Usable Smartphones?

JTL

diop Agreed 100%

jasonpicard

Maxx I feel like the flicker thing has been been sorted out for the most part. Almost any new monitor you buy is flicker free. OLED Phones now come with the option DC dimming. Alexander Wunsch explained the blue sky issue really well in one of his videos. Blue sky shouldn't be a problem because the spectrum from the sun is totally different to artificial light. He puts both spectrum's side by side in one of his videos and they look very different. For me I think LED blue light only becomes a real problem at a certain brightness. It's probably around 3500K or higher. Then distance also becomes a factor depending how close I am to the light source. Rtings.com is a great site for looking at screens that are flicker free. They review TV's and monitors.

degen

jasonpicard Neither Apple nor Samsung (largest manufacturer of smartphones) offer DC Dimmimg and I don't see them doing so as it would be an admission that there was something wrong with PWM (also it serves some other functions besides dimming as described well here https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s8+/development/amoled-pwm-s8-t3716663). Flicker (as defined narrowly by the presence of PWM) has actually gotten worse in the smartphone space as AMOLED has become more ubiquitous.

JTL

degen Neither Apple nor Samsung (largest manufacturer of smartphones)

I think the largest OEMs offering DC dimming at the moment are Huawei, OnePlus and Xiaomi. Still niche by North American standards though.

jasonpicard

JTL You are totally right. I'm not a fan of Samsung and Apple and I think they are some of the worst choices you can make for phones right now. Especially since you can get some of the other phones you mentioned for half the price and a lot of phones that came out even last year were higher specs and higher refresh rate. The same thing is happening in the TV market. TCL is under cutting everyone with good quality products.

Maxx

For my eyes, the flicker has not been solved at all. DC Dimming is still flickering like mad. Just confirm it yourself - take a video with a DSLR of a DC Dimming screen, you will see thick black bands flickering the screen, just like PWM, just maybe a bit less than with no DC Dimming on. The screen needs to be flicker free to be suitable for those who have the problem with flickering.

Maxx

degen Sorry degen, you just are plain wrong. For my eyes, a flickering screen is not ok under any circumstances. DC Dimming flickers just like PWM when taken a video with a DSLR

KM

Maxx That black band looks indeed awful. But I wouldn't give up on OLED or assume other device models have the same flicker. I have never seen a black bar that big on my device. If it would be big like this, it would have covered my whole sensor (BPW34), and the oscilloscope would have shown zero brightness. But there's just a small dip, so if the picture shows what's truly going on, there are devices that do it better.

degen

Maxx

Hi Maxx,

Coming back to this after all this time because you were more right than me. A lot of your posts rightly sound the alarm bell on the shifting definition of our shared issue with display flicker.

Manufacturer advertised “DC dimming” does not equal flicker-free. I think it’s important I come back to correct myself here because this distinction is important as more displays which flicker (temporal dithering, LCD inversion flicker, and OLED refresh flicker must all be considered as sources of display flicker) are being branded as “DC dimming”.

It’s very important that “DC dimming” does not become equated with flicker-free.

Maxx

The above is DC dimming enabled. Can you see the purple and black band that flickers at 90 or 180 Hz? (I'm not sure which frequency, but it really does not even matter, flicker nevertheless.

Maxx

Could we now put this idea that DC dimming resolves the PWM problem, to bed? Yes, there is some other sort of flickering in many LCD and maybe also OLED screens that can still cause eye strain, but we cannot get to that point if the DC dimming flickers like this.

With OLED screens I have thought though, that as the pixels light and shut down immediately, then any screen scrolling is basically flicker, in comparison to LCD screens where the pixels do not change state so fast. But if that would be the source of eye strain, then there would be at least a "little" of eye strain with LCD screens that have fast response times. My current HP monitor has quite fast response times and I do not get ANY eye strain, even if I play games for 12 h straight.

jasonpicard

Maxx I think this is a person by person issue and how they process an image on the screen. I use a Yotaphone 2 and it has an OLED screen and is flicker free at 50% brightness and I have no issues with it and have used it for probably 4 years now. I think for me DC dimmed OLED will be fine I haven't taken the plunge on buying a new phone yet because I want to run my into the ground. I also used to own a Samsung S2 OLED phone and that was flicker free to 25% brightness. Yeah there might be some 60hz flicker that people on this forum are sensitive. What is the proper method for capturing flicker on 60hz OLED? You can make an Incandescent flicker like crazy if the camera is not set properly.

Maxx

jasonpicard I'm sorry you don't seem to understand this. Incandescent flickers is soft - the bulb fades to dark, then fades to full brightness, whereas oled and led switches of and on instantly. The abrupt nature is what makes the flicker so bad. You can think off it like this: imagine you are being punched with a sharp needle vs. a soft pillow with the same speed and force, which one would you tolerate longer?

Maxx

jasonpicard and I also had Galaxy s2, it also caused eye strain. Not as bad as modern OLED, but still caused eye strain.

Maxx

jasonpicard I've seen this argument countless time that it is the camera settings that cause the flicker. Can you make the sun flicker with camera settings?

jasonpicard

Maxx I actually understand it very well. That is why I have taken myself from a person who used to have eye pain and eye strain all day to having almost no issues at all and still be able to work 44 hours a week with computer screens under LED lights and then spend 15 hours a day playing video games if I want on the weekends with no issues.

Peter

Maxx To add on this, I have a engineer relative that works for a company that builds monitors and other parts for tanks and she pretty much concluded that LED flicker is the most difficult issue to solve due to the instant on/off of the LEDs. She told me that it tires tank users eyes very quickly.

jasonpicard

Maxx The sun doesn't flicker. Alexander Wunsch has made awesome videos on spectrum with the sun vs man made light.

jasonpicard

Maxx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISY-7gEFms MVG made a great video about the proper way to film a CRT with a camera. It totally does matter how you film light with a camera. Shutter speed and refresh rate matters. Also the device matters especially if it's not refreshing at exactly 60 hertz like the Super Nintendo or PAL at 50 hertz.

Maxx

jasonpicard yes, you are wery observant, the sun does not flicker. Exactly my point. If a light source does not flicker, then you cannot make it flicker with a video camera either. Humans are not evolved to tolerate flickering lights for extended periods as there is no flickering light in nature. Of course the sun flickers from a ripple in a water but that is different kind of flicker and mind you, I have no issues with my eyes being fishing in open waters for the whole day without sunglasses. Except of course if my eyes get sunburn from UV, but that seldom happens here in the north.

Maxx

jasonpicard and if you do not have the problem anymore, why spent time here arguing with the people who have the problem?

JTL

jasonpicard I think what @Maxx is trying to point out is that a fast enough camera even exposes subtle flicker which can be bad for "severely" sensitive individuals

Maxx

jasonpicard Sorry, you are just wrong. If DSLR shows flicker, then there is flicker. Also, it is not the blue light for me. I wear blue blockers in the evening and they block all blue light, a blue led becomes completely dark whereas a red does not dim with the glasses at all, but the glasses give no relief for the flicker.

Please tell us what steps you have taken to fix Your issue? Maybe it would help some others.

I"ve dealt with this problem now for 25 years, since the first Sony Trinitron Crt tv I got in '95 when I was 15, so I do have some experience what causes the eye strain for me and what not.

Maxx

amazing, again this waste of time discussion "I know better what your problem is than you"

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