Usable Smartphones?

JTL

Gurm HAHAHAHA

ryans

Sunspark Please let me know how Essential phone is. Unfortunately the price is back up, but I might just bite the bullet and try it anyway.

KM

I recently used a flicker meter to compare an iPhone 4s which is of the "usable" kind and an iPhone 4 which gives me symptoms of eye strain in just a few seconds.
The good 4s barely touches 1% ripple flicker. It is below 1%. The bad 4 is somewhere between 1% and 3%.
It might be coincidence at this point as I need to test more devices, but so far this is a hint that the safe flicker percentage could be lower than most of us expected. At least lower than 3%. Which means when you are sensitive and you look into a supposedly flicker-free display that in reality still has alternating light intensity from 100% to 97% (or even up to 99%), the flicker might already be too high and could cause symptoms.

It is difficult to see such small changes on an oscilloscope output.
All my "flicker-free" monitors are in between 1% to 7% ripple flicker (so in fact they do flicker). Only one of them is usable, and is somewhere between 1% to 3%, amongst others who are not usable. Further strengthening the theory that the safe flicker percentage is somewhere below 3%. Sadly I could not track this down further yet as the flicker meter's scale won't display other low values than either nothing at all (means below 1%), 2% (means between 1% and 3%) and 4% (between 3% and 5%). My cheap oscilloscope can not show such low amplitude flicker, not to mention the high frequencies. I had not imagined that I would need even more resolution than steps of 2%. All I cared about was being able to detect flicker of high frequencies, hundreds of kilohertz.

I tested my OnePlus 3 with the brightness app "Brightness Manager", with which you can quickly change brightness in steps of 10. Changing back and forth from brightness level 255 to 245 is still consciously visible. This would be a flicker of just 4%. Imagine such a flicker at very high frequencies, say 200 kHz, and you have your average "flicker-free" display that might still hurt your eyes.

Seanicus

Sunspark Very interested to hear how the essential scrubs up eye strain wise

Seanicus

Soreeyes Thanks for the info. By any Nokia Lumia phone, does that mean any phone running windows? I'm tempted to try the Lumia 950. Perhaps Windows is free of the whatever it is that people seem to report on newer android versions.

KM I thought the Galaxy S2 had an OLED without PWM? Problem with that phone is the minimum brightness was stupidly bright.

Also I just realised you can reply to multiple posts at once. This should put an end to my spamming!

KM

Seanicus I thought the Galaxy S2 had an OLED without PWM?

Maybe, some people say so. I suppose Samsung released different hardware across the globe, because I bought a Galaxy S2 in Germany some years ago (in 2012 I believe), and if I'm not mistaken, it had PWM. At least it was unusable. I got a strong headache during the first day, burning eyes, and returned the phone the very next day. It was the worst device I ever looked at up to that day. I can imagine had it been flicker-free, I might still be using it.

Edit: The minimum brightness was very low. Must really have been different hardware.

Gurm

Seanicus Low-end Windows phones continue to be usable for me to this day. Anything with a 540p screen resolution seems to be fine, across the board, even in Android-land. I suspect it is because of the panels in use at lower resolutions. 1080p and up phones are the harshest, naturally.

ryans

Seanicus I've not seen an OLED phone without PWM. The Galaxy S5 definitely has PWM but I'm not really affected by it. Though I do think I'm affected by other PWM -- I guess all PWM is not created equal (and certainly not at the same frequency Hz)

Seanicus

Interesting. Maybe it was a second hardware revision? Sounds like the HTC M8 inconsistency problem.

KM

Seanicus I just measured my "bad" HTC One M8, and the ripple flicker percentage is on the verge of 3%. Another hint that 3% might already be too much.
This is one of those "symptoms within seconds" devices. I looked at it with one eye closed, and clearly just the open eye and the muscles around it are affected now.

Seanicus

Gurm I find lower res screens are a bit better as well. Hard to know why, perhaps lower contrast?

KM Does that mean there's a 3% brightness variation?

ryans You're probably right about different reactions to different manifestations of PWM. That Wiko phone is totally PWM free as well (scroll up a few dozen messages), would be cool to hear some user feedback.

It's been very helpful reading this entire thread through, but I'm still a bit lost as to which phone I should try next. Iphone 6s and Pixel XL both give me ocular migraines, so it's not just a PWM thing. I suspect it's a software thing as my macbook is also bad and everyone seems to dislike Android 6,7 and 8. The only comfy screen I have is my Galaxy S2 (running 4.2). I'm tempted to try a HTC M9 next and keep it on Lollipop. Otherwise, maybe a windows phone will be free of whatever it is I'm sensitive to? Does anybody have any suggestions before I give this dodgy backalley ebay seller my money? Has anyone struggled with an iphone 6s and found a 7 or 8 to be ok?

tfouto

KM How did you measure ripple ficker percentage? What's the device?

KM

Seanicus Does that mean there's a 3% brightness variation?

Yes, given a and b as max and min amplitude, it means (a-b)/a.

Gurm

Seanicus Some people have found iPhone 7+ or 8+ to be decent where the 6/6s wasn't. Especially with a matte screen protector. Probably has to do with polarization/focal issues... might be worth a try. That's my fallback if my phone just stops working outright and I haven't found a new 'droid I can use.

ryans

Seanicus @Gurm has previously said that the Galaxy S9 was somewhat tolerable.

Seanicus

Gurm I tested an iPhone 7 last night with polarised sunnies. The polarisation method is indeed very different to the 6s. I'm still a little skeptical seeing as I feel like it's something to do with the software as well as the screen, but perhaps I'll take the plunge and buy a second hand 7 or 7+ to confirm. And failing that, a HTC M9. And failing that, a Lumia 950. Then I'll be up to 10 phones! We need a phone swap system on this forum aha!

ryans Which is a little strange given that Samsung PWM is usually pretty bad and it's running the same OS as many other problem phones. A mystery indeed.

Sunspark Please give us your full testing impressions when you can. Any chance you could check the polarisation characteristics with a pair of sunnies?

AGI

JTL What leads you to believe it's Android System WebView and not the OS or the drivers itself causing you issues?

Hey there, long time no see...
Have been away from the forum for months, wow, time goes by so quickly...

Sorry for bringing up this again after so long. I Just want to update on the outcome of the factory reset of my Samsung Galaxy On5. Since then I have little by little re-updated all apps except Android System WebView and Google Chrome, and I can use my phone NO PROBLEM as prior to the upgrade of those two apps on April 30, 2018. I have not yet had the courage to try to single out which of the two messed with my eyes. I have been busy enough with other problems.
But it was not a "psychological" strain. I still remember how all of a sudden I could not use the phone anymore without terrible and long-lasting pain...

Sunspark

AGI You can compare by typing chrome://gpu/ on the address bar, before and after if you ever felt like it. You can also flip some switches with chrome://flags/ as well.

Sunspark

The Essential arrived yesterday but I am too tired to mess with it during the work week. Saturday is most likely when I will check it out. I have already downloaded the final Android P beta for it.

I can offer one thing about the device that surprised me when I opened the box. It's the heaviest phone I have ever had here. Heavier than I would prefer. It weighs 185 grams which is only 10g less than a Note8. Must be because of the ceramic. The HTC One M8 by comparison is 160g.

Sunspark

Sorry guys, it was a bust. There is display variation with this panel, and I just happened to get one with a 9000K+ colour temperature that also had a slight green tint which I associate with Samsung. I was procrastinating because other than being tired I had a suspicion it would be like this.

I will write some observations though..

Device came with Nougat, which combined with the colour temperature was uncomfortable right off the bat. I immediately sideloaded Android P. sRGB mode in the developer options does not work, you need to install a different kernel or install Lineage, which I am not going to bother doing since I know the native temperature is way high.

Android P was a bit more comfortable than Nougat. Google has spent a lot of time working on it, nice interface. Also a brightness bug in P on this device where if you adjust it lower than 80% it goes really dim really fast.

Phone did not come with a USB-A to C cable.. C to C only. Fortunately I had a Sony cable that was A-to-C here that I found on the ground along with the charger. 🙂 New cable worked just fine.

USB drivers on Win 7 were a real hassle, after downloading Google's usb driver, I still needed to install it twice.. once in 'normal mode' connected to the computer, and a second time on the computer when it was in recovery mode.

No need to bootloader unlock this (which is a toggle option), usb debugging mode alone is fine. All you do is adb sideload the zip file.

I didn't bother peeling off the plastic, though I did peel it off a little so I could look at it with and without. Did not make a difference, other than clarity.

Phone is noticably brighter when my M8 is placed next to it and my M8 appears to have a reddish hue when sitting next to it (which you do not see when it is by itself).

The last LCD display panel that I saw on a new device that seemed ok was a store demo model of the G7. This panel is not an RGB panel, but an RGBW one which is interesting. I'm too cheap to get it right now, but I will take a look at it again at a different store.

I don't have sunglasses on hand.. there is one in the basement somewhere but I don't want to go through boxes looking for it. Though I am curious to dig it out sometime.

So yeah, would not recommend the Essential to this crowd.

Seanicus

Sunspark That's a shame. Looked like a cool phone.

ryans

Gurm Well, CCitrine reported it (Essential Phone) is usable, but Sunspark says it was not usable for him. Probably different issues affect them (their original posts linked in my tag). Did you ever get your functional vision checked (eye teaming, etc), Gurm ?

I don't think Sunspark tried the Paranoid Android ROM? I still don't know why Paranoid ROM is okay but nothing else is.

AGI

Sunspark You can compare by typing chrome://gpu/ on the address bar, before and after if you ever felt like it. You can also flip some switches with chrome://flags/ as well.

Hey, thanks. This sounds powerful but I am not sure which use to make of all that information, e.g., what are "Problems Detected"? Does the list refer to my specific device or the version of Chrome installed?

ryans

Seanicus @Sunspark Try updating Essential Phone to Android 9 (recently released). Not sure if they fixed anything; worth trying.

« Previous Page Next Page »