
Measuring the brightest iPhone ever: iPhone X - PascLeRasc
https://justgetflux.com/news/2018/02/16/OLED.html
======
herf
Co-author of article here. Some notes:

* Light levels matter a lot, and we are trying to move the discussion to objective (and impartial) measures rather than talking about colors and subjective impressions

* Yes, our surveys of viewing distance (5000 people) were done in imperial, so we describe it that way for an English-speaking audience

* Yes, metamers are real - two spectra can stimulate the cones identically but be different to the non-visual system. We are comparing screens with identical luminance and 2-degree observer chromaticity matches, and the melanopic response does in fact vary

* The SCN has a logarithmic dose-response to light, so indeed 20% isn't that much. But 2x is an important change to talk about

* Our goals do not include making screens redder, but to improve outcomes for most people. We think the way to do this is by improving the contrast between day and night, and that this means that many of the the lights in the world should use timers that people can adjust based on the outcome they want

* The biggest surprise here (and the impetus for the article) is "wow that's more than double" when you first measure the phone, because the iPhone X doesn't feel that much bigger than an older phone

* Defaults certainly matter, especially when a product implies it will improve your sleep

~~~
epistemex
First, thanks for writing and sharing this.

Since many here uses desktops I wanted to share a small tip, but first an
anecdotal observation: I got my first computer at age 10-11 back in the 80s (a
VIC20) and we only had a 50Hz (Europe) interlaced 21" TV as a "monitor" at
that time. After using it a few months even my teacher pointed out I was
getting dark circles under my eyes. My sleep was getting worst. Many years
later and years in front of computer screens I also found that I had gotten
delayed sleep-phase syndrome as well - this at a time CRTs was the norm. For
those who say that this light is not enough to affect sleep, I would say
you're wrong. But that's anecdotal..

As to the tip: here is what I did - in your color management settings, create
a ICC profile which turns off almost all blue and most green. This will leave
you with a darker orange color which is perfect if you need to sit late and
work. This also affect _all_ programs on your screen. You can also use tools
to create ICC profiles that inverts bright colors etc.

Now you can simply toggle between your normal ICC and the dark/orange one.

~~~
herf
Also we know that pre-teens are more than twice as sensitive to light as
people in their late teens [1], and CRTs were 9300K also [2], though they were
quite a bit dimmer than current ones.

1\.
[https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/100/11/4067/2836092](https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/100/11/4067/2836092)

2\.
[https://fluxometer.com/rainbow/#!id=NEC%20Diamondtron%20CRT/...](https://fluxometer.com/rainbow/#!id=NEC%20Diamondtron%20CRT/6500k-diamondtron)

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baddox
I’d like to see some data about the measurable effects of this melanopic
light. The measurements provided in this article all sound plausible, but they
wouldn’t be as scary as they sound _if_ , hypothetically, it turns out that a
20% increase in melanopic light in this range has little or no measurable
effect on sleep. It could be that going from zero melanopic light to that of
an older iPhone has a large effect, but that a further 20% increase has little
or none. I’d really need to see some data.

~~~
woah
You're unlikely to get impartial information from the people making flux.
Their whole goal is to sell something that is an OS feature, but their version
is more red.

~~~
ceejayoz
In fairness, flux was around _before_ (by seven years) the OS feature.

~~~
baq
flux hopefully is the reason for the feature to exist in the first place.

personally i can't use a computer without flux anymore. my eyes hurt.

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crazygringo
> _Night Shift’s default setting is not capable of dialing things back to the
> level of the old phones with Night Shift turned off._

What about a non-default setting? Night Shift gives a whole range of color
temperatures. This feels like FUD if you're still able to set Night Shift to a
level of blue/green light comparable on previous models... and the article
doesn't even address this.

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makecheck
Using Accessibility settings and Display Accommodations, you can Reduce White
Point (to any slider value) and it makes a big difference at night.

~~~
radicaldreamer
I wish there was a way to save these settings and quickly enable via control
center.

~~~
djrogers
You can make Reduce White Point one of your ‘accessibility shortcuts’ to
activate with a triple click of the right button. You can add multiple items
as well and a triple click will pop up a prompt for which you want to enable

~~~
PascLeRasc
That feature's really great. You can add grayscale and smart invert and make a
superb reading mode.

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vinceguidry
I'm _extremely_ sensitive to screen brightness. I can't leave auto-brightness
on, it just never picks the right level of backlighting. Using multiple
monitors was extremely annoying until I made a keymapping to change the faux-
brightness of all three monitors at the same time.

F.lux is great. I keep a MacBook around solely for Darkroom mode, it's the
only way I can use a computer at night without it messing me up the next day.
I can't really use my phone for anything anymore other than playing Threes on
Dark mode, it's just too bright. I reach for the MacBook if I want to browse
Quora or HN. What sucks is that I can't just leave f.lux in Darkroom mode, I
always have to switch it on.

There's a 'flow' I can get into at night, if it works right, I can stay awake
and aware and intellectually engaged, without sleeping, and the next day I
don't feel sleep deprived. It's a bit of a moving target, this last week I've
been sleeping really hard.

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ferongr
Is there any proof that the change of color by programs like flux or built-in
OS "night-light" features improves anything?

~~~
Havoc
I'd be surprised if it doesn't frankly. The blue-light effect on the circadian
is well documented science. Don't think anyone is challenging that.

...and turning on flux makes the screen decidedly less blue-ish even by a non-
scientific eyeballing so I'd be very surprised if it doesn't check out on a
broad level.

Whether it delivers the tangible results promised is a different question.

Broadly speaking I've noticed a correlation between late screen time and bad
sleep (or rather falling asleep).

~~~
ferongr
>Broadly speaking I've noticed a correlation between late screen time and bad
sleep (or rather falling asleep).

Your observation could be due to the placebo effect. That's why a study is
warranted. A yellow post-it could have similar effects if everybody constantly
said that having a post-it on the display frame prevents circadian rhythm
disruption.

------
Synaesthesia
OLED is also capable of going much dimmer and retaining contrast than LCD.
Something I’ve always been jealous of Galaxy phones for.

~~~
pmontra
I confirm that. My old Galaxy S2 could get much dimmer than my new Sony, even
with one of those night filters switched on.

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textor
I have mixed feelings about this. Flux team did contribute to the
popularization of this trick, and they were of much help to me for years. But
really, inasmuch as this is useful at all, this must be an inbuilt OS feature,
so their project is kind of doomed.

~~~
Havoc
>so their project is kind of doomed.

Agreed. Can't see this being very difficult to duplicate for a skill say
Windows dev. As they say in finance circles...it's got no moat to keep
competitors at bay.

[Rumour time]

I've seen (unsubstantiated) rumours on the interwebs that people are seeing
different blue light results between flux and (windows) built in when measured
with hardware meters. Seems unlikely to me, but thought I'd throw it out
there.

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huebnerob
This f.lux stuff is really starting to cross the uncanny valley from well-
intentioned concern to junk science conspiracy theory.

First of all, the idea that you "can't see" the differences in the light
emitted by OLED vs. LCD is just absurd. It's called white balance, it's well
understood, and any person with at least one functioning eye is going to pick
out most OLED screens as having a blue/green tint to them.

To correct for this, the iPhone X was the first generation of Apple phone to
adopt "True Tone", which matches the white balance of both OLED and LCD
screens to that of the ambient environment. How convenient that they took the
time to conjure up some bespoke metrics, but somehow didn't get around to
mentioning this headlining feature of the iPhone X that has quite a lot of
relevancy to the subject area. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact
that it stomps all over the point they're trying to make.

As to "Night Shift" not making enough of a difference at the default
setting... yeah, you know that you can _change_ default settings? Indeed, with
one finger swipe, I can spray tan my phone screen so hard it gets elected
president. Turns out I don't need f.lux after all!

~~~
jacobolus
No, the “white balance” isn’t sufficient. Spectral power distribution is what
might as well be an infinite dimensional space, whereas trichromatic vision is
(in a simplified model anyway) 3-dimensional.

You _can_ see the difference between lights if you look through a diffraction
grating, though.

There are light sources with very dramatically different spectral power
distributions which appear to have the same color if you look directly at the
light. These can have substantially different impact on circadian rhythms,
brightness adaptation, etc.

Spikier light spectra have an additional problem for color reproduction
(unrelated to sleep) which is that they amplify differences in color vision
between different observers; everyone’s vision is just slightly different, and
if you use very spiky spectra for primaries, the result is that all of the
color relationships (say of some photograph) end up looking at least slightly
wrong for most people (where “wrong” here means different from what the
creator of the image intended). The new phones are just getting toward a
spectrum which is spiky enough where our simple models of color reproduction
start breaking down; the next-generation gamuts specified for film etc.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020))
are beyond that point.

Personally I wish there was less of a rush toward the largest possible color
gamut. In marketing and lay understanding larger color gamuts are strictly
superior, but (like with many engineering decisions) there are actually
serious tradeoffs involved.

see e.g.
[https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ist/cic/2014/00002014...](https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ist/cic/2014/00002014/00002014/art00003)

~~~
phiresky
This is really interesting. So far I've been looking for the widest gamut
monitors as possible, but I guess it's not that simple.

So is there any way to have a wide gamut without getting different results for
different people? I can only think of adding more primaries. Or maybe using
some "flourescent" material to try and shift the primaries to match a specific
viewer?

~~~
jacobolus
Yeah, if you use 7 or 8 primaries you can do a lot better.

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qwerty343
Skimming through the article I noticed that the author uses imperial measures
instead of metric. In the scientific world, that's a sign of a poor work.

~~~
SmooL
Really? I get that it's not the norm, but to judge the whole piece _purely_ on
the choice of units seems rather judgemental. The imperial system, while
unconventional, still works fine.

~~~
saagarjha
It works, but it's a warning sign, similar to a scientific paper not written
in LaTeX or without a list of citations at the end is likely to have
significant issues.

~~~
SmooL
If you have so many papers to go through that you've started using such
'virtue signaling' as a means of filtering through them all, fine. But to
apply such a method and then _take the time to comment about it_ completely
defeats the purpose.

