NewDwarf They do I can clearly see and feel moving static patterns / dithering on my iPhone SE 2 (LCD) screen (it has iOS 17.2.1) and gradients also look more smooth than they "should" on my 14 Pro with iOS 16 too.

Not sure about the OLED iPhones (since it has backlight precision per pixel, it might be using that instead to achieve greater color depth i.e. different PWM frequency per pixel), but for the LCD, it's so obviously using temporal dithering to my eyes. I have an iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 with the same resolution and size screen that feel so much more comfortable than the SE does.

However I have some older devices that don't dither or dither less, like an iPad 6 with an earlier version of iOS 15 that shows way more banding on gradients, shadows, and transparency effects.

      jordan

      One last thing worth noting is what that "flagship" Eizo's marketing says:
      "stable display using industry-first ai" and "the color and brightness of an LCD monitor can shift due to changes in ambient temperature and the temperature of the monitor itself" and using that temperature data, the monitor "adjust in real-time so gradations, color, brightness and other characteristics continue to be displayed accurately." Wow and what "other characteristics". Lastly for laughs or feelings of anger they say "a small number of people perceive flicker on their screen which causes eye fatigue". I heard they cheat by using high frequency PWM at low brightness levels on other models.

          deepflame I'd recommend the M2 Air or M3 Air instead. The M3 Pros and other Pros with XDR displays have a lot more quirks with their screen (for example, they have 10,000 individually controlled backlights behind the screen that all basically use different PWM frequencies per zone to dim at independent amounts) that we don't know everything about or how to solve yet.

          I've already discovered two additional properties unique to the Pros that are needed in addition to disabling dithering to further improve the screen output, there are a lot of extra things the Pro displays do that are currently unknown.

          Meanwhile, M2 Airs have a simple, traditional edge-lit LCD for the most part with a PWM-free backlight, and Stillcolor can resolve a very significant amount of issues with their display output.

            photon78s yikessss lol. All that color changing stuff sounds like a mess. Can we just get basic displays without all this wacky tech! haha. Wow even if we don't perceive flicker it still affects us, definitely angering when I see people post stuff like that. Most people who "aren't affected" just haven't connected it to their screens I'm sure

              jordan No idea, the old Plus phones use scaling FYI so they're not pixel accurate, it's taking a 2K image but then downscaling it down to a 1080p panel like how Macs do when they're not on @2x resolution. If you're sensitive to that I'd recommend a regular 7 instead.

              All I know is that my regular 7 with an earlier version of iOS 15 is very comfortable compared to my SE 2. It does have a P3 color display, but it doesn't seem to affect me — even though it still does display brighter reds than sRGB, it doesn't have the extremely oversaturated reds that my SE 2 has.

              The only reason I don't use my 7 really is due to 60% battery health and a broken "loose" charging port, meaning I can't use it while it's charging and mine only lasts for 1 hour. But you can definitely find a 7 in way better condition than mine is, lol.

              I've heard some people here talk about iPhone 7 suddenly becoming unusable with iOS 15.7 or 15.8, so look for one on an earlier version.

              IIRC I remember iPhone screens starting to feel "weird" (way before I learned what temporal dithering was) when the iPhone 8 launched, I knew a friend with an iPhone 8 and even on its original version I thought the screen looked "weirdly smoothed out" or "overly glowing and shiny" to me. So iPhone 7 is probably the last "good" iPhone LCD, at least concerning how the software is choosing to render to it.

                photon78s I heard they cheat by using high frequency PWM at low brightness levels on other models.

                From what I understand, some models of EIZO monitors have a minimum brightness of ~40cd/m2 and others can go down below that. The latter seems to work by using DC dimming circuitry to a point but than switching to high frequency PWM below that.

                    JTL

                    That is what I read as well. All about that economics and engineering tradeoffs.

                    • JTL replied to this.

                        photon78s Well. I'd be curious if someone took an LED backlight array (as used by a monitor) and created driver circuitry for it, what it would take to create a DC dimmed solution with lower range of brightness and what potential disadvantages it could have.

                            JTL

                            If what I read is correct, color accuracy, power consumption, reliability, and probably more would suffer. So much marketing and competition with everything else as we all know is focused towards colors and more "accurate" colors and to satisfy that greed of making the screen look like "reality". I echo Jordan's view. I just want a basic usable display!

                                photon78s Yep, this is where my username comes from, I care about displays that allow me to work and be productive. I really wish all digital displays in laptops, phones etc. would also be benchmarked by how well they display text and user interface elements, not just how realistic they display colors, photos, games, and videos.

                                Not every display should be built and benchmarked in the same way that a TV is. I might care about those things when buying a TV, but when I'm looking for a monitor, laptop, or even a phone, I'm looking first and foremost for something that can display documents, emails, and text correctly, and does not move when the screen is supposed to be still. And most modern displays and operating systems totally fail at that.

                                I would say the biggest group of people modern displays impact is actually college students. I've talked about before how this is a very real problem for Gen Z too, not just older people.

                                I was literally failing classes when all I had was an M1 Max XDR MacBook Pro and iPhone 12 at default settings. I couldn't study for more than an hour without feeling like I wanted to fall asleep.

                                The moment I stopped using those devices and switched to better displays (such as an ancient 2012 Windows laptop, and reading PDFs on my old iPad mini 2), I became so much more successful in school and was able to read textbooks on my devices again without feeling like I had, like, a severe reading disability. But for the most part, all of that is tied directly to which screens I use.

                                In addition to this, more recently, I've felt like my cognitive ability has noticeably increased even more by swapping out the flashing 120hz LEDs I lived under for years with just a few Waveform bulbs — and also choosing to study outside when I can, instead of in campus buildings filled with probably hundreds of different types of cheap LEDs & flourescents all flashing at different rates.

                                It's so surprising how many of my reading and processing issues either become much more tolerable, or even literally vanish, the moment I stop looking at devices with temporal dithering, PWM, or HDR capabilities.

                                    Tested this app from my side. It doesn't work for me.

                                    What I tried:

                                    • Regular usage of Macbook Air 15'' M3 without Stillcolor app: giving me slight nausea and weird effect at the back of my head, like tiredness after 15-20 minutes of usage.
                                    • Installed Stillcolor app on MBA 15'' M3. Tried. Nothing really changed. Same effect. Even on next day with fresh head, same results.
                                    • Connected MBP 14'' M3 to my external display 8bit monitor ASUS VG27AQ with Stillcolor app. Having almost the same effect.

                                    Do you guys think that something can be different with M2 ? I'm pretty much sure it will not. Don't know what I can do else.

                                      DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs I am right with ya on how processing issues and all arise from bad devices. When I use a bad device I get bad brain fog, can't retain info have to keep reading the same thing over a few times, my iq feels like it drops significantly like I'm a zombie but I also get anxiety, depression, OCD/adhd like too. There's many more symptoms too but those are the bigger symptoms. all those symptoms go away completely when I go screenless. I'm sure many others are suffering with these symptoms too with it being screen related but no one would really even connect it to their devices/lights 🤯

                                      I'm still on the hunt for good devices

                                          madmozg might be FRC or some other visual enhancements still present. From what I read above someone else found other things to disable within the OS that could help. Maybe try still color again after the dev updates it with the new findings added to it 🙂

                                            DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs can you try measuring the display with both Stillcolor enabled and BetterDisplay dummy/virtual display mirrored to the physical display? BetterDisplay dummies try to render 8-bit

                                            I did try this, but didn't have noticeable reduction in flicker under the microscope. Though, I am still trying to track down the exact source of this flicker.

                                              madmozg what is the output of the command

                                              ioreg -lw0 | grep -i enableDither

                                                NewDwarf Ok. I do not want to kill a drive to get a working solution, lets try everything possible. Just saying for anyone who have high workloads, do not over-commit to alpha solutions 🙂 as it might hurt a bit 🙂

                                                  jordan My go to solution is ubuntu 22.04. It gets better quite quite quickly. Recommend getting some old crappy thinkpad or elitebook for 200-400 usd and have linux machine always standing by if needed. You can even tweak wifi transmit power and many other settings. This is a total savior for me, gets me grounded very quickly. But of course quality of software and apple silicon optimization is incomparable to it. I guess that is why people keep pushing so hard to get a solution.

                                                      madmozg I have a MBA 15" M2 with macos 13.5 and disabling dithering doesn't fix the migraine problem. But for others is working so i am glad that this app existed.
                                                      Maybe we are sensitive to other display quality enhancer and we need to disable something else like @DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs is trying to do.
                                                      Keep going guys 🙂

                                                          Donux Recommend getting some old crappy thinkpad or elitebook

                                                          Yeah even though I'm trying to mess with my M1 device my old Lenovo laptop is still my current solution for my main portable device.

                                                          (However, surprisingly enough, my M1 MBP now produces the best output on my external monitor, compared to all my other devices, after installing Stillcolor. The monitor still has built-in FRC unfortunately, but is actually pretty comfortable now for certain tasks when using it with Stillcolor and the M1 Mac. Also using USB-C to the monitor's DisplayPort input, not HDMI.)

                                                          However I run Windows 8 on it, running Ubuntu 22.04 on the Lenovo I actually notice a very significant temporal dithering effect but can totally fix this running ditherig.exe on Windows. And to remain connected to the software of macOS, I simply remote desktop into my Mac from the Lenovo 🙂

                                                          Also for me wifi settings are not relevant, not sensitive at all to whatever you're referring to here. My productivity is tied directly to display/GPU/rendering, nothing changes for me messing with things that aren't related to the screen. It's the moment I'm on a good screen that stuff immediately improves for me.

                                                            dev