Vividblu99
Wow thanks for the explaination. Indeed it does seems like there may be many factors at work. It seems to be really difficult to narrow down to purchasing a decent phone that works friendly to the eye!
I did not even know about this fiacso surround the nexus 5 and 6 and that complains has began way back then. (I was probably a big Sony Xperia fan back then and many complains were on the Xperia Z model in the XDA forum. The model for the japanese market were getting the good constrast and wide viewing IPS LCD screen, while the rest of the market getting the inferior traditional LCD screen.)
I'm sorry about the eyesore about the banding but please do let me post another OLED related banding and my complains about OLED screens in general!😂 As I found some really interesting insights.
From the left (in their lowest brightness setting), it is the new Honor 90 pro (with the advertised 3840 hz) , followed by Honor Magic 5pro (with the advertised 2160 hz) and lastly the Oneplus Ace 2 (with 1440 hz).
All three are on the lowest brightness and captured with a 1/4000 shutter speed.
You can't see the multiple banding artifacts in the Honor 90 pro's 3840 hertz anyway since camera shutter speed is in 1/4000. It might not be visible even in 1/8000. Only if it is 1/16000 and above will you then clearly see those on the camera.
I think I read somewhere from a reddit post that explains that some people can even perceive the flicker artifact in 1/19000 per sec from their eye.
Based on the picture above, these advertised "higher PWM" hertz are no way even near the lower PWM of LCD screens, like 900 hertz. I don't get such crazy awful band artifacts with even a lower PWM hertz (<2000 hertz) LCD. Hell, I'll take Honor 90 lite's lower PWM (I suppose it is PWM 900 hertz) and endure the headaches/ eyestrain over these OLED advertised "higher" PWM hertz anyday.
It seems that the reason is because the oled on smartpone is fundamently flawed. All bulbs within the led screen have to shut itself down in every of its "refresh rate" cycle(60 or 120 hertz). Hence, you continue to see that horrendous thick line band artifact despite the improvement in PWM hertz (from 1440hz to 2160hz to 3840 hz). The 120hz oled refresh really sticks out like a sore thumb.
From a reddit post and then to a video, I found this rather interesting information on OLED 's complete brightness shutdown.
Left is 60 hertz refresh rate while right is 120 hertz.
It seems that in the lowest brightness for those OLED screens (even when anti-flicker/ DC dimming is enabled) the 60 hertz screen refresh rate corresponds to 80% modulation depth percentage while a 120 hertz corresponds to 47%. (Based on what I've read, modulation depth is the difference between the highest and lowest brightness during a flicker. Thus the lower the better. 100% modulation means a full screen brightness shutdown from a brightness that was on)
Going by this pattern, where notebookcheck states that oled screen corresponds to the refresh rate when anti-flicker is enabled, and where lowest brightness is:
screen refresh of 60 hertz corresponds to 80% modulation
screen refresh of 120 hertz corresponds to 40% modulation (let's put it as 40%)
We can then estimate and predict the following reduction of modulation percentage flicker, with the increase in screen refresh rate:
screen refresh of 240 hertz will correspond to 20% modulation
screen refresh of 480 hertz will then correspond to 10% modulation
Following that, screen refresh of 960 hertz will correspond to 5% modulation (This is where we will finally see real world improvement)
And lastly, screen refresh of 1920 hertz will correspond to 2.5% modulation (This will finally match LCD's hardware DC Dimming, where we can no longer perceive the flicker)
Damn, we are [buzz] light years away from a mainstream 960 hertz refresh rate.
The newest breakthrough is from Japan/Taiwan [only] market Sharp Aquos R6 with 240 hertz refresh rate. It was released in 2021 and we have not had any mainstream 240 hertz smartphone yet in 2023.
In all honesty, I wonder how long do I have to wait till I finally get a 1920 hertz refresh rate, and whether can flicker free LCD screen continue to be available in market until then!
