Usable Smartphones?

I have always been able to use HTC phones (with Super LCD3) display without a problem. I have owned HTC One (m7), HTC One Max, I skipped M8, now I am using M9+ Supreme Camera Edition. All these phones uses Super LCD3, and I look at the screen for hours e.g. watching you tube without any problem whatsoever. Note that my M9+ is still on Android 5 (Lollipop). I dare not upgrade to Android 6 because I read users get eye strain after upgrading.

I have purchases many other phones, LG V10, Huawei Mate 7, Samsung Note 5, even other HTC model like E9+ that uses IPS display all give me eye strain. So far, only HTC phones with Super LCD3 display I can use without a problem.

So now is time to upgrade my phone again. HTC has new model, HTC 10 and U Ultra that uses Super LCD5. The 10 is last year's model, so I bought the U Ultra (also because I prefer bigger screen), which comes with Android 7. Lo and behold, I get eye strain. My one hope and phone brand that I can use now is unusable. This sucks.

This eye strain is different than, say a PWM induced eye strain. PWM i feel the strain more inside my eye balls. This eye strain from the phone is more like a throbbing inside my head (skull, brain), from ears up.

This phone has no PWM. I am assuming that Super LCD5 is not causing eye strain to me (because Super LCD3 does not give me eye strain, but I cant know for sure), and I assume the cause of eye strain is really because of Android 7. I tried tinkering with color and display setting. Not much can be changed.

I have discovered that this combination that makes the eye strain a little bit better:

Disable HW overlay + use "CF.lumen" app and change the master color profile (change RGB values, and use the auto-brightness of the app instead of the phone's). These 2 combination helps to reduce the eye strain, but the eye strain is still there and not 100% gone.

The CF.lumen app says that if the phone is rooted, it can work better. How better I am not sure, but I am hoping the app can change things at root or kernel level to change the color is displayed. But rooting my new HTC U Ultra will void my warranty, and if it doesnt work, I would loose a lot in resale value if I need to sell the phone.

If anyone has a rooted phone, can you install and try the CF.lumen app, let the app control the phone's auto-brightness, and set any value RGB and brightness so that the app will control the color and brightness, and see if it helps to reduce eye strain or not.

Wrightpt1 I like VA panels much better as well. Remind me of plasma somewhat. Deep blacks, rich colours but not oversaturated.

ensete That was me. Unfortunately those "color filters" don't change the way the dispaly render colors. It just changes the color it is displaying. For example, if you are sensitive to particular spectrum of blue light the display emits, f.lux and the like won't change that from being emitted. It will just add red and green to the color display to make it look less blue.

ICC profiles work by actually changing the way the display shows colors. Unfortunately Google has decided not to add ICC support to Android, which is weird since there already exists an ICC profile class for Java so it would be trivial for it to be incorporated into the OS, and color accuracy is a huge deal for photographers and have kept smartphone from really being considered high end cameras, but they have handwaved away the issue like so many people who do not suffer our symptoms. You can search the Android bug report/suggestion forums for ICC and see the discussions.

You should really try and install the CF.lumen in your phone. The app does not just change the color of the phone, actually this is true only if your phone is unrooted. But for rooted phones, the app can install and change the driver of the graphics itself. Here is some extract of what the app can do:

Drivers

CF.lumen currently supports several driver backends to adjust the display: the original CF.lumen driver, the KCAL kernel driver, the PCC/RGB kernel driver, and the rootless (non-root) overlay. Driver selection will only be presented to you if multiple drivers are actually supported on your device.

Drivers: CF.lumen: Performance mode

This driver mode overrides Android's rendering system in a different way. While it doesn't work on all devices and firmwares, if it does work, it is often significantly faster than the compatibility mode. It also doesn't suffer from short flashes of the original colors being shown. This mode causes visible artifacts on some devices, though it isn't common.

Drivers: KCAL

The KCAL driver is quickly becoming a popular kernel mod for Qualcomm devices. It allows color adjustments in the display hardware itself. There is no performance difference with this driver, but of course your kernel must support it. This is the fastest driver.

Drivers: rootless

The rootless fallback driver (for non-root users) uses a color overlay. This is an additional surface, causes at least one additional expensive full-screen rendering step, and is likely to throw your system into software compositing mode most of the time. This is the slowest (and ugliest) driver.

Drivers: CF.lumen

The CF.lumen driver requires software compositing, as it changes the colors displayed during the software compositing step. Of course, it lets the system go back to hardware compositing if it's not actively changing colors. This can slightly impact performance. This driver changes colors on the surface content level, and can perform all sorts of calculus before deciding what to display. This usually gives it the highest possible image quality output.

More info here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=51779367#post51779367

I think this is the closest or the best we can get to changing the ICC profile of android phones.

ensete, since ICC and color profile has positive impact on your eye strain, you might want to give the app a try.

You can download the app here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.lumen&hl=en

Kray My phone cannot be rooted as my work requires an unrooted device as a requirement and my job has a heavy mobile component. Interesting to see that CF.Lumen works that way on a rooted device though, curious if something those alternate drivers change would make a difference. Would love to see results of someone who had a phone that gave them problems, they tried CF.lumen, i didn't help, they then rooted the phone, tried it again, and found one of the alt drivers eliminated the eye strain. Not only would it be a good solution for people to try, it would narrow down the cause of the eye strain as something that driver is changing

I read that LG G6 uses pwm at 2400 Hz and also all new LG models, as well as Moto G5...
I'm thinking of trying an HTC phone . Unfortunately M8/m9 are a bit too expensive for me now, so I am turning to Desire 610/626/630. I watched some videos of HTC 610 and it's interesting a flicker can be noticed in the screen, as here:

(in the upper right) .How do you think , what can it be due to? Do you think it is some kind of pwm or dithering?

KM Yes, it'd be good if it works, but I was heaving eyestrain and headache from my Super Amoled Samsung even at 100% brightness, where it's not supposed to have pwm. Either the 60 HZ flicker is still irritating my eyes, or there's something else besides pwm which bothers me. But I think PWM is definitely a problem for me, as I felt change when reducing and increasing brightness. At low brightness the headache was heavy and I felt very dizzy, while above 80% brightness the headache was less but still uncomfortable to use after 2-3 minutes. Could Super Amoled screens also have issues with dithering and color tints?