Video playback issue on OS4

Bur_ger · 2025-12-08T21:23:07+00:00

Nach dem Update ist mir ein Problem mit dunklen Videos aufgefallen. Egal wo ich ein Video abspiele – YouTube, Instagram, eine beliebige Website oder in der Galerie – ich bekomme Farbstreifen, alles wird pixelig und blockig und die Farben wirken verwaschen, besonders in dunklen Farbtönen nahe Schwarz. Es ist seltsam, dass ich kaum Beiträge zu diesem Thema sehe, daher bin ich mir nicht sicher, ob es nur mein Problem ist oder ein Problem mit dieser Betriebssystemversion im Allgemeinen. Ich habe dies bereits an den Support gesendet, habe aber noch keine Lösung von dort erhalten. Hier ist ein Vergleich mit meinem alten Nothing auf 3.5. Haben Sie dieses Problem auch? Probieren Sie dieses Video zum Test aus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyD6WaDifr8 [upl-image-preview uuid=d0555c70-353d-458f-98f7-2be21079dd5e url=https://cdn.nothing.community/2025-12-08/1765228745-551139-comparison.jpg alt={TEXT?}] [upl-image-preview uuid=4c6e384d-f62f-4b69-8764-b52001a2595d url=https://cdn.nothing.community/2025-12-08/1765228745-932406-comparison3.jpg alt={TEXT?}] [upl-image-preview uuid=794e6f9b-8809-4766-bd54-1b77c293cba5 url=https://cdn.nothing.community/2025-12-08/1765228746-281132-comparison4.jpg alt={TEXT?}]

Bur_ger

After the update, I noticed an issue with dark videos. No matter where I play a video - YouTube, Instagram, any website, or in the gallery - I get color banding, everything gets pixelated and blocky, and the colors look washed out, especially in dark shades close to black.

It’s strange that I barely see any posts about this anywhere, so I’m not sure whether it’s just my problem or an issue with this OS version in general.

I’ve already sent this to support, but still don’t have a solution from them yet.

Here’s a comparison with my old Nothing on 3.5. Do you have this issue as well? Try this video for the test:

Til21 🇩🇪

Bur_ger I am facing the same issues and have you noticed that the display calibration at 60Hz differs significantly from the calibration at 120Hz, especially in darker lighting conditions? At 60Hz, the display seems slightly brighter/more orange/warmer. At 120 Hz, the colours are richer. I think that could be a related software bug that needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

Anonymous1123

Bur_ger It’s strange that I barely see any posts about this anywhere

It’s been posted three times but OP weren’t able to explain it properly so it didn’t get enough attention

I have streaming HDR disabled on my phone so let me try and see if it fixes the issue on that video

Selecting 2160p (with HDR off) looks a lot better than 1080p. But screenshots appears to have no difference?

Truly_Lokesh

Bur_ger https://nothing.community/d/48711-phone-3-display-issues i have posted this issue, the support team in India is not good, better other country people can report it

Bur_ger

Til21 🇩🇪 I’ve already gone through all the display settings that could affect this, and nothing helped

Til21 🇩🇪

Bur_ger me too, I have already reported it as a bug. I think these kind of problems make the whole phone feel much cheaper 🙁

Stereobasic

Just tried with phone 3, os 3.5 and the YouTube video is good. Will try if someday i update to 4.

FabioR 🇩🇪

Looks like an HDR related issue

Bur_ger

Anonymous1123 If you mean turning off the HDR toggle in the display settings, that didn’t help.

But overall, that does make sense. The videos I tested from youtube titled ‘blak oled test’ were all HDR, and so is most content from instagram reels and phone camera videos. So the issue could really be related to incorrect HDR decoding in the new OS version.

I tried a non-HDR video, and the banding is indeed much less, though it still shows up in the darkest areas:

Anonymous1123

Bur_ger If you mean turning off the HDR toggle in the display settings, that didn’t help.

That option increases the brightness but HDR is still enabled. I turned it off completely using adb

If I enable “show HDR/SDR ratio” in dev options it stays at 1.00

I still get the blockiness on 1080p youtube video while watching it. But if I take a screenshot and view it in gallery it’s fine?

Bur_ger

Anonymous1123 That seems like a pretty complicated operation just for testing. As for the screenshots: on the same phone, the screenshot shows banding and pixelation, but when I open that same screenshot on another phone, it looks normal

Anonymous1123

Bur_ger That seems like a pretty complicated operation just for testing

It’s how I normally use my phone because HDR on Apple TV looks unusably dim

I downloaded the video in 2160p HDR and 1080p HDR (using yt-dlp) and watched it in VLC. It looks much better than the youtube app and the banding is less visible. And again, screenshots are fine

But it has the exact issue I turned HDR off for: the greys are completely black. At the start of the video there are some trees that appear slightly green on SDR, but completely black with no detail on HDR.

So maybe the lack of detail and black crush is giving the impression to me that it looks “normal”

Bur_ger

Truly_Lokesh Already reported it, waiting for their solution. Is your phone on OS 4 too?

georgios1

I think that I have reproduced one of the issues described here. The phone above is the Xiaomi 15 running HyperOS 3.0.4.0, and the one below is the Nothing Phone 3 running OS 4.0-25117-1909-EEA. It looks better on the Xiaomi. I used 2160p HDR video quality and full-screen brightness on both devices.

Bur_ger

So, there’s no response from support so far, and no OS update. Anyone managed to fix this?