LineageOS 18.1 made my 2016 Android comfortable again.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Back in 2016, my primary smartphone was Xiaomi Redmi 3 with Android 5 / MIUI 7. Amazing ~$120 budget phone back in it's era. I still get all-day battery life even today. I live in US so I had to import back then, I still don't regret it lol

Unfortunately, between 2018 and 2023 I did not enjoy using this phone. By 2023 it was put away in a drawer…

However, just last month I was able to turn it into the most comfortable mobile device I own that ALSO now has the ability to run modern apps.

The caveat: I can't actually switch back to it as a "real phone" because of the US 3G shutdown (it never supported LTE bands here), but aside from that it's an incredible "tablet".

TLDR:

Old Android phone. Snapdragon 616 chip + 720p IPS display. LineageOS 18.1 Android 11 ROM. (Unofficial port if that matters.) Disable HW overlays. Disable it again after rebooting or if the battery runs out. I can now enjoy modern apps with close to no strain.

Here's the full details…

Part 1 - some backstory before I get to the current situation.

(Skip to Part 3 if you just want to learn how I fixed it)

Just to note, I've totally forgotten how the original MIUI 7 software felt in regards to screen comfort (honestly if I really try to remember I think it's likely it was quite comfortable)

Anyway, at some point in 2018 I decided to try out some custom ROMs. Back then a weird quirk was that if you ever tried returning to MIUI, your bootloader could get locked again, it took forever to get an unlock request approved so once you started flashing ROMs it wasn't easy to "safely" return to the original OS.

This means up to 2023 my main point of reference for how this device feels has been the custom ROMs — LineageOS 14 on Android 7, Pixel Experience on A8, CyanogenMod on A6, even an alternate Chinese ROM (Meizu Flyme OS on A5.1)

Part 2 - the problems:

After I first became aware of how significantly screens affected my health during 2022-2023 (to be more specific, after a 2021 14" mini-LED MacBook Pro nearly ruined my life)… one of my first ideas was to see how many daily tasks I could feasibly move back to any older + more comfortable devices I still owned.

Unfortunately at the time, there seemed to be problems across the board with my old Xiaomi.

Running the Pixel Experience ROM, even though the image was "mostly" flat in a good way, I would get a very strange sharp pain in my eyes after a few minutes of using it. Some colors, especially reds, also felt oversaturated and as if they were "pulling" at my eyes. On this ROM I tried Disable HW overlays in Settings and it didn't change anything.

I then tried hopping between the previous ROMs I tried and the issues remained. I thought the Android 5 Custom ROM could possibly fix things as many people here only started having problems with phones after Android 6. Unfortunately this didn't work and actually seemed to make the pain even worse.

(I didn't want to try the original MIUI 7 ROM again for fear of accidentally locking the bootloader, especially because this device is years out of support so I have no idea if I would even be able to unlock it again)

At this point I was stumped. Over the years my Xiaomi also developed a defect after a screen crack where a strange greenish glowing affect along with a repeating pattern of small squares is constantly visible around the edges of the LCD, so I really wasn't sure if my problems were coming from the defective LCD itself or the software.

But then…

Part 3 - the solution:

For a while I thought custom ROMs for this phone simply maxed out at Android 8-9ish as that's what I was seeing on the main XDA page. However, just last month after digging deeper out of curiosity, I was shocked to find a link to an unofficial LineageOS 18.1 port, based on Android 11 from 2020, buried in one of the threads. ("Official" ports of LineageOS stopped after Android 8)

My first thought was "newer version = bad" but I decided to flash it anyway. Right out the gate I noticed that the screen felt different in an interesting way. However, at first, I still felt some immediate eyestrain similar to what I mentioned before.

Then… not even expecting it to work, I headed to Settings to Disable HW overlays (as I've previously tried on other ROMs to no avail).

Boom.

STILLNESS. STRAIN GONE.

Toggling it back and forth, even just scrolling the super basic looking developer settings menu with text and toggles felt entirely different to me. It feels like I can now keep the entire screen in focus while I scroll instead of the scrolling "pulling my eyes around" in whatever direction it's moving.

One time the strain came back after the battery ran out. Turns out Disable HW overlays unchecks itself every time the device does a full shutdown or reboot. All I need to do is re-check it and my eyes feel great once again.

It's been around a month now since I solved this. Waited to post until I knew it wasn't placebo.

With Android 11 I can actually get modern apps on this phone for the first time in YEARS so I've loaded just about everything that doesn't absolutely need my iPhone or a cell signal.

Discord, Instagram, DoorDash, Apple Music, email, calendar, todo apps, Obsidian, whatever, I run all of them here now. I can read for hours and feel FINE afterwards. Sometimes my eyes even feel better i.e. heightened depth perception in the real world.

Obviously in 2024 with Snapdragon 616 it's not fast by any means but it's not painfully slow either. Apps take a while to load but once they're open it's smooth enough.

I'm typing this whole post on my Xiaomi, I have 47 other Chrome tabs and 3 other apps cached in the background and there's no typing lag, although at times it hangs for a few seconds when switching tabs.

(In addition, loading screens are surprisingly SO much less anxiety-inducing on a comfortable screen, I can stare at a loading spinner or a frozen screen in almost a "relaxing way", compared to "bad devices" like iPhones where I usually get sudden discomfort or a strange feeling of wanting to look away if the screen freezes """still""" but is "actually still moving" due to temporal dithering and such)

One small detail, Battery Saver mode feels better to me for whatever reason. Not sure if this one is placebo. However, the rest of my experience such as the effects of Disable HW overlays on Android 11 is NOT placebo for me at all.

IN CONCLUSION:

Got an ancient Android phone? Does it have a Snapdragon chip and an IPS LCD display? Does it have an unlockable bootloader?

Try flashing a LineageOS 18.1 ROM if available. Dig for an unofficial port if it doesn't initially seem possible, I thought Android 11 was totally out of the question for my phone until I found what I did.

Then Disable HW overlays. Disable it again if the phone reboots. You might be surprised.

photon78s

I think you are on to something here. I have a motorola g7 (river: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/river/install/)

with 18.1 installed and it is very comfortable even though my daily driver is an oneplus n30 with android 14. At the very least they are both non-oled.

Rowe

I flashed Lineage 21 onto my e-ink phone: https://www.reddit.com/r/hisenseA9/comments/1diqvv6/flash_a_hisense_a9_with_a_custom_rom/

It's so good I rarely look at the screen of my iPhone (and when I do it's usually just to launch a shortcut from my lock screen). I still keep an iPhone too though as I use a lot of Apple hardware and services.

reaganry

Rowe ooh. how does it work? do the eink settings work?

JOSEUISLEY

Rowe Hi, which iPhone do you use at the moment?

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

I finally tested the Xiaomi Redmi 3 for PWM and yes, it also has the infamous "mild flicker depth PWM at a 60~120hz-ish rate detected at all brightness levels" when filming at 240hz

surprisingly, despite this, this phone remains very very comfortable for me! in fact it is still one of the most consistently comfortable devices I own!

this is probably because because the PWM depth is too mild to affect me

the image on LineageOS 18.1 is extremely flat and most of the time everything looks rock solid. even watching YouTube videos feels amazing on this

but one thing's for sure, from all of the LCDs i've tested and have detected obvious PWM when filming anything other than white (and even in that case, it's actually still there if you lower the exposure, but cameras just do a bad job of making it visible on white in recordings)

the idea that """IPS LCDs don't use PWM""" is a MYTH and should not be trusted

same for "LCDs only use >10khz PWM rates that cameras cannot detect". this is also obviously not true as most LCDs I've tested that have "mild depth at all brightness levels" PWM appear to all use slow flicker rates

the only LCD I have not detected any PWM on at any brightness level so far is the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro (the USB-C only Touch Bar version). although, of course, being a Mac it still has many color management, temporal dithering, and other pixel flicker issues

finally, "mild depth PWM" is not temporal dithering, because the M2 Touch Bar MBP is confirmed to use temporal dithering yet the backlight always appears stable on camera

Rowe

reaganry The Hisense e-ink refresh options are included in the custom ROMs. Overall works much better than stock.

Rowe

JOSEUISLEY 15 Pro Max

JOSEUISLEY

Rowe Right, the iphone 15 pro max causes you ledstrain?

Rowe

JOSEUISLEY yep

JOSEUISLEY

Rowe I'll try to buy a Xiaomi Redmi 3 to try with my eyes. Thanks for the answer.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

JOSEUISLEY BTW, in order to install LineageOS 18.1 on the device you have to unlock the bootloader (which is a relatively annoying process for this phone, since you have to get an unlock request approved). I unlocked my Xiaomi Redmi 3 bootloader all the way back in December 2016 so I can't speak for if it still works in 2024. YMMV

(If you can somehow find one that already has any custom ROM on it, that would make things a lot easier, but I'm not sure how common that is)

The "Part 1" section of the answer to this post is pretty much what I remember doing (note that 3S and 3 are different phones, but the bootloader unlock process is very similar between them):

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/177695/how-to-unlock-bootloader-root-and-install-twrp-on-redmi-3s-should-work-with

Note that:

it's been way too long to remember what the factory stock ROM (MIUI 7 Android 5) felt like for me. I don't remember having any major issues but there's also a chance that it's not good

every single other Android 5/6/7/8 custom ROM that wasn't 18.1 caused really annoying eyestrain

specifically the LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11) ROM with HW overlays disabled is the only custom ROM I've found that doesn't cause the strain at all!

LineageOS 18.1 is the only ROM I can "100% confirm" from experience is strain-free

This is the ROM I used:

https://xdaforums.com/t/index-redmi-3-custom-roms-kernels-etc-19-02-2021.4099085/post-83830503

Also note that depending on where you live it's either possible or NOT possible to use it as a real "phone" with cell service in 2024 — in the USA, I was able to get a 3G signal on T-Mobile back in 2016-2018, but today, it only can be used as a "WiFi-only tablet" in the USA because of the 3G shutdown

If a carrier in your country supports the phone's 4G bands (which was never the case in the USA, even back then, but is more likely to be true in many other countries) there's a chance you can still get 4G signal on it though 🙂

If you're only planning to use it as a tablet (which is what I am doing) you don't have to worry about this cellular stuff

JOSEUISLEY

Thanks for the tutorial. This model is difficult to find, I didn't find it on Ali Express (I live in Brazil), I only found the Redmi Note 3, same year and same specs, but is not the same device. But anyway I'll try. I'm going to use it as a tablet on wifi, for calls I use a dumbphone from 2010 lol. Thanks for everything and sorry for the bad english.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

JOSEUISLEY Be aware, there are both Snapdragon and MediaTek versions of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3

Make sure you get the Snapdragon version

(MediaTek phones have an "image enhancement" system called "miravision" which from what I've read seems to cause many issues for sensitive users)

jordan

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs supposedly disable hw overlays in developer settings turns off miravision but haven't tested myself

JOSEUISLEY

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Oh yes, the Redmi Note 3 that I saw is Snapdragon, I'll test it anyway. As we say in Brazil, whoever is in the rain is supposed to get wet. Thanks

JOSEUISLEY

jordan Well, is a good idea to try too. All tests are a hope. Thanks

jordan

Can someone try lineageos on Razer phone 2? Supposedly it uses a sharp igzo 120hz panel. Looks like they have a android 14 build one but seems like lineageos 18 is also supported which also is older of course. I would give it a try if I knew if dithering isn't present

reaganry

i tried lineage21 on a pixel 3xl - not good.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

reaganry 21 (android 14) is probably entirely different from 18.1 (android 11)

skiver

Which kernel version is your device running with 'lineageos 18'?

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

skiver

Xiaomi Redmi 3 LineageOS 18.1 system info:

Chip: Snapdragon 616 (msm8939)

GPU: Adreno 405 (OpenGL ES 3.2 V@269.0)

Build: Android 11, RQ1A.210205.004

Security Patch: 2021-02-05

Incremental: eng.ura.20210208.061658

Build Date: 07.02.2021

Kernel: 3.10.108-mokee-gd7fd-544e292-dirty #89 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 8 23:26:18 MSK 2021

ALSO I have found the panel

Panel ID: hx8394F_HD720p_video_BOE (ft5x06_720p touchscreen)

^ yes, that's right, BOE — somehow, despite BOE typically being hated here, this remains one of the most comfortable panels I've ever used (at least while running this OS)