Lines or a green line on your screen: cause and repair

Take a screenshot and open it on another device, for example by sending it to yourself. This test reliably separates software from hardware.

If the line also shows up on the screenshot, it is created before the image reaches the display. Then it's the system or the graphics, and an update or a restart can help.

If the line is missing from the screenshot, the image itself is fine and the display is showing it wrongly. That's a hardware fault in the display or its connector. Software won't help any more.

On OLED displays, which means all iPhones from the X onwards except the XR, 11 and the SE models, a single green or pink line sometimes appears without the device ever having been dropped. It often coincides with an update. On the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple fixed flickering lines at start-up with an update.

If the line stays after a restart and after the latest update, the display itself is affected. If the device has never been dropped, never been wet and never been opened, please call Apple first. Faults like this are replaced under warranty, and there are reports that Apple has also helped as a goodwill gesture afterwards.

We tell you this even though we replace displays ourselves, because the order matters: once a device has been opened by an independent repair shop, that route with Apple is usually closed. If Apple says no, we're still here afterwards.

After an impact, things look different. Colourful stripes, a flickering area or black spots that look like spilled ink come from a broken display under the glass. The glass itself can be completely intact.

The black spots are leaking areas in the light-emitting layer. They almost always get bigger over time, sometimes within days, until the screen is completely black. If you still need to back up data, do it while you can still see something.

The only fix here is a new display. Because the glass, touch layer and screen form one unit on current devices, we replace them all together.

If the stripes appear when you press a certain spot or bend the device slightly, the display connector is often no longer seated firmly or the cable is cracked. This happens after drops and sometimes after an earlier repair that wasn't done carefully.

A loose connector is the cheapest version of this fault, because the display itself is intact. We can only see whether that's the case once the device is open. We'll tell you then, before we order a part.

Galaxy devices with an AMOLED display also get green or pink lines without a drop. The screenshot test works the same way there.

On many Galaxy models, the display is permanently attached to the frame and is replaced together with it. Why that is and what it means for you is explained in the article on the Samsung display with frame.