Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max has something in common with the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and it's not good

Over the last year, the color green seems to be in for malfunctioning smartphones. Last year, the Pixel 4 XL had a green tint with the brightness set at 40% or lower. An update brought the same color hue to the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, and some OnePlus 8 Pro models suffered from the same fate out of the box. Now we know that some Android users accuse Apple of copying everything so it might not be a surprise to them to hear that some iPhone 11 users are having the same problem.

On Reddit, an iPhone 11 Pro Max owner has been seeing what he calls "a uniformly green tint" after unlocking the device. His mom owns the same model and has also been experiencing the same issue. Those complaining about seeing green say that it started after the update to iOS 13.4 and still appears with the recent 13.5.1 security update and the iOS 13.5.5 beta installed.

Some theorize that the problem is related to the models' AMOLED displays since users of the iPhone 11 and its LCD display have been spared from seeing the green tint. Dark theme is enabled on several of the affected phones with True Tone and Night Shift toggled on or off. The former adjusts the display depending on the ambient light in order to keep colors consistent. The latter changes the colors on your iPhone display toward the warmer end of the color spectrum to reduce eye strain and to help you get to sleep at night. This can be turned on daily by schedule (and set to turn off automatically each morning) or done manually. Most of the complaints say that the offending tint surfaces when the brightness is set to very low levels.

One iPhone 11 Pro user first noticed the problem in February when Apple dropped the iOS 13.4 developer beta. He even went to the trouble of performing a factory reset which didn't remove the tint at all. The green appears for as long as five seconds before disappearing; once the green fades, the screen appears normal. Besides wiping the phone, others tried turning off Face ID (go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode and disabling Unlock iPhone) and toggling off Tap to Wake (found in the Accessibility menu under "Touch") and only noticed a slight improvement.

This is not the first time that iPhone users complained about a tint. You might recall that back in 2010 (10 freakin' years ago!), the iPhone 4 shipped with a yellow tint on the display. This issue was blamed on an adhesive used in the process of manufacturing the handset. Apple claimed that it was shipping units so fast that the adhesive on the models with the yellow tinted screens had not yet dried. When it did evaporate, the yellow disappeared. In 2016, iPhone 7 users complained about the same problem but were able to go into the settings and reduce the amount of yellow on the display.

As for the current problem, Apple has yet to comment on it. The hope is that an upcoming software update is released to clear up this problem. With iOS 13.5 recently disseminated and iOS 13.5.5 being beta tested, there still could be room in the middle to squeeze out an update designed to remove the green tint.

While we wouldn't necessarily classify this as a major disaster, the green tint has been spotted on more than just a few iPhones. Having said that, we do have to note that we have yet to see the green tint appear on our iPhone 11 Pro Max.