Hey guys,
I have this prank app which has been developed using OpenFL and one of it’s functionality makes half of the screen flicker to fool users. This flickering is done by drawing a black square with graphics.drawRect and changing it’s visibility per frame - just a cheap trick. Now, I know this sounds ridiculous but some users have reported that the flickering remains on their android phones and they claim that the app has broken their phone (even when they reboot the device). At first I was like “haha, good one” and for the next couple of times I wasn’t taking it seriously but I’m still getting such reports from time to time.
How is it possible for that to happen? Are people just trolling me? How could someone be so mean? 
Here’s one review: "The crash game has broke my tablet the bottom half keeps flickering I even restarted tablet but its still there"
And another one: “In the fake crash prank I used it on my brother and now pixels won’t stop flashing out of app, I even u installed the app…”
Any thoughts?
I’d say troll. There’s no way you can damage a screen with a flickering image otherwise how would it display video? Perhaps you should be expecting prank comments on a prank app
I can’t think of any reason why this would occur. When you reboot, you reboot. I could only see it (possibly) happening when installed, and without rebooting, but after you think the application is closed
Thanks guys, it seems it was trolling all along. I just received message from one of the “funny users”. Interesting how they all got the same idea to fool me. What seems impossible at the beginning becomes a doubt after a couple of times. Shame on me.
Thanks for finding time to reply. Cheers!
I’m shocked, but this wasn’t trolling afterall. I got myself a new phone LG L90 and I tested my app with it. The blinking that my app displays affects the screen somehow and it leaves some ghosting effect even when you go back to home screen. I don’t know if this is related to the hardware or the graphics renderer. Look at the photos provided.
Here is what happens when the app displays the blinking, the lower (darker) part is where the black rectangle is displayed. As you can see the whole area is rendered dark blue even though at this frame the black rectangle was invisible. At the edges you may notice that the screen is faded. That’s not a photo effect - that is really visible on the phone. This fade get’s darker the longer the blinking is performed.
Then after I go to home screen this is what I see. There are artifacts left, a white remains of the previous screen. The white ghosting is still blinking and slowly fades away, it leaves a delicate but still noticable blinking on the screen. It disappears completely after turning off the screen for a while.
Can this be related to the type of screen? Damn I’m clueless.
What are your thoughts on this?
Wow, yeah, maybe something about the screen type. I know that old plasma TVs would “burn in” if you left things on-screen too long, perhaps there’s something about certain screen technologies that get a bit sensitive to blinking. I’ve never heard of this before, but when your app is closed, it’s closed
