An unknown number of iPhone 15 Pro Max owners are finding the image of home screen apps being burnt-in to the display, but the issue doesn't appear to be any worse than any other year.
My understanding is that a lot of “burn in” with OLED screens isn’t permanent. The quote accurately calls it “image retention” because the image is temporarily retained but the screen will go back to normal. It also points out that this type of thing happens under niche circumstances. Almost like people are trying to make this happen.
It's the other way around. OLED suffer from image retention due to the individual pixels being worn out. The only way to fix this is to wear out the rest of the panel to match (this is how the TVs keep things looking good).
Nope you’re thinking of actual burn in. With image retention the individual pixels are not permanently worn out. There are other factors in the panel cause the pixels to temporarily be unable to display their full color range. Often times if you turn the panel off for a few minutes and back on the image retention will be gone despite no calibration being done. If your panel experienced significant wear on the individual pixels after a few hours of being on like that then it would look terrible after a few years. The actual permanent pixel degradation is much more subtle.
Edit:
Here’s a source that describes this behavior for those of you who don’t believe me. I’m almost certain that I’m right here but would love to see some evidence otherwise.
Yes, it is but this isn’t it. I guarantee these displays are not permanently damaged so soon after launch. It usually takes thousands of hours of displaying the same image with max brightness to actually burn in a modern OLED panel.
Do you have any proof? Apple claims they’ve fixed these issues in iOS 17.1 which would again suggest that this is just soft image retention that that they weren’t accounting for well enough.