Usable Smartphones?
- Edited
Maxx in my mind it's never been a question of the panel being used. It's close to irrelevant, apart from maybe frame rate control (dithering) and pixel grid moire effects. The actual culprit will be the stability of the current fed into the backlight/oled in 90% of the cases. That includes visible/measurable PWM and the visually often unnoticeable current/voltage fluctuations.
To put it bluntly, I find that cheaper phones have more stable power output and thus lower propensity to cause headache and/or eyestrain. That's likely because the power supply components are larger, unlike the razor thin flagship models where they've squeezed the life out of the components trying to cram it all in.
This Xiaomi has DC dimming, which I enable first thing. And the remaining power/light output fluctuations do not cause me any issues. Either because they practically don't exist, or because the frequency is sufficiently high to not cause discomfort. There will always be output ripple in the buck converters; question is whether the frequency is at a triggering rate and the magnitude of the ripple. Also the power draw design factors into play. The cpu power draw can cause ripple as all components pull power from just one source (the battery), which might not be compensated sufficiently by the buck converter's feedback circuitry, or possibly even overcompensated and overshooting the voltage delivered to the backiight/oled.
I've made countless desktop monitors headache free by replacing the power feeding for the backlight with ripple free dc power. Not in one of them have I had an issue since, so at least in my case it's always the power input. Not glare, bad coatings, pixel grids, FRC, radiation, magnet fields, US politics, retina, bad eyesight or any of the other ideas thrown around. Just simply: if it flickers at a high rate (or any rate), it causes me nausea and/or headache in the frontal lobe. And my case is pretty bad since in practice I can't use any device without severe issues.
The new OnePlus device, OnePlus Nord, has 367 Hz PWM when below 100% brigthness. It's really sad, shows they don't care about their own "DC dimming" ambitions anymore. Major step backwards.
(Found in https://www.notebookcheck.net/OnePlus-Nord-Smartphone-Review-Comeback-of-the-Value-Champion.483131.0.html)
reaganry I have switched the Pixel with my wife's Samsung A70 because i wanted the dual sim option. I got used to the Pixel from the start after i updated to Android 10. It is ok for me.
But Samsung A70 with Android 9 is even better. I use it all day long with no issues. It took some to get used to it at first but now it is absolutely fine.
I jailbroke my iPad 4 now and with an app called "coolbooter" I could install iOS 10 in parallel to iOS 7 (dual boot) to see if it's usable. Seems similar to iOS 7. But now that I have found much better displays I truly notice how bad the iPad's screen is for me. It is "usable" but only at super low brightness or the headache kicks in quickly.
I think all 32-bit iDevices, including iPhones, can be jailbroken and downgraded at least in the form of a dual boot. Might need a lot of time to inform oneself, but maybe one of you has old 32-bit iDevices and wants to experiment.
Quad43 Unfortunately it doesn't work for me, even with DC dimming turned on. It gives me all the symptoms I usually have with such devices like headache, strain, feeling warm, brain fog, eyes fatigue.
Right after having Xiaomi tested I bought Realme 6 Pro which "only" gives me a burning sensation, so I'm going to give it a try and use it for several weeks in order to get used to it.
Peter Yes, I have made up my mind I'm not going to bother with 10 at all. In part due to my puzzlement at the carriers here still offering only the February patch when in other parts of the world they've already rolled out the September patch. 10 was a buggy initial release and while it's supposed to be fine now, I'd rather not bother when 9's not draining the battery and is stable. The A70's actually a really good phone, despite being a level below flagship. Would have been one in previous years. I'm on the December patch. I will consider 11 when they roll that out, probably next year.
I have a question to those who use iPhone 7+ or 8+. Did you have any symptoms at the beginning? I had a chance to test iPhone 8+ and it's indeed easy on my eyes, but I experienced some kind of strain on the back of head that disappeared in the very same moment I stopped looking at the screen.