Samsung community forums
Update: April 17, 2020 (6:02 PM ET): According to SamMobile, Samsung is aware of the green tint issue on Galaxy S20 Ultra displays and is working on a fix. A software update should begin rolling out to affected Exynos 990 handsets relatively soon, so hold tight until then. Read on for more details about this issue.
Original: April 16, 2020 (3:28 AM ET): The Exynos 990 variant of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is not behaving very well for many users. After multiple reports of autofocus issues and overheating, the display on the phone is now apparently turning green.
A bunch of people have complained about the problem on Samsung’s community forums, while folks over at Sammobile were also able to reproduce the issue at their end. The culprit seems to be the April security update which Samsung released not too long ago.
What’s happening?
A green tint reportedly appears when the display refresh rate on the Exynos S20 Ultra is set to 120Hz and the brightness goes below 30%. This causes the problem to manifest across apps like Samsung Pay, the camera app, Snapchat, PUBG Mobile, and more.
The issue is also said to occur when the phone’s battery is below 5% and its temperature exceeds 40 degrees Celsius. At this point, the display refresh rate automatically kicks back to 60Hz.
People at Sammobile also experienced the problem when the phone had 60% battery and was nowhere near the 40 degree temperature. This shows that the issue is inconsistent across devices.
Basically, the display will turn green if the brightness is low and the refresh rate automatically goes down to 60Hz inside apps that don’t support 120Hz refresh rates.
Is there a solution?
To solve the problem, Samsung advises users to reset their phones and clear the cache of apps that display the green tint. However, this doesn’t seem to resolve the issue.
Thankfully, all signs point to this being a software bug. Samsung can hopefully fix it in the next device update. What’s strange is that only the Exynos 990 version of the S20 Ultra is displaying the problem.
This only adds to existing beliefs that the Exynos version of Samsung’s flagships are inferior to their Snapdragon counterparts. Sadly, as far as performance is concerned, we’ve found that to be true.
