yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Galaxy S II General] EleCtrOx666:
PixelFormat is on 5 by default, I don't know much about these gradients things(I can't see it) but 5 is not defined in http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/PixelFormat.html#RGBA_5551 ... Strange
[Galaxy S II General] dinan:
If the gallery on this phone is the same as most other android phones, then yes you will have banding because that gallery app is known to be pretty bad. It's the same thing on my Nexus One and Nexus S.

Can you download quickpic from the market real quick just to view the same image of the gradient to see if you have banding? On my Nexus One/S, quickpic shows the picture without banding while the stock gallery app shows banding.
[Galaxy S II General] Dannyboyni:
I am still getting the banding having viewed the picture in quickpic, :(
[Galaxy S II General] mwatson:
Its gotta be a software issue. My ZTE Blade doesn't have banding like this. The screen in the blade is made by Samsung. Hopefully just a FW update needed...
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
Ok well that should be fine then, cause I think that is RGBX so full 32bit available (24bit colour)

So my guesses would be in least probable order:

Probably Not

^ a) Display is defective on some unit

| b) Display is not configured and has some odd contrast setting enabled

| c) The graphics in question is pallet based png or some compressed pallet format

v d) The app or 3d draw in question doesn't enable the nice pixel formats

Probably

I have an idea :) Back soon!
[Galaxy S II General] tuhinz:
I remember there was a huge issue with the heavy banding shown by the X10i because of its 65k display. However subsequent firmware upgrades improved the situation to a point where now its not very noticable (possibly using optimised dithering algos?)

As things stand, the 65k display has lower visible banding than the 16M colour SG2. :p . Dont have a camera to click both the phones together but trust me its true.

However I am afraid if the reviewers and the public in general don't complain about it Samsung wont take it up for rectification- Coz till now not a single reviewer has pointed out this issue (which I find hard to believe and thus still think this is a batch fault)
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
procedural gradient

ok very simple, tested on my sgs2, I see slight banding in the green in portrait, however we should note that the human eye is most dominent in green spectrum, by quite a bit!

This amazingly complicated app does set the 8888 format on binding, so if all is well on the display there should be little or no banding. Android messes with bitmaps so procedural grads are the best way to see :)

I was going to put controls in to generate user gradients, but then just thought sod it, it's only a test :)
[Galaxy S II General] Seabass1:
There is slight banding in the green as you say, but the others all look good on mine. Looks like some dithering is going on in the other colours but that might just be my eyes playing tricks.
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
there is nothing to dither, so thats weird :/

edit : wow, you got me looking now and i see it too

Or i see what you mean, hmmm, that could be colour inaccuracy of amoled :\

As in most displays claim they can have all these colours, and it's true you tv can display 16.7mil but it doesn't exactly have control of doing it, there is serious guess work by lcd and plasma tv's, thats why they have colour processors. So the same shade of red wont be maintained over pixels, there will be variations. Have not read into amoled or +, so maybe thats what you see, is how inaccurate these things really are :)
[Galaxy S II General] Seabass1:
That's the most likely explanation, the "dithering" doesn't look as uniform as it was images of gradients in the gallery so it's probably just a display limitation. To be fair you really have to look for it in the app you made, in general use it would be unnoticeable.
[Galaxy S II General] tuhinz:
TBH The banding is quite noticable to me.

Just tried clicking some pictures of the display. Apologise for the poor quality- Only have my X10i around for the job. Also ignore the moire pattern.

The banding is rather noticable in the screenshots dont you think?
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
try the app i posted and tell me if you see banding in that, you may see banding in dark green but others should be fine, specially in landscape.

With images you cant really judge it cause they may have been destroyed with palletization and compression :)
[Galaxy S II General] tuhinz:
tried the app and its the same as you and seebass1 observed. Slight banding in green, some dithering in red as well. Couldn't make out for the others. I actually tried the gradent test on lagom.nl earlier as well and couldnt see any banding in the greyscale image there.

Now i'm confused. There is still the matter of my x10i doing a better job of the gradients in apps like angry birds etc. Also the Nexus & windmill(cloudy) LWPs still look ugly.

Does this imply that the display could actually fare better with driver/firmware updates?
[Galaxy S II General] cigaro78:
Thanks very much for that lagom link. I was able to test:

1) pc (nvidia high graphics card) on acer 24"

2) acer 2540p, famous for having banding issues due to display

3) samsung sgs2

Pc was perfect, acer was banding (as expected) and samsung... no banding. And I'm anal retentive when it comes to these things, trust me.

I suspect it might be a firmware thing. I'm KE1, bought from Three in the UK. What else is everyone using?
[Galaxy S II General] hung77:
I have tried this banding issue with the Skyfire browser and it looks much better then the stock browser. I think this is a software issue.

Have anybody tried this with Skyfire and notice the difference?
[Galaxy S II General] RogerPodacter:
just for the hell of it i tried the gradient app on my nexus one, and it was smooth as butter, looked beautiful. before the 2.3.3 update it would have showed the banding for sure.

i strongly believe this is a software issue guys, no question.
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
How do you know it would for sure? Lots of apps dont use procedural gradients, they use palletized png (or as it ends up). But would like some1 with pre 2.3.3 nexus s to test this, cause I cant see it tbh.
[Galaxy S II General] RogerPodacter:
well i dont know for sure on tha tparticular gradient app. but the nexus one had the same banding on everything else, xda tapatalk app splash screen, many other types of gradients.

google updated to 2.3.3 and admitted the color bit was increased from 16 bit up to 24bit. so i have no doubt this is just a software issue with the SGS2, at least that is my opinion.
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
very doubtfull, until proven, we need some with 2.2 nex s cause will change my 2 minute grad app to measure screen pixel info.
[Galaxy S II General] ijat91:
Actually i already see this problem since using galaxy s1, there is some sort of banding(nexus s livewallpaper, xda app start logo) but galaxy s2 have better image(less banding) compare to galaxy s1, still, i can confirm there is still a banding issue.

Maybe, this is some sort of software limitation by samsung?
[Galaxy S II General] cigaro78:
Good point - I was testing the URL using Opera Mobile. I'll try tonight with the default browser.
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
New test

Ok changed grad display, includes Pixel Format ID, Pixel Format Name, and screen refresh rate (just for the hell of it).

You should see ID = 5, Name = BGRA_8888 which is Blue, Green, Red, Alpha at 8bits per channel per pixel. So this gives you 24bit colour.

Note: Androids default from what I have read used to be RGB_565, and now RGA_8888 i think is standard, this new BGRA format isn't well documented.

But neways, if you have anything other than BGRA_8888 then yes, software issue!, if you have that, then I think it should all be fine and conclude that displays on phones are not the most accurate (like almost every display in use today, except my lovely pro ips lcd I'm typing this on ;) )

Edit:

as another note, developers can set PixelFormat to what they want, and instead of programmer generated gradients, they may use bitmaps (images) that have been heavily compressed and/or palletized to hell for space and performance. This would create banding in lots of cases. So you cant really look at an app, and say my screen if naff or have defects unless you wrote the app or know how it's setup. This grad app shows the screen/os default pixel format and sets full 24bit colour for the procedural gradients, so it's the best graduation of colour your gonna get.
[Galaxy S II General] android53:
BGRA_8888 on sgs1 cm7

Used to get the banding on froyo though, its probably a software bug for you lot
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
amoled and devs and draw and stuff!

Just had another thought, most developers and 3D engines will use a 16bit draw mode that would cause more banding on amoled screens that really require 24bit. So I think thats the issue, a better dev than I would have to confirm that things like SurfaceHolder in android defaults to 16bit draw. In addition, most people will use the PNG format and accept a 16bit image out of the source, this would display worse on a better screen like samoled, also colour dither sometimes makes the issue less. Being an 3D artist thats starting to learn android dev all my apps/gfx will be 24bit and s2 friendly :)

Just thought I'd share more thoughts on the issue :)
[Galaxy S II General] nickbarbs:
I'm not bothered by this at all, i do see it in some apps etc but honestly the screen is so far superior in every other way.. that i dont care.
[Galaxy S II General] mwatson:
I don't see any banding on websites which must mean the screen is up to the job. Just some of the apps and wallpapers are still 16bit.

Surely if this was a software issue with the phone everything would display gradiant banding?
[Galaxy S II General] MrSuppah:
As posted before me, there seems to be a difference when using different browsers

dolphin browser: no banding in the lacom.nl gradient

stock browser: banding
[Galaxy S II General] tuhinz:
It does sound counter-intuitive but i suppose its possible that a better screen willl show more of the flaws in a bad image (kinda like SD content on HDTV I guess. However as I said earlier, the 65k colour screen of my X10 does show better output. It seems the S2 does a poor job of dithering and thus shows prominent banding. Could this be a driver issue?

Also, just noticed this, in the stock browser, some videos show quite severe banding- try searching for the Gears of War 1080p trailer on youtube.
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
I wrote the test grad app so show ppl the device runs in 888 bit

so imho

screen characteristic = 99%

driver issue = 1% (only cause nothing in this life is ever certain ;) )

Like i said from what I have learned it's just one of those things, and most devs will not force quality of apps beyond 565 to 888 cause of the space and performance.
[Galaxy S II General] r_a_c:
Another test on this. When you turn your phone off and put the plugg in you see this battery icon. The grey part is really ugly and banded with green/pink vertical lines.

Can some check this if it is smooth grey with them?

Thanks!
[Galaxy S II General] NitroOnTheRocks:
Is this the screen banding you guys are talking about?

At first I didn't notice these vertical lines, but now it begins to worry me.

It is best seen with this grey background or on the notification pull down menu.

Or is this something else (worse?) to worry about and bring this device to the store for warranty/servicing?
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
not meaning to be patronizing, but look close at your lcd monitors, or tv, the panels just are not that accurate. If you want amazing contrast and fast as f#ck colour, you need to ask for a crt display, although I somehow think the size of the phone will suffer :) maybe battery also
[Galaxy S II General] int_19h:
I've noticed the banding right away - I suspect because I switched from a Nexus One (fully updated, of course...).

It still feels like there's dithering going on even in the test app above. The reason is that, rather than seeing solid stripes of clear colors one over another in the color bars, I do instead see some kind of "sprinkled dust" effect where the stripes are still visible, but they are not solid. All in all looks a lot like dithering to me.

Same thing for the original image posted to this thread for testing. It's really bad in the browser (that's probably 16 bit for real), and in gallery it's somewhat better, but the same "dusty" effect is there.
[Galaxy S II General] style34:
Sorry but the pictures posted by NitroOnTheRocks look awful. I dont want my super-duper and very expensive new toy that claims it has the best screen ever looks like this. I just wont be able to live with it.
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
They do look bad, but there is also lots of sensor noise in there from the camera makes it look worse. Will change gradient app to step though shades of grey (best to see this kinda thing) and maybe get a big camera with little or no noise and macro lens to take a few pics of the lines of pixels.
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
pics

Dont really prove that much other than the variation there exists between pixels of the same colour (if you have photoshop and know how to do area average calcs).

But thought I would post them neways :)

Could have got closer but couldn't find my BIG macro lens :( Think the G/F has got it somewhere!

I may write a screen test app for ppl that think they have probs and not use bitmaps and turn of dither etc. Just so ppl can be sure, but I had a little 3D work to do at the mo, so wont be today :)
[Galaxy S II General] r_a_c:
The sky in angry birds, close to the ground, has 3 bands( grey-bleu-grey).

Is this a banding problem?
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
Doubt it, is just color graduation from 565 display draw. Gonna play ab and have a look now :)
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
I belive thats how the bitmap is, nothing to do with the screen
[Galaxy S II General] bcam117:
Any progress on this issue? Was there the same issue on the s1? I remember seeing horrible bands on an app called zedge.
[Galaxy S II General] deanwray:
I think its more a case of the screen showing more artefacts of gfx in use than a real problem.
[Galaxy S II General] prodygee:
I'm really annoyed by the banding, but its not really notable in videos. But when I do see it somewhere, I get really annoyed by it.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy SII with XDA Premium
[Galaxy S II General] godutch:
big difference indeed, compared with other browsers (opera, dolphin, miren and especially xscope (best looking imho)), the stock browser also seems to dither the image
[Galaxy S II General] tuhinz:
I get what you are saying but shouldnt the gfx drivers be doing some kind of dithering to avoid the banding?

I fail to understand how 'lesser' screens (my X10i 65k LCD display for example) manage to show the same image (eg: the Angry Birds Sky screen) without noticable banding but the GS II can't?

Is this even fixable through future driver/ OS updates?
[Galaxy S II General] RogerPodacter:
you guys see the banding in andry birds? where exactly? cause i played angry birds on the Infuse yesterday to look for banding but i didnt see any. i'll try to compare to see if its related to both these devices, or just the type of amoled+ screens...
[Galaxy S II General] tuhinz:
Check out the Angry Birds screen attached. It loads just after you click on Play. Even though it's a screenshot, you can clearly see the green banding zones. On the phone it looks worse.

BTW: My PC screen is IPS . I wonder if that makes the banding more apparent compared to a TN display. :)
[Galaxy S II General] Mitty1990:
I have noticed it a little bit nothing as bad as the Atrix, when I had the Atrix opening the XDA app was an eye sore now in the SGS 2 it looks like very minimal banding.
[Galaxy S II General] r_a_c:
Do you also see gradients on the grey of the numeric keyboard of when in contacts?

The grey of the numbers are not smooth. You got some yellow above, some pink beneath(not that noticable but look close). Do you have that?
[Galaxy S II General] mscheetham:
I'm confused, I did not notice any dithering on the gs1, never mind banding.

People seem to be talking like its normal to apply dithering, are all phones 16bit or does the gs2 have lower color depth than normal?
[Galaxy S II General] flooki:
Your monitor and most smartphones use 24-bit. But the Galaxy S2 is limited to 16-bit by its software.

Bit of explanation:

With 24-bit, you have 3x 8-bit (red, green, blue).

8 bits let you store 2^8 values, which is 256 - That means you have 256 different values for the separate red, green and blue channels.

The S2 only has 16-bit: 5 for red and blue, and 6 for green (our eyes are more sensitive to green). 2^5 = 32 and 2^6 = 64...

As you can see, you have way less space to store the colors with 16-bit. It's pretty ridiculous that Samsung released this, in my opinion!
[Galaxy S II General] RogerPodacter:
Just confirmed the infuse here also shows banding I'm angry birds etc so it seems to be a Samsung trend for now I guess.
[Galaxy S II General] mscheetham:
First my apolgies for my previous post. I just read it back. I don't know what the hell happened there, brain fart, I expect.

What I was trying to get across is that I can't understand why there is no big deal being made of this. Did reviewers get differant phones because to me the whole os (ie not just apps) looks awful. All reviews I read had nothing praise for the colour quaility of the device, yet in my opinion it looks worse than my old galaxy s.

flooki Thank-you for that explanation, I do understand the concept of color depths and the like. I was confused as to why such a big issue to me, considering the phone was sold, by a large part, on the screen is getting such little attention aside from this one thread.

I just hope it is a fixable issue and not a comprise to achieve the more vibrant colours the reviewers where all excited about.

edit:

ok Iv'e just discovered a more worrying issue the vertical lines that I have been seeing which I assumed to be linked with the above problem seem to be a seperate issue. Its difficalt to explain, the banding is in the image and so moves when scrolling but the vertical lines are not. They stay where they are on the screen as if they are a defect in the screen itself. Does everybpdy else get the vertical lines too?

btw the vertical lines are exactly like these in this post a few pages back (the forum would not let me quote the images) click on the '>' next to the posters name to see what I mean:
[Galaxy S II General] r_a_c:
Do you mean by the os is ugly that you see a lot of banding, not smooth color on the os?

Like the keypad in the phone are, the grey keys are ugly as hell, not smooth grey changes, alot off lines, than a darker one, dan something little ligther, and so on...

Also in the green telephone button there.

And you see it very good in the stock clock app. When you add an alarm, and you see the page wich show all the alarms you have set, the grey (block) of each alarm is f*cking ugly as sh*t. Alot of the os color seems to be off.

Is this what you mean??

And abouth the vertical lines, I have them too.
[Galaxy S II General] mscheetham:
Yes exactly what I mean.

The vertical lines which I originally thought was a screen fault (which it may still be) seems to be a ghosting issue. It had got so bad when I wrote the above messege, I could see it everywhere but after coming back to my phone later it was very light but still there. I hope this is a fixable issue also.

Wether the ghosting and banding are linked or seperate software/hardware faults, I dont know.

All this is very concerning I'm hoping a dev will suffer these issues too (sorry, selfish I know:) ) and investigate.
[Galaxy S II General] r_a_c:
Yes i also want to know if it is hardware or software...

I made a topic abouth it "os samsung not very well made, or is it the screen..."

There is a person saying that het doesn't see any banding or lines on his numeric dialer... Just smooth grey. Strange, no?

Go post in that topic too, because maybe they don't know what i mean exactly...

Could you also check the next problem I have. I saw the contoures of the keypad after i entered a message and than pulled down the pull down menu. It disapeared after 15 seconds, slight burn in?? Could see it in a dark room.

And also the grey bar where you put your thumb when you pull the pull down menu down, seemed to be changing color when i moved it; But as I looked closer, there was something left behind from the things that stood there first. like on the homescreen, i could even read contacts in the grey bar when i pulled it down to cover the contact icon... It also dissapeared after 15 seconds.

Could you check this?

Thanks
[Galaxy S II General] RogerPodacter:
I very much think its a software issue but I don't have any evidence to support this other than the previous amoled phones which had the sane issue and got fixed.
[Galaxy S II General] godutch:
could this fix our problem too?

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1012278
[Galaxy S II General] godutch:
Take a screenshot and you will see the banding too or watch a screenshot from a device without banding on the sgs2-> no banding.

This is really annoying though, no one know of a fix?
[Galaxy S II General] kickassdave:
I am in the same boat. People saying that this isn't a problem or is minimal are having a laugh...

Loaded up Battleheart on my girlfriend's optimus 2x and while all the colours are smoothly blended we've all got horrible banding on our screens... it's very annoying.
[Galaxy S II General] BarryH_GEG:
Someone said the Nexus' had the same problem and it was fixed with a driver. Maybe the 2.3.4. upgrade will address it. Who knows, it may have been Samsung's intention to address it in 2.3.4. all along.
[Galaxy S II General] godutch:
I jst came across the voodoo project for the sgs1, it has afix for a similar problem on the sgs1, which was caused by an excessive sharpness filter maybe the sgs2 suffers from the same problem and we can port the fix from the sgs1 to the sgs2=

http://project-voodoo.org/color
[Galaxy S II General] tuhinz:
The modder goes by the handle of supercurio ( Lagfix, colour & audio mods for SGS). Unfortunately it seems he is not happy at all with the choice of the Yamaha DAC in the S2 over the Wolfson chip in the Galaxy S. Which might make him less inclined to do any mods on this phone! :(

I'm hoping he does!
[Galaxy S II General] jvidia:
I noticed that too. It's soo ugly the battery icon :mad:

Also the USB icon, when you conect the usb cable from a PC to the S2, is very bad.

I am very unpleased with S2 at the moment.

All the hype arround Super Amoled Plus and all I see is:

- yellowish left side (=> darker left side)

- pink aurea when filming/shooting a pic

- branding gradient/reduced color dept (see batery icon , Angry Birds I, Image Gallery thumbnails, etc,etc ...)

- temporary image retention, a.k.a. image burn-in (don't see many people talking about this one)

- and in some cases vertical stripes (permanent burn-in ??)

I don't even need to talk about the other problems (short life battery, weak wifi and heating).

I'm soo f*cked with Samsung at the moment. :mad:
[Galaxy S II General] godutch:
All we need to know is how he did it, I tried looking at the git repository but couldn't figure out how he did it or where the fix is...
[Galaxy S II General] otaku888:
send him a PM asking him?
[Galaxy S II General] Blue1k:
On the samsung focus this was fixed with a simple registry hack that changed the dword value to 24 from 16.

Here's hoping a custom rom can achieve this as well.
[Galaxy S II General] tuhinz:
Im no coder so maybe you could PM him for some pointers and get people interested in fixing the display.

This is an important issue but generates way less interest for some reason.:confused:
[Galaxy S II General] godutch:
Android does not have a registry. In linux I would look in xorg.conf but in android I have no idea...
[Galaxy S II General] peachpuff:
The sgs1 never had any banding issues.