Usable Smartphones?

Seagull

I think the fuzziness of the way e-ink handles animations gets me in the same dithering does.

Peter

Gurm I mainly watched photos and videos and checked the internet on a friend's P30 pro. Not more than a couple of hours. I am skeptical though. My wife recently purchased Samsung A70 and she asked me to setup it up for her. For a few hours i felt bliss! Not a single symptom, no headache, no eye strain. I thought this is it. However, in the evening i had one of the worst eye strains ever. It seems for me OLED displays have this characteristic, in the beginning everything is fine.
So for the P30 i would say it is one more candidate for testing.

Sunspark

Peter I'm still using my A70 plenty including as I type this, but I'd be curious to know if the change you observed concided with any software patches. I was on May then October and the rendering did change slightly which I think was subtly better before. November patch can't be rolled back from which isn't a big deal since I wanted Android 10 to play with in a few months.

Oh as a side note, I hope you did the setup with a sim card. Samsungs erase themselves the first time a sim card is inserted into a new device.

The Huawei thing is interesting. It uses a Kirin CPU with a Mali GPU. A70 devices use a snapdragon-adreno combo. I did see a P30Pro at a kiosk and I didn't touch it more than a few seconds since I didn't care for it, but I'll look at it again next time. Huawei is politically problematic anyway because of the company's connections to an authoritarian state.

KM

Peter maybe you left automatic brightness on and so in the evening the display's PWM got worse because it dimmed the screen more than during day lighting conditions?

Peter

Sunspark The A70 is updated with the latest patch. I updated the phone when i set it up with my wife's sim card because she does pretty much everything in her smartphone like banking. So i cant say if there was a difference.

Did you install the Oled Saver in A7? While in Pixel i can actually see a difference (it helps A LOT), in A7 I did not notice any change. What is your setup in A7?

Peter

KM No i had it at 100% with Oled Saver active.

Sunspark

Peter Good read https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2019/11/using-dc-dimming-to-stop-pwm-flickering-in-iphone-11-pro-and-pro-max-google-pixel-4-and-4-xl/

Sunspark

Peter I'm playing with oled saver again. It does seem to work interestingly. Surprised functionality like this is not part of stock software. That said, in the settings where it says "brightness correction" where did you place the marker? It seems to affect how much % of black it might try to apply.

Sunspark

I did try oled saver because I was curious how it works. It appears to be somewhat like the "reduce white point" feature iOS has which is a black overlay. Tho in this case it is a software overlay and not a hardware overlay or an overlay that can work with the kernel like cf.lumen on a device that has root. It wasn't bad, just slightly different. One reason I had to not use it was that adaptive brightness has the ability to go brighter than when it's off which helps outdoors etc.

The app hasn't been updated in some time and I'm not sure why it needs permission to work with the internet.

degen

Peter Only got it the other day. Holiday delays in shipping. There was definitely PWM strain I noticed immediately which the Flicker Reduction option built-in took care of, but there could still be Android OS related strain. Panel itself is easy to focus on which I attribute to it not being IPS (I can't think of a single IPS panel I find comfortable at this point). Need some time to evaluate for low level OS eye-strain, which I am all but certain will emerge over time. Have not gotten EMUI 10 update yet here in Canada.

degen

An update. P30 has "regular" Android eyestrain from extended use. Maybe Android 10 will change that (supposed to come to Canada in January or February), but I doubt it I have Galaxy M20, OnePlus 3 (switch between PA 7 and Pie to compare), and P30 on Pie to compare between. Only OnePlus 3 on PA doesn't have OS strain. Galaxy M20 was the worst for me as it had panel and OS strain. P30 can go very dim with no PWM. I am planning to keep it.

OS level strain is just a fact of life now it seems.

Sunspark

degen It depends. I just got the December security patch on my A70 and it seems to have restored some of the text sharpness I had on the May patch. Also seems to be doing better at lower brightness levels too. Not currently using oled saver because I felt it was making the text slightly unsharp due to the extra software overlay.

I took a quick look at the P30 Pro but only had seconds because the store was closing. Screen seems to have a bit of a screen door pixellated effect which could be due to running at a lower resolution than native. Who knows. Or perhaps being in demo mode every day. Worth another look for me but I can tell you now that I've never really cared for curved edges. They seem pointless. Nothing wrong with flat screens to me.

degen

More observations about the P30 (non-pro):

The very low luminance at 0 brightness (1.72 cd/m² according to notebookcheck) combined with the DC Dimming option (there is immediate pain when turning it off), my new glasses (over magnified on purpose) allows me to get a really good look at this screen. It is just CRAWLING with movement. Various types of dithering and software gimmickry overlaid I guess? After a while it makes you feel ill. Nauseous, jerking in the legs, and pain deep in my ear.

Feel burnout after.

degen

Spent a lot more time comparing phones tonight and my assessment has changed.
Eyestrain has gotten worse over time. I believe it is worse on the P30 compare to OnePlus 3 on Pie, which itself has eyesrain more than the same device on PA 7. Would not reccomend the P30

degen

So currently I use the Galaxy M20 when out of the house. It is a slow phone with a terrible camera and has fits of touch unresponsiveness and misregistration, but it gets the job done most of the time. It is not good for long viewing but not terrible for basic smartphone tasks. It runs much better now on Android 10, almost as good as Android 8.1 it was released on. Android 9 was a disaster for that phone. I have the Latin American model with only 3 GB RAM.

The OnePlus 3 which I have now back on PA 7 (it's just so obviously relieving to the eyes, you can't argue with it), I use at home mainly. The battery on it is quite degraded, but it's better than any computer monitor / setup I have, so I use it whenever possible. Almost all of my screen time is on this device. It is incredibly snappy and always a joy to use.

My eyes are feeling relieved after returning the Huawei P30. That phone was very painful, even with DC dimming enabled (and confirmed on slo mo camera).

degen

@Sunspark Are you still enjoying the A70?

reaganry

somebody here has the eink Hisense. anyone else try it? not sure where it works, probably not US..

Sunspark

reaganry I am contemplating getting one for ebook reading but we will see. The bands are not very North American compatible so that leaves me with 3G UMTS and 1 LTE band so I wouldn't be using it for cellular.

@degen Yeah, it's pretty ok. I watched a movie on it last night. I'm on the December patch. I do find the device a little bit bigger than I'd like tho. Amazing battery life is a plus.

reaganry

Sunspark i could deal with 3g lol. where did you buy it? [edit:sold here.. https://www.cect-shop.com/en/hisense-a5.html?v=10348

Sunspark

reaganry I didn't. I'm just thinking about it. Cect-shop and jd both sell it. Be aware that it doesn't have google play services as this is a Chinese market device but that's not an issue for me.

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