PSA: One UI 6 may not have screen burn-in protection

Samsung has rolled out the stable version of One UI 6 to a handful of devices so far, with more to get the update soon. While the update introduces a variety of new features, it looks like it could also be missing a crucial one — screen burn-in protection.

When it comes to OLED screens, there’s really only one downside — the danger of screen burn-in. This is where a display suffers permanent discoloration, which can appear in the form of a text or image outline, fading of colors, or other noticeable patches. Samsung has long taken steps to avoid this issue as far back as the Galaxy S3; one of those steps includes shifting pixels every so often.

While pixel shifting is a feature in One UI 5, Samsung may have overlooked the feature in its One UI 6 update. Reddit users are starting to report that the status bar icons are no longer shifting positions after updating to One UI 6. As Reddit user dragosslash explains, this can be tested by following three steps:

• Take a screenshot while the status bar is visible
• Rotate the screen to landscape then back to portrait (do it five times so the elements drift for a significant amount of pixels)
• Open the screenshot in the Samsung Gallery

You can see an example of this in the images below (via dragosslash).

The left image is a screenshot of the calculator app in One UI 5, while the right image is a screenshot of the same app in One UI 6. At the top of the left image, you’ll notice the status bar is overlapping, showing that the status bar elements have moved as they are supposed to. However, it looks like the status bar stayed in place in the right image, suggesting burn-in protection is not working.

If burn-in protection is indeed not working in One UI 6, hopefully, Samsung will implement a quick fix soon. Android Authority has reached out to Samsung about the issue and will provide an update as soon as more information is available.