MagnuM at first I only used the EINK side for about six months. Then I got my eyes stronger and I mostly only use the OLED side unless I'm outside the E-Ink side is way better outside. E-ink no issues ever except I find the contrast isn't the greatest unless your outside for the E-INK side. They probably fixed the contrast on yotaphone 3.
Usable Smartphones?
jasonpicard Does OLED side cause you issues? Is the Eink side "usable" for everyday matters - calling, sms, email reading, writing, messenger/viber/whatsapp?
Yotaphone 3 use Samsung screen for OLED part and Android 7, so I believe it will be no good for us, but still we can use only the E-ink side
randomboolean Have you tried Paranoid Android ROM?
ryans I have, on the Oneplus X. But the screen on it is no good for me so there is no difference in eye strain strength. It is bad on original, on paranoid, on lineageos, android 5/6/7. Also this phone has terrible PWM so I set birghtness to 100 and dim with cf.lumen or twilight (rooted phone). Nothing helps. I think even Oneplus One on android 5 was so much better compared to X, even though the X has the same specs, processor, graphic card, amoled screen etc as my perfect Lumia 930.
I just exchanged X with my sister to hers Samsung galaxy s4. The screen is somehwat usable, much better than xperia xz, oneplus x, but not perfect. I will try installing custom rom in it too, but 'm afraid there is no paranoid for s4. It does also have PWM and I now think that this phone testing damaged my eyes so I became sensitive to PWM too.
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randomboolean Better don't dim with brightness apps that change colors like you mentioned. I can only speak for myself, but I get heavy eye strain by using them. Feels just like Windows 10 eye strain or the eye strain of ROMs that have color profiles. What I recommend you to try out is to use the app "Brightness Manager" by Igor Tseglevskiy from the Play Store and set the brightness to 80. That doesn't mean 80% but the value 80 out of 255 possible Android brightness values (which is roughly 31%). This value should be the lowest brightness setting for the One plus X which still doesn't use PWM, if I remember correctly.
Edit: verified it's 80
randomboolean OLED side on yotaphone 2 is great. Eink side is totally usable for most things.
jasonpicard Why does it have an eInk side and not just a normal phone backing? In the promotional material, box, etc, what "features" do they pitch with that addition?
MagnuM e ink does everything the OLED side can. You get no flicker and no back light. Just don't expect to play games on it or watch YouTube videos as it stutters because e ink is slow.
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jasonpicard An e-ink phone now? Wow! What is the manufacturer? I do not get if GearBest is just the distributor. Since from the other thread you seem to be super-sensitive to flickering and above you say you can use the OLED side of the phone as well, how do you explain that? I thought OLED dimming frequency can't be higher than 240 Hz, which is causing problems to IPhone X and Samsung Note 8 users.
On the e-ink side can you efficiently use apps like Outlook? And what about Google Maps? Thanks
There is also this option if you are not into the highest resolutions...
https://www.techradar.com/news/the-beloved-nokia-3310-is-back-with-4g-lte-and-android
I was exploring the 3G version when I realized the 4G is coming out (I think as of now the model is distributed only in China).
AGI I don't know how I can use the OLED. The only two I have ever been able to use is yotaphone 2 and Samsung S2. They don't use pwm and they have to be less harsh when it comes to blue light because I don't need orange glasses to look at them. You can do everything in the E-Ink side and I imagine the Yotaphone 3 has a better E-ink side because I don't find the contrast the greatest on this phone. You can even watch YouTube videos but the video is choppy. For people who have no options or a bad day eink at least won't ruin you anymore.
I use Xiaomi Note 3 without any strain.
jasonpicardIs it proven that the Yotaphone 2 does not use PWM or you say so because you can tolerate it? I could not find the phone in the list of the PWM-tested devices at
https://www.notebookcheck.net/PWM-Ranking-Notebooks-Smartphones-and-Tablets-with-PWM.163979.0.html
Is there another site doing that?
I ask also for the following reason. I see the display resolution is 1920 x 1080 FHD.
As I had posted in the other thread, for some reasons which I do not understand, - and I am not ashamed to say I am just an user without hardware knowledge so I may say crap - on monitors and laptops I benefited from reducing the display resolution.
The OLED phone that drove me crazy weeks ago mounts a 5.7inch WQHD 1440×2560 Super AMOLED.
Quoting from KM
KM I don't see how PWM would interact with it, but maybe your problem is temporal dithering or the other still unknown cause that does stuff with the display output (Firefox Quantum, Windows 10 versions after build 1511, Android overlay functions/color profiles...).
When you lower the resolution, the monitor might get a lower resolution input from the graphics card (which is not guaranteed these days), and so he scales the picture on its own, slightly masking any temporal dithering or whatever is happening to the pixel.
Could it be what bothers us is not flickering but else whose effect diminishes with display resolution?
I am throwing ideas as I am desperate :-)
Btw, do you have any feedback on Yotaphone 3?
The little I found does not sound great
https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/18/yotaphone-3-yota3-specs-snapdragon-625/
Thanks
AGI https://forum.xda-developers.com/s7-edge/development/amoled-pwm-s7-edge-t3517739/page3 the Yotaphone 2 was tested on this site. It was posted somewhere on this forum. It doesn't flicker unless you drop it below 30%. I don't know anything about the Yotaphone 3 and at the moment I am not going to replace this phone I have till it dies.
jasonpicard Thanks. Unfortunately Yotaphone 2 was on sale for ~ 100 bucks until shortly ago and I missed it! It is now unavailable for good having been discontinued and being the reservoir over. There are only some ridiculous offers, some over 2000 USD. I contacted Yotaphone customer support to know how to purchase version 3 in Japan where I currently am but did not receive any attention.
Any other e-ink smartphone that you guys know of?
ONYX seems to not be manufacturing e-ink phones anymore...
Does someone have info about Nomu products? According to
https://www.notebookcheck.net/PWM-Ranking-Notebooks-Smartphones-and-Tablets-with-PWM.163979.0.html
their M6 has a PWM frequency of half a GHz...
Thanks
Has anyone tried the essential phone yet? Amazon is running a special on them.
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ryans Very interesting...
so my first phone, I never had issues with, has Android 6.0.1 (I just checked in "About device" in the settings).
My second phone, which I bought and re-sold a month ago because I could not stand the sight, has Android 6.0 Marshmallow according to the manufacturer's webpage. However, it also says "7.0 Android Update coming soon", so it could be I had updated the OS to 7.0 after turning the phone on?
My third phone, which is easier on my eyes than the second but still bothers me, was bought 2 weeks ago and has Android 6.0 according to the settings. Now, is 6.0 prior to 6.0.1? I checked and there are no updates. How come the OS of the old phone is also up-to-date but is 6.0.1? Maybe the new phone settings are not displaying the details?
Does the version of Android tell about how "old" the model is, or is it possible that smaller players throw out phones with low versions of the OS?
What is the difference between Android 6.0 and Marshmallow?
With regard to my last purchase, I find the phone very bright. Has anyone passed from being bothered to feeling great by simply placing a tempered glass protector on the screen? I am considering whether wasting more money on the phone or re-selling it before it loses value further.
Also, what are the current e-ink options? I wanted to buy Yotaphone 2 based on the positive feedback on this website but the best deal is 10 pieces at $100 each from China which does not sound viable. Any test on Hisense A2 Pro? Any hope on The Light Phone? It looks quite a basic phone though (could it handle Google Maps for instance?) and it is still an year away...
Thanks for any input!
It's usually the case that older phones have older versions of Android, but some manufacturers are much better at releasing new Android updates than others, so it's not a completely reliable indicator.