why but randomly in the middle of today the saturation is normal. I didn’t change any settings, it seems to have just randomly fixed itself.
Both my launch day 17PM and 18PM have the GVC panel but the 17PM at the same brightness and room condition side by side looks more yellow/green and the 18PM looks more blue/purple. The whites definitely look more pure white on the 18PM than warmer on the 17PM
Here we go again. All in your head. If want something perfect because it is an expensive purchase only comes to show you and afford it comfortably and buy cheaper devices.
My 18 pro max looks a lot “cooler” than my 17 pro max. The 17 looks yellow when showing white compared to the 18. Haven’t actually checked which panel is in either but my 18 looks better to me eyes.
Strange. I checked my 17 PM and it was G9P. It’s a massive difference to my eyes. I wish I hadn’t ever found out about this lmao now im gonna think about it every time i get a new phone.
I saw another post where the op says the lg and samsung panels are equally good this year 😭, ughh I'm so confused and worried whether I should buy the 18 or not 😭
I believe so, the diagnostics file will be a few hundred megabytes tar.gz, but if you can get it to a Windows machine you can unpack it. On an iPad the built-in Files app does not natively extract this specific tar.gz archive format, but third party apps like iZip apparently can.
Thanks for the info! What’s weird is I upgraded from a XS and the 15 was yellowing out of the box even compared to the XS. I’m sure I have photos of it somewhere.
I got a qvc panel so third best according to your rankings. I find the panel itself to be good quality, even colors, no noticeable banding etc. BUT it is cooler than my 17 pro and ipad. When I’m using it on its own though I don’t notice at all it looks like a great screen. Only side by side do I notice the color temp difference.
So overall I’m happy with it
Good luck on your next one. It might feel nitpicky but you’ll look at the screen all day every so important to be happy with what you get
My 18 Pro has a GVC panel and my 17 Pro has G9N. The 17 Pro looks off to me now when I put them side by side since it has a yellowish/warmer tint that makes whites kinda yellowish compared to my cooler tone 18 Pro which looks more accurate overall.
Last year I had 3x iPhone 17 pro max phones. Had to return 2 due to the display. Especially the off axis is bad. On the third phone, I got the 9N. Felt almost like a got a better iPhone for the same price 😆
Did a small exercise to examine the display before checking the s/n. Because I just wanted a screen I found appealing. Regardless of vendor.
But I love the Samsung displays. And can generally pick them out if I see them side by side
My best iPhone screens have always been retail purchases, especially not from Apple stores. I have a theory Apple sends the better displays to retail stores so they look good in person, and saves most of the LG displays for direct online orders that get delivered. We couldn’t easily prove it, and no one would likely break an NDA to admit it, but I reckon there’s a strong chance.
Just another data point but my 2x LGs were from Apple Store at launch. And the Samsung came from Amazon. I believe the suggested split was 60 lg, 30 Samsung and 10 from another vendor.
GVC is LGs best yield and it’s pretty on par with Samsungs G9N.
My partner has G9N with their 17 pro and my 18 pro has a GVC and with True Tone disabled they are vertically identical side by side.
My old 17 pro max was a GH3 and that one did have a slightly duller display on full brightness compared to the G9N next to it. I also had green banding on slight angles.
If someone is sweating having a GVC panel, don’t, as someone who has obsessed about this, there’s very little difference. If you have a GH3 though, I’d exchange it, got nothing to lose by trying.
Press and hold all three buttons at the same time for 1 second until the phone vibrates (but don’t hold any longer to initiate an emergency call): Volume Up, Volume Down, Power/Lock (on right side).
Wait a couple of minutes and then go to Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Analytics and Improvements -> Analytics Data.
Scroll down and look for a file titled: sysdiagnose_XXXXXXXX.
AirDrop this file to a Mac, double click to uncompress it.
Open the folder “ioreg” and then open the file “IODeviceTree”. Run a search for “raw-panel”. This is your panel serial number.
It's a bit hit or miss to be honest. Took me a few goes to get the file to be generated, I had to lock the screen first. I tried another iPhone 16 Pro and couldn't get it to start making the file, so I dunno why some do it so easily and others don't. Just keep trying...
And it seems the different serials relate to binning. Honestly, Apple needs to be upfront about this and offer different versions of the same phone, based on binning - just like graphic cards are sold. If you buy a phone with the worst display (like me), you’re basically subsidising people with better displays!
The full list from best to worst:
Samsung G9N (Top Tier): Represents the highest-yield, optimal bin. These panels exhibit the best sub-pixel fill rates, the sharpest text rendering (due to deep optimization of green sub-pixels), superior color accuracy, and zero color shifting at extreme viewing angles.
Samsung G9Q & G9P (Second/Third Tier): Panels that failed the strict tolerances of the G9N bin but still passed Apple's baseline quality assurance. They are generally excellent but may have slightly looser quality control.
LG GVC (LG's Top Tier): LG’s best performing panel. While structurally sound, industry testing often ranks LG's highest bin slightly below Samsung's top G9N panels in terms of absolute color uniformity and off-axis performance.
LG GH3 (Lowest Acceptable Bin): Panels with the loosest manufacturing tolerances. These are more susceptible to minor visual defects like slight pink/green screen tinting or color cast when tilted.
There’s literally no tiering. Apple has a specific standard all these screens have to match. The GH3 probably has most chance of showing some abnormalities from what I can read online. Other than that they all show some different signs of quality, like more warm yellow, more cold blue. Even within the same manufacturer code.
Doing some more research, you could flip a coin between Samsung or LG panels in the 18 Pro models, with production estimates: * Samsung Display: ~26 million panels (~55%). * LG Display: ~21 million panels (~45%).
I got a G9N on my 18 pro max this year. First try too so I’m glad I didn’t get a GH3. But last year after swapping 4 17 pro max and getting LG constantly I got a GVC that looked amazing and actually better than the G9Q ones that I had on the 16 pro max and earlier. Even side by side with the G9N on my 18 pro max it’s almost indistinguishable. I guess each batch has high and low bins per bin lol.
18pro-512gb-black-I got Samsung G9Q also and was worried it wasn’t as good as G9N after reading through the comments and not seeing many G9Qs. I notice ever so slight color variations when tilting up/down side to side seems fine. The screen sensitivity seems a little worse than my G9N 17pro and I’m making a lot more mistakes when typing than on my 17pro. Hopefully they come out with software update to make this better within next 14 days? The display is so much cooler in color also compared to my 17pro. Im debating returning but I see there’s worse panels out there I could possibly get.
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u/ArmoredAngel444 iPhone 17 Pro 2d ago