Measuring the brightest iPhone ever: iPhone X | Hacker News Reader

Measuring the brightest iPhone ever: iPhone X

justgetflux.com

48 pointsPascLeRasc52 comments

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

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.

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

2. https://fluxometer.com/rainbow/#!id=NEC%20Diamondtron%20CRT/...

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.

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.

In fairness, flux was around before (by seven years) the OS feature.

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.

Yep, sorry they got sherlocked but at least it's built-in to both iOS and macOS now :)

> You're unlikely to get impartial information from the people making flux.

Why not? They spent years of their lives making a not-very-lucrative career choice because they believed in the importance of their cause. I would expect them to be better read and more up to date on the relevant scientific research than anyone working for the phone vendors.

They've been doing suspicious things in order to do that, though. Remember the time they offered the app as an Xcode project so that people could self-sign it, and it ended up being an opaque binary being copied to the device rather than the source code being built and installed?

They were trying to offer what they considered to be an important public service, in the only way they could figure out to possibly do it, under the constraints of the time.

The mechanism was a poor one, but they didn’t have any other choices (besides giving up and effectively conceding that people’s circadian rhythms would be disrupted by the target devices with no ability for a third party to offer any mitigation, at a time when it seemed like the phone vendor had no interest in the topic whatsoever).

This isn’t “suspicious” if you take a moment to understand what the developers view as their mission. Indeed, it is strong evidence that they are treating this project first and foremost as a cause to promote / public service, rather than a business to profit from.

If your personal top priority is phone security rather than health, and you are inherently suspicious of all software developers, then of course you will recommend people not side load applications which haven’t been carefully vetted by Apple. That is also a reasonable position to take. If you are Apple, there are obviously good reasons to shut down any developer’s ability to pursue such a workaround of platform policies.

But the argument that willingness to provide a free tool which can be sideloaded on a phone in contravention of platform policy indicates willingness to distort scientific evidence just doesn’t hold water. The two things are entirely unrelated.

I'm not sure if you're aware of the circumstances surrounding the fiasco, so I'm going to recap the timeline here:

WWDC 2015: Apple allows for sideloading apps through Xcode without a paid developer program account.

~November 10, 2015: f.lux releases their product for sideloading on iOS (it was previously only available for jailbroken devices) as an Xcode project that ran scripts to install a opaque binary.

~November 12, 2015: f.lux receives a notice from Apple to stop distributing f.lux in this manner.

~2016: Apple restricts the users not enrolled in the developer program to sideloading just three apps, and only for seven days, without requiring a resign.

So, as you can see, f.lux basically put in extra effort to make sure their code was not distributed with their binary release, and this made Apple get mad at them–so much so that they significantly curtailed the sideloading abilities of the free developer program. Note that there was no issue here of using private APIs–there are already a couple open source apps performing similar functionality with a large number of users that Apple had turned a blind eye to. The issue was that this was being used to load uninspectible code onto users' devices, which sooner or later may have led to a bunch of users installing malware.

> The issue was that this was being used to load uninspectible code onto users' devices, which sooner or later may have led to a bunch of users installing malware.

It is entirely reasonable to prioritize malware above circadian rhythms. (And e.g. Apple’s response is predictable.) This is just not the same as the priorities of the Flux developers.

I feel like you are deliberately missing my previous point. Do you understand what their motives and reasoning process were? Can you see why I think their practice has nothing to do with their likelihood of distorting scientific research about vision or sleep science?

Relating the two seems to me like seeing a pedestrian crossing the street in the middle of the block and guessing that they probably don’t tip restaurant servers.

I'm not sure about the total affect on sleep, but another affect of the blueish lights is macular degeneration, a google search brings up a lot of resources on it. From what I understand, your eyes have a hard time focusing on bluish light, so the constant strain increases the chances of contracting age-related blindness.

> 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.

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

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

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

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

If you 3D Touch on the brightness slider in control center it comes up, or long press on non 3D Touch phone.

That only shows the Night Shift toggle as far as I was aware.

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.

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

On my Android phone, you can use night-light which just changes the spectrum of photons that hit your eye. The theory is pretty simple -- since lower wavelength photons have less energy than higher wavelength photons, the radiation ends up having less destructive potential. I would consider that an improvement.

That's not it at all and nobody cares about "destructive potential" of screen-emitted photons, though. The actual reasoning behind shift to lower wavelengths is that our circadian rhythms are entrained by ambient light, with "blue" light being assumed as indicative of daytime and "red" tones – of sunset (ergo, time to ramp up melatonin secretion and prepare to sleep).

> That's not it at all and nobody cares

FYI - macular degeneration and circadian rhythm disruption are not mutually exclusive, and lots of people try avoid both of these things...

But is there actually any scientific proof of something like this? The studies on the effects of blue light concern way different levels of luminous output.

Your mileage may vary, but as someone with retinal degeneration it makes a pretty big difference. Photons in the red wavelengths of light carry less energy and put a lot less stress on the retina. Screens are pretty unpleasant for me to use unless they have a color filter on them, and it's the same reason I always keep deep red sunglasses on.

I'm not an expert, but somehow I doubt the strain your eyes feel is directly caused by the energy of a photon.

Retinal degeneration patients are all advised to avoid blue light exposure for this reason. Not only is there a great deal of research to back it up, but subjectively blue light also makes the photopsias and afterimages worse.

Can you link a source? I've found a lot of sites claiming blue light is bad, without a real reason. This[1] site seems to support my uncertainty.

[1]: https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/should-you-be...

Also re: photopsias, and strain.

> The wavelength of light may also affect the photophobia percept. Main et al. (103) found that shorter wavelength (blue) light was more uncomfortable for subjects with migraine than for those with tension-type headache or controls. These investigators also reported that longer wavelength (red) light was also less comfortable for subjects with migraine (103).

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485070/#!po=0....

Yea downvote me for asking... y'all need to learn to ask.

You said said that even though you were probably uniformed (not an expert) you thought that somebody with firsthand experience was probably wrong.

So technically you learn to need learn (how) to ask.

I'm guessing you wanted to ask something along the lines of: "I would not have thought that. Could you point me to some sources that shaped that line of thinking?"

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).

>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.

Do you get less blue light or do you get more red light?

I use flux like stuff everywhere because it feels better but I never really analysed if there is less blue light.

I have an iPad with True Tone -- I was originally skeptical (the colors aren't accurate!), but subjectively I end up picking up my iPad instead of my phone quite a bit just to avoid the harsh "blue" light. I have no idea what the impact is on my sleep, but it feels like a nice feature to have anyway.

See, that's the problem with red-light reduction software: it seems like it does something nice, but there doesn't seem to be any concrete evidence supporting it other than personal anecdotes of "I can live without this anymore". I haven't seen a study done yet that says "f.lux helps you get better sleep, and not because it makes your phone's colors look horrible".

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

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

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.

>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.

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!

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) 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...

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The author uses metric units except in the case of viewing distance, which is likely to present a more intuitive distance to the (I assume) primarily American audience. The mix of metric and imperial is a bit weird, but you can see it as a case of using metric where the things being measured have a strong convention of metric units (wavelength, luminance) and using imperial where it doesn't really matter (viewing distance).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com