In recent years, something hidden has happened at the millions of pixels that make up our screens. Once created to solve a problem, temporal traming has created its own monster from a problem that slowly infects new and old devices, making them unusable to part of the population, and Android users have enough.
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July 9 An official report of bugs has been tabled For the Google Android problems monitoring system, describing the ways in which the system scale was negatively affected by users. Symptoms sound enormously like an article that I wrote more than two years ago on how the flickering effects of PWM gradation caused me headache and made me nauseous.
However, unlike the PWM gradation, temporal traming can be presented to a phone after purchase, sometimes years later. Apple iPhones are among the worst offenders of this tactic, forcing users to find ways to “demo” the iOS version to an older version (often iOS 17) or to deal with debilitating problems.
Many Android phones are also at fault, and although Android users have a much wider range of choices than Apple, the list of phones that are both Without certified flickering And those who don’t do it The use of temporal tramenting has decreased to zero. Now, it is time for Google to work for new accessibility options to help a whole band of users to have the smartphones completely.
What is temporal traming?
The screens are generally made up of millions of pixels, all of which are individually displaying colors that make up the images we see on our phones. To make these colors, the pixels adjust the shade each of their red, green or blue sub-pixels. Think about it a bit like when Bob Ross dips his brush in a crimson red, then an azure blue to make a kind of pretty purple for a mountain landscape.
But temporal traming, also known as the FRC or control of the image frequency, is different. Instead of simply showing a solid set of colors to create a color, the temporal traming flashes subpixels between the colors to create a color that does not exist. Your eye sees this “new” color because this is how the human eye works. Flash something fairly fast in front of one, and it begins to see a solid image or in motion instead of a series of flashing images.
It is an intelligent engineering tip that allows R&D companies of dollars, which allows them to use cheaper panels and get away with it saying that their phones or displays display “billions of colors”, even if they cannot technically. But of course, just as is the case with PWM Dimming, display a flashing light or a color to some people will make them get headaches, nausea or, at worst, a crisis.
Avoid it is almost impossible
People sensitive to temporal features have much more difficulty finding apparatus appropriate for three main reasons. First, while certain supervisory companies easily list the FRCs on the specification sheets, smartphones companies do not do so.
This means that the only way to know if a phone or tablet uses soaking is to feel symptoms or find an examination that dives deep into the screen. I try to include these figures on any criticism I publish, but I am only one person, and there are far too many devices so that I can test by myself.
In addition to finding the existence of sparkling itself, there is no published rate to which these pixels sparkle. At least with PWM Dimming, most manufacturers now announce the existence of PWM gradation and the gradation rate. Brand phones like Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel operate at a very slow rate 240-480 Hz, while other brands like OnePlus and Honor push this number between 2160 Hz and 4320Hz. The faster, the better for humans.
No one knows how fast the pixels flash when the temporal trament is used, outside the engineering teams that create algorithms, of course. For this reason, there is no way to know which phones have a “safe” flicker and which are bad for you. All we know is that when phones use temporal tramages, some users experience real pain and cannot use these phones.
Finally, there is no color, application or even specific activity on the phone that could trigger time tramages to activate. Some companies use temporal features around the edge of the text to make it more fluid or more “readable”, while other companies can use it to improve animations and make them more attractive. It is a total mixed bag, and it is to determine the right phone an extraordinarily difficult process if you are sensitive!
If you want to test for yourself, I recommend This $ 20 smartphone microscope from Amazon. Find a phone that can make at least 240 IPS video capture in slow motion – I prefer the OnePlus 12 or OnePlus 13 because the two phones can capture the idle 480 IPS – and run the microscope on different parts of the screen.
I often test on the edges of the text, on different icons on the home screen, and on a rainbow gradient and a gradient grades. If you see pixels “dancing” between colors, it’s probably your display. Discover the GIF above to see what it might look like, as an example.
The right-handed sub-pixels permanently flash between two colors, while the screen on the left displays solid colors. It was captured on what looks like me like a united color, so this movement is not the result of an animation on the screen.
What is the solution?
The most immediate thing you can do right away is the AOSP number tracker jump and click on the +1 on the temporal traming problem. If you are assigned, share your story in the comments and officially put your name on the tracker. It’s like signing a petition, but with much more weight behind. This tells Android engineers that this problem should be prioritized in future Android updates. Otherwise, they have no idea that there is a problem!
Now on companies that make smartphones. Since 10 -bit color has become the new industry standard for display excellence, companies must use 10 -bit screens whenever possible. An 8-bit screen can display 256 different shades of red, green or blue in its sub-pixels, while a 10-bit screen increases up to 1024 possible colors per sub-pixel.
In general, only OLED can properly display the 10-bit color without any kind of nonsense. If you see an LCD screen that claims that it is 10 bits, the manufacturer is probably misleading. Even many 8 -bit LCD LCDs use 6 -bit panels and use FRC / dithering to obtain an 8 -bit or 10 -bit color palette.
The problem with the OLED is that it cannot be fully transported by DC as a traditional bulb. There is nothing like a completely sparkling Oled. It is impossible. Instead, there are “safety ranges” that exist for most users, but a subset of users will never be able to use OLED because of this problem.
These people need An accessibility option that allows them to completely deactivate the traming or the FRC. Otherwise, the only safety options are ENK E phones, and all of them have a kind of significant limitations for workflows or modern uses. I recently wrote about how TCL deleted temporal traming on its latest NXTPAPER 4.0 tablets when using specific parameters, and we must see other manufacturers start to do the same.
This is particularly important for LCD screens, because the most sensitive to sparkle users must choose between an LCD screen or an E ink device. The introduction of something like FRC / dithering to an LCD completely beats these screens as a safe support, and equipment manufacturers and operating systems developers like Google must implement means to completely deactivate.
The above -mentioned Android Bug Android report has already been assigned to an engineer and tagged as a “functionality request” in the hope of obtaining a new accessibility option for affected users. Google has implemented accessibility options for blind users for years, which make up statistically Less than 4% of the world’s population. We do not know the number of people negatively affected by the traming of colors, but we know that people who are Assigned by him cannot use any phone with him.
It is an important differentiating between certain accessibility options, which are made simply for reasons of comfort or convenience, and the one we ask Google to do. Without this new option, an entire subset of users may not be able to use Android phones, especially since the support of older phones ends.
Android is by far the largest operating system in the world, and this statistic does not change anytime soon. Now that we know that Google combines Chromeos and Android, this number will only increase. It’s now time to act, Google. I know you can do it, and now that you know that it is a problem, I hope it is only a matter of time before obtaining a fix.
The latest TCL tablet uses NXTPAPER 4.0, the new evolution of the unique EPAPER screen of TCL which offers even better eye comfort modes than previous generations. This, combined at an advantageous price and a huge battery makes it a wonderful tablet to read as late as you want in the night.
