Usable Smartphones?
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I just checked the specs on the G7 (which is JUST NOW available from Verizon) and it has Oreo. I am starting to wonder if there's just something about Oreo that makes it better for our eyes?
I'm going to go to my local Verizon store later on and check it out, this makes me VERY excited.
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Talking about OLED devices here (the G7 is a traditional LCD), while I haven't seen it in person the LG V30 catches my interest as well. While obviously not PWM free, the dips are low amplitude and the line stays relatively flat.
This is in comparison to the Iphone X below where only 50% brightness is desirable here.
And of course, Samsungs are just straight up trash. Note 8 shown here.
These graphs are from a Russian review site, ixbt.com
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Sunspark It looks like the Russian reviewer's V30 doesn't use PWM for brightness regulation but what we see is a 60 Hz refresh rate flicker almost (*) all AMOLED displays seem to have. There's a good chance such devices are usable when it comes to flicker. Keep in mind incandescent bulbs driven at 50/60 Hz AC have a bigger flicker percentage. If those measurements are accurate, that is (they seem a little noisy).
But Notebookcheck's V30 has strong flicker below 80%:
Picture: https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/LG/V30/PWM.png
Review: https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-V30-Smartphone-Review.246326.0.html
Different electronics in different parts of the world?
(*) However, the Nokia 650's line seems even more flat, assuming the many small spikes are equipment noise:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/Microsoft/Lumia_650/response_pwm.jpg
And here the Wiko WIM:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/Wiko/Wim/PWM_full.png
So it seems totally flicker-free AMOLED devices exist, too. That's the only two I found so far.
Reviews:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Lumia-650-Smartphone-Review.165363.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Wiko-WIM-Smartphone-Review.242720.0.html
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I have found all AMOLED phones on lollipop or older to be 100% comfortable.
These phones were perfect for me: Any OLED Nokia Lumia, Galaxy s4, s5, Oneplus X, LG Flex 1 and 2 (recommend a Flex 2 if you don't mind the low max brightness and sticking to lollipop, it's the newest released absolute comfort phone I have come across and you can still find them new for relatively cheap. First phone to shoot in 4k if I remember correctly too.)
The moment I update to marshmallow or newer on any phone I get eye strain instantly.
Galaxy s6 was unusable, s7 was too, tried an LG V30 and while much better than others it's still not great for me.
Any normal LED backlit phone I've come across I haven't been able to comfortably use. iPhone SE was the most pain I've ever been in from an LED backlit screen and it happened so fast every time.
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Soreeyes Unfortunately, for me it is not true, as I HAVE strong eye strain on Samsung A5 (2015) with Lollipop and even with KitKat. So probably in 2015 there was a new generation of LED backlight introduced. And yes, I DON'T have any problem with Samsung Alpha (2014) both with Lollipop and Kitkat.
OLED panels don't have a backlight by the way the pixels light themselves up.
I haven't tried the A5 but Samsungs newer AMOLED screens are garbage regardless I've never seen worse PWM than on Samsungs newer panels. Even if you don't have issues like ours there's no way using a screen that's essentially a flickery mess at anything other than max brightness is actually comfortable to use (or good for you)
I assume it's because they want the screens to be as BRIGHT as possible which means the moment you start lowering it they have to massively slow the on/off cycle compared to if the screen was a lower brightness from the get go
I've seen more uniformity issues with LGs OLED but I'll take a lack of uniformity (literally the only time I've been able to see the uniformity issue on an LG is on the phone's off but charging screen where it displays mostly grey and some of the grey was a little darker) over the massive PWM from Samsung.
@Sunspark confirmed what I'm saying just a few posts up (re: v30 catching your eye - having played around on one for a while I can only see visible pwm below around 30% brightness anything higher doesn't have the signature low PWM "trail" if you move the phone. the phone still wasn't ultimately comfortable for me but much better than Samsungs recent phones since the s6 and above. Also I found it to be a fantastic phone once they drop in price I am going to get one.)
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Soreeyes Unfortunately I have all possible issues with all modern screens starting from 2015. No matter - IPS (that doesn`t has PWM at all) or OLED. So, I assume that the problem is both LED type and Android version (probably temporal dithering). It is strange that Samsung Alpha also has AMOLED screen but I can use without any problems (both with KitKat and Lollipop). So my hypothesis that starting from 2015 there was something new introduced in LED technology. And yes, last years Samsungs screens drive me crazy after 30 seconds of interaction.
Yesterday I tried another popular Android 8.1 ROM, "AOSP Extended". But my eyes started to burn after a while and my left eye began to hurt. It seems that ROM is no different from recent others, at least on the OnePlus 3.
Amazon was running a Prime Day special of Essentials for $250 US new. I bought one, sight unseen. I am aware it is not a perfect device due to various complaints, but none that I read were about the display. That price though.. I should have it at the beginning of August. Will be interesting to see how it is.
As for the latest Android, this is not a complete disadvantage, one of the nice things about Essential is that they didn't lock it down and do put up lots of images, unlike other companies. So officially, I can try Nougat, Oreo 8.1 and P developer previews without having to do S-OFF or whatever. It will have P, and also supports Lineage, etc.
They've definitely liquidating these things. The 360 camera is $19 on their website now. I can't pass that up either.
I recently used a flicker meter to compare an iPhone 4s which is of the "usable" kind and an iPhone 4 which gives me symptoms of eye strain in just a few seconds.
The good 4s barely touches 1% ripple flicker. It is below 1%. The bad 4 is somewhere between 1% and 3%.
It might be coincidence at this point as I need to test more devices, but so far this is a hint that the safe flicker percentage could be lower than most of us expected. At least lower than 3%. Which means when you are sensitive and you look into a supposedly flicker-free display that in reality still has alternating light intensity from 100% to 97% (or even up to 99%), the flicker might already be too high and could cause symptoms.
It is difficult to see such small changes on an oscilloscope output.
All my "flicker-free" monitors are in between 1% to 7% ripple flicker (so in fact they do flicker). Only one of them is usable, and is somewhere between 1% to 3%, amongst others who are not usable. Further strengthening the theory that the safe flicker percentage is somewhere below 3%. Sadly I could not track this down further yet as the flicker meter's scale won't display other low values than either nothing at all (means below 1%), 2% (means between 1% and 3%) and 4% (between 3% and 5%). My cheap oscilloscope can not show such low amplitude flicker, not to mention the high frequencies. I had not imagined that I would need even more resolution than steps of 2%. All I cared about was being able to detect flicker of high frequencies, hundreds of kilohertz.
I tested my OnePlus 3 with the brightness app "Brightness Manager", with which you can quickly change brightness in steps of 10. Changing back and forth from brightness level 255 to 245 is still consciously visible. This would be a flicker of just 4%. Imagine such a flicker at very high frequencies, say 200 kHz, and you have your average "flicker-free" display that might still hurt your eyes.