Burn-in Mitigation Support Found in iOS 11 for 'iPhone X'
The folks over at 9to5Mac got their hands on the Gold Master (GM) release of iOS 11 over the weekend, and have been poring over it. Among the many discoveries largely spoiling the surprise and anticipation of the event includes an indication that the upcoming “iPhone X” will support burn-in mitigation.
What Is Burn-in Mitigation and How Can You Stop It?
To understand burn-in mitigation, you need to know what burn-in itself is. This effect is when a “ghost” image, faint but still noticeable, remains on a display for quite some time, if not forever, after a period of static images or text on a screen or portion of it. This used to be a serious problem with vintage game consoles and older televisions, but hasn’t been as noticeable with modern display technology.
LCD panels can experience burn-in, but OLED technology currently in production are more especially prone to experiencing burn-in. Burn-in mitigation attempts to prevent that from happening in a variety of ways.
Since you don't want burn-in on your iPhone X, Apple is apparently coding iOS 11 to minimize the effect
Credit: 9to5MacIt isn’t clear exactly how iOS 11 will prevent burn-in, but evidence found by 9to5Mac demonstrates that it will in some form. We do have some other examples to speculate from. Some of Samsung’s devices use pixel-shifting techniques, where the position of content is changed oh-so-subtly on the screen. That limits the amount of time a particular pixel is constantly displaying the same color, and prevents burn-in.
The interface in iOS doesn’t have many places where the screen remains constant for extended periods of time, thanks to the heavy usage of translucency in the design. However, the status bar’s relatively-static white text and iconography could pose burn-in problems. The reference to burn-in mitigation within the iOS 11 code shows that Apple is accommodating that problem, and hoping to prevent it from becoming a serious concern.
