Android Temporal Dithering

G3RDAS

Hello everyone!

I am currently looking for a new phone. My biggest concern: temporal dithering. I know that I feel discomfort on Redmi 13 5G, which has Android 14. I do not have sensitivity to PWM.

For some reason I started to believe that temporal dithering was introduced in Android 14. That means, on phones manufactured after 2023.

Therefore, I am stuck looking for older phones so I can use them comfortably.

chatGPT says that temporal dithering comes from hardware on those phones which gets enabled by Android with no option to disable it. However, I don't believe that.

There is also a ray of hope with upcoming Android 16 which is expected to have a terminal. In my opinion, it introduces new opportunities for us to toggle temporal dithering off. But that is fantasy right now.

Please let me know what are your thoughts on this? Do you think that it has something to do with Android version or is it plain hardware?

I am not looking for advice on choosing a specific phone model.

Reinhard62

G3RDAS

That's also my impression: Temporal dithering was introduced with Android 14.

So It's clearly a software thing and has nothing to do with the hardware. With PWM it's the other way round.

KM

I have a device (OnePlus 3) which for me is perfectly fine to look at up until a specific ROM version (it happens to be Android 6), but when I upgrade it to a later OS, there's immediate eye strain. When I downgrade, the eye strain is gone again. So I believe it is safe to say that software at least for this specific scenario is involved. To jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by the Android version though may be a mistake. More likely the hardware manufacturer provided some new drivers, color settings etc., coincidentally starting with a particular Android version. As custom ROMs are usually based on the official ROM, this would explain why custom ROMs often inherit the condition.

ensete

I found that going into Develop Settings and enabling "Disable HW Overlays" helped me on my device.

To jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by the Android version though may be a mistake

It's not a mistake, it is the Android version.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Reinhard62 That's also my impression: Temporal dithering was introduced with Android 14.

I thought from reading really old posts on this forum, Android 6 is when the Android OS-related dithering issues started with many saying they noticed temporal dithering flicker on Android 6 (but not Android 5) on multiple different brands on phones?

Or possibly 8, since that's when color profiles and IIRC high gamut support was introduced

Any specific evidence you have for temporal dithering starting with 14?