Nokia Lumia 930 screen flickering / fluttering / jumping / blinking issue

[Ivaylo Badinov]

I'm not sure we all speak about the same issue. Mine is not jumping, not trembling, it just goes black for a millisecond. It is blinking.

I tracked it to the degree that it is not caused by radio interference, because it happens in flight mode.

I hope they fix it, but knowing they are busy building Win 10, may be it will not happen any time soon.

 

[anon9059916]

I'm not sure we all speak about the same issue. Mine is not jumping, not trembling, it just goes black for a millisecond. It is blinking.

I tracked it to the degree that it is not caused by radio interference, because it happens in flight mode.

I hope they fix it, but knowing they are busy building Win 10, may be it will not happen any time soon.

I have exactly the same problem. After Lumia Denim update, my display goes black for a millisecond from time to time. I've done a hard reset until now, but it didn't fix the problem at all.
The display does this flickering in all apps and also in the settings, but mostly in ie.

It appears in 4G, 3G and all other connections, also if I'm connected only to wlan. Also in flight mode.

 

[Ivaylo Badinov]

Yeah, same here. I tought it might be a defective unit. But probably a Denim issue. May be I will try to go back to Cyan.

 

[Marco Roccagli]

Yeah, same here. I tought it might be a defective unit. But probably a Denim issue. May be I will try to go back to Cyan.

Same issue here but i can confirm that is a Denim issue. I've downgraded to Cyan and no more blinking issues (used for almost 2 weeks). After reupdating to Denim the screen started to blink after 5 mins of normal use...

 

[X54TH]

I'm only a couple of weeks into the 930 that has a Denim update. I did notice a flicker here and there when reading through certain articles only within certain Apps and on occasion. Its hard to pin point any type of consistency causing the issue. Not sure if its App related, interference, heat, auto brightness, etc. In my case, I've only seen this on occasion and when I've been on the phone for quite sometime.

 

[Marco Roccagli]

I don't know if it is a coincidence or not, but after enabling the "kids corner" i haven't blinking issues until now. For those that have the flashing screen, can you try this? Let me know the results!

 

[Florin_Anghel]

I don't know if it is a coincidence or not, but after enabling the "kids corner" i haven't blinking issues until now. For those that have the flashing screen, can you try this? Let me know the results!

I saw it once or twice, but more rarely with kids corner. I have my eye on the phone for the last 4 days, it seems this is a small fix. However it is something they should be fixing in fw.

 

[anon9059916]

I don't know if it is a coincidence or not, but after enabling the "kids corner" i haven't blinking issues until now. For those that have the flashing screen, can you try this? Let me know the results!

I have had kids corner enabled all the time, before the denim update and after it. The flashing screen appears every day and I have not found anything that makes it less often.

 

[Marco Roccagli]

Nevermind started flashing again... But less than other times

 

[Ivaylo Badinov]

I sent the phone for repair, hope they fix it. Of course if they even manage to reproduce it, because on the description of the problem the guy in the service just wrote "sometimes display blinks".

However before sending it I tested with flight mode, and turned off auto brightness, enhanced touch, other ease of access options. None of these fixed the problem. I'm pretty sure it is not caused by any 2G, 3G, 4G, WiFi or other radio interference and improper shielding. It is something else for sure.

If they cannot fix it probably should wait for a MS update.

 

[anon9059916]

I sent the phone for repair, hope they fix it. Of course if they even manage to reproduce it, because on the description of the problem the guy in the service just wrote "sometimes display blinks".

However before sending it I tested with flight mode, and turned off auto brightness, enhanced touch, other ease of access options. None of these fixed the problem. I'm pretty sure it is not caused by any 2G, 3G, 4G, WiFi or other radio interference and improper shielding. It is something else for sure.

If they cannot fix it probably should wait for a MS update.

Please report to us what happened afterwards!

 

[Kevin Garcia3]

this exact same thing happened to me as well. And just like you ive come to the conclusion that its a HW problem where it seems to have a bug in the power circuit of the display. hopefully they can release a software fix, IF THEY LISTEN TO US.

 

[Mahmoud Abdelfatah Shalaby]

same problem here.
Denim.

 

[JaniM]

I have the same problem. Seems like pure software glitch. When scrolling fast there seems to be some flickering like the picture is not updating correctly and some bits of earlier frames show up just a fraction of a second.

 

[tommikovski]

It's good to read all this, since i thought my phone screen is broken again. Hope that the flickering really is on the software side and an update fixes everything more sooner than later

 

[JaniM]

It's good to read all this, since i thought my phone screen is broken again. Hope that the flickering really is on the software side and an update fixes everything more sooner than later

It started doing that after some updates, so it should be fixed in some update hopefully soon.

 

[PiggyMiddle]

I suspect the flickering is there to stay. The AMOLED screen has a zillion LEDs to turn on/off for the three primary colors that are used for each pixel, Red, Green and Blue.

IF the CPU is busy doing other stuff, then the processor time is shared between all of the different things. It may be weighted in favor of the screen, but not totally, so the flicker coming and going is normal. That some are experiencing worse flicker after Denim suggests that time share priority to each CPU cycle has been changed.

To test this theory you could turn off all background tasks that you can. Then disconnect wifi and turn off radio (if possible) and then let it sit for a few minutes to let the CPU load (if any) settle down. Then, test for scrolling jitter and flicker where the CPU has little other stuff to share it's time with.

Just look at the PPI (440) of the AMOLED versus the LED (around 290-330) screens and understand the work load that has been thrust upon the AMOLED. Little wonder that the next phones from msoft are going to have 800MHz processors, maybe even 64-Bit, the 200 and 400 are not cutting it with AMOLD. Also note that 64-Bit will not make much difference to the screen performance though, but the 800MHz will.

 

[anon9059916]

I suspect the flickering is there to stay. The AMOLED screen has a zillion LEDs to turn on/off for the three primary colors that are used for each pixel, Red, Green and Blue.

IF the CPU is busy doing other stuff, then the processor time is shared between all of the different things. It may be weighted in favor of the screen, but not totally, so the flicker coming and going is normal. That some are experiencing worse flicker after Denim suggests that time share priority to each CPU cycle has been changed.

To test this theory you could turn off all background tasks that you can. Then disconnect wifi and turn off radio (if possible) and then let it sit for a few minutes to let the CPU load (if any) settle down. Then, test for scrolling jitter and flicker where the CPU has little other stuff to share it's time with.

Just look at the PPI (440) of the AMOLED versus the LED (around 290-330) screens and understand the work load that has been thrust upon the AMOLED. Little wonder that the next phones from msoft are going to have 800MHz processors, maybe even 64-Bit, the 200 and 400 are not cutting it with AMOLD. Also note that 64-Bit will not make much difference to the screen performance though, but the 800MHz will.

This is not a very clever consideration. I'm sorry if you are offended by me, but it worked well before the Lumia 930 got updated to Lumia Denim. And this issue occures on my Lumia 930 mostly while browsing (no other programs opened at this time). The phone is not hot or warm at this time, so the processor does not have too much work to do.

One time the issue occured (I was browsing), I turned on the flight mode, but it does still this flickering (the phone was totally cool). Other Phones have also AMOLED Screens, even with higher resolutions, and they don't have this flickering (and these phones run on Android, which needs more cpu power to run the system then WP). I also have no jittering, the flickering is my only issue.

@Ivaylo Badinov what happened to your L930?

 

[tigrucat]

Unfortunately I had to return my second 930 due to this issue. It seems to be exacerbated by the Lumia Demin update, though I noticed that the screen did flutter slightly on Cyan - not enough to affect usability, however after updating to Denim the flickering got worse and worse until it was actually worse than on phone no 1 - the flickering was based on horizontal lines all over the screen. The flickering is so bad that it would surely be a danger to anyone with epilepsy. Microsoft need to be alerted to this as it could get them in trouble.

The phone also got warmer than the previous phone, the screen kept going black (not anything to do with sleep) and crashing - all I could do was restart the phone - I didn't have this issue with the previous phone.

I also discovered that despite taking photos of the same objects / views (did not take out of the house as still within returns period) the photos were coming out very dark and the camera could not take decent photos even in good light - this was on auto setting. There was nothing wrong with the camera on the first phone - I compared similar photos taken in similar light on One Drive - I cannot remember whether I took the photos whilst on Cyan or after Denim on the previous phone, but I feared that the camera sensor was faulty so that was another reason to send it back.

The headphones would only come out of one ear when inserted into the phone, however if I restarted the phone I got stereo. I also had this issue on the previous 930.

I wanted to run try out the phone a bit more this weekend and send it back on Monday but this time when I printed off the returns label Amazon requested an immediate return instead of allowing me another 30 days to return it as the previous time so it had to go back on Wednesday. I could not get a replacement this time either as Amazon had suspended the phone from sale - it's now back on sale but I have decided to leave trying out a replacement until after Easter one year after the phone was announced in the hope of getting later stock. I think after this month this phone will go out of production as Microsoft have announced that they are closing the Nokia factories in China at the end of the month - hardly a surprise given the quality issues. I doubt production of this phone will get transferred to Vietnam as it wouldn't be cost effective and it has lost nearly half it's original value.

 

[Kweku Dapatem]

nokia, we need a solution to the problem of screen flickering , fluttering, jumping, blinking issue....( nokia lumia 930)