It’s only a few days until the Samsung Galaxy S22 launches, but unfortunately the Galaxy S22 Ultra may be shipping with a dodgy display.
Complaints on Reddit sourced by 9to5Google show users who got their Galaxy S22 Ultras early are experiencing flashing bands of what looks like TV static across the width of the display when watching video or playing games.
Users who have encountered this issue have all had their S22 Ultra displays to 1440p (QHD) resolution with Samsung’s natural color profile. Changing either of these seems to bypass the problem, although if you prefer natural to vivid color, or want to use the full capability of the S22 Ultra’s display resolution, it’s disappointing that it’s seemingly necessary to alter these just to use the phone properly.
The display problem also seems to be affecting Galaxy S22 Ultra phones with the Exynos 2200 chip, not the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 version that American and Chinese buyers get. This is causing concern that the issue is therefore hardware-based, since a software problem would theoretically affect both versions of the phone, although without further research it’s hard to confirm that.
Hopefully, a software update can just fix this problem but if it needs to, Samsung might need to offer free repairs or even replacements for users affected by the screen band problem.
Replacements might be tricky to find though. We’ve already heard how short Samsung’s supply of S22 Ultras is, with a two-month wait already on the cards for anyone without a pre-order already.
In our review of the Galaxy S22 Ultra, we didn’t experience this problem at all, although we were using the Snapdragon version of the phone that doesn’t seem to be universally unaffected. Do keep the reports of the Reddit users above in mind if you’re looking to buy an S22 Ultra, but also know that the phone is one of the best Android phones, and one of the best phones outright, that you can buy right now.