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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Glare On Cellphones?
An anonymous reader writes: As far as I know, I am not particularly sensitive to glare; I've used CRTs in offices full of overhead fluorescent lights, and just ignored the terrible reflections, and I've worked in places where the natural sunlight cleverly funneled in by architects was bounced around by glass walls and mirrors in just the right way to irritate. Still, I never found it much of a problem. Now, though, I work in a field that has me both working outdoors a lot, and traveling by car a fair amount, too. Now that days are getting longer, especially up here in the Pacific Northwest, I know that I'll be squinting and cursing a lot at my phone. My question(s): Are there are any modern smart phones you can recommend with a truly or even passably day-light readable screen? I don't care if it's e-ink (that would be cool), transflective (long promised!) or maybe just a secondary screen with some daylight-readable technology. Barring that, how do you deal with glare on a phone, when you need to use it on a sunny day? Same answer could apply to laptop use, I suppose. Do you build a little glare shield, of the kind that camera operators use? Wear a giant hood of privacy and darkness? I know I'm not alone — I see lots of others squinting and cursing at their cell phones, cupping it with their hands at their eyes, or ducking into scant shade just to see whether the call that's coming is one they need to take, or to read a text. I've tried quite a few phones that have been praised by reviewers for their bright, crisp, daylight-friendly displays, but I think those reviewers probably lived in New York or San Francisco, and were reading in either shadow or fog, because even the brightest Samsungs, Motorolas, and LGs I've seen cannot hold a candle to the summer sun north of Seattle.
Just wait a few seconds, the rain will start back up soon enough.
I just don't go outside, and my mom's basement protects me from the harmful sunlight.
I don't get the point of glossy screens, ever.
Not on phones, not on monitors, not on tv's.
I was looking at HP laptops the other day and it's like they're going for hypergloss - this finish that makes every single dark part of the screen work like a mirror and reflects nearly perfectly every single ambient light around/behind you in your viewing cone.
Who - ever - wants a glossy screen on any such device?
-Styopa
Odd - usually cloudy days are the worst case. (Why? Because there's no angle at which you can rotate the phone to eliminate the specular reflectance from the cloudy sky.)
So it's strange that the OP is having issues in direct sun - in this case it's easy to rotate the phone so you don't see the one superbright specular highlight in the sky. (You will never see a display that is fully readable against a direct-sun specular...)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Turn your body so that the sun is directly behind you
this guy has them.
Talking about the guy posting a tech question anonymously on the internet or the guy posting a snide response anonymously on the internet?
I just turn the phone off and enjoy the sunny weather.
I don't know of any such phone, so I'll ask differently: what do you use the smartphone outdoors for?
You mention seeing who calls and reading texts; that I can do very well on my (non-smart but connected) Garmin Fenix watch, which is very readable outdoors (the downside being the large number of software bugs). If you're looking at maps/routing, there are quite good GPS devices with transreflective displays (so the sunnier the better).
take a fine grit sandpaper and scratch your screen everywhere. it is a poor mans matte finish.
"How do you deal with the effects of electromagnetic radiation?"
"You interpose a material that stops it"
http://cdn.instructables.com/F...
Their laptop for children used grayscale only for sunlight, for obvious power consumption reasons, and an effective low power color display for night use. I frankly wish most modern cell phones would use the same technolgy. I have no need to see pretty colors for a dozen icons on my cell phone, or for fancy borders on text messaging, email, or phone interfaces.
I just assume that is the way it works on most phones. I increase brightness and I use high contrast colour schemes. I prefer dark backgrounds with bright letters.
One side usual color LCD, other side e-paper. A very good idea, a very idiosyncratic implementation, tough.
Because, if not, get a cheapo phone with a black and white LCD display; I have an old Moto in each car's glovebox, bought for nothing a while ago.
Can't remember the model number...Google is your friend. Does nothing much except call and SMS, but if one of the family has an emergency and a dead battery/smashed phone, (always a danger with today's phones), they can drag the Moto out and get calling. The battery lasts for months when turned off.
***pause while does a quick google***
Damn, the ones I have are like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Motorola...
Except this one is 450 bucks, and I paid about 20 for mine many years ago...
I use my iPhone in full sunlight here in SoCal all the time. I've not noticed it not being bright enough.
If you're primarily interested in who's calling and notifications, you might consider an eInk based smartwatch like the Pebble. While it won't improve the screen on your phone, it will at least ensure that the important stuff can be read in bright sunlight.
Captain Obvious strikes again!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Tilt the screen so that the glare doesn't bounce into your face.
Done.
No, in fact this is even MORE of a problem in the third world, where landlines are almost entirely non-existent, people spend more time outdoors, and (in much of the third world) it's quite sunny.
had this last year really bad and saw one of the sleazy doctors at an eye glass store. he wrote me a weak prescription for reading glasses. i have a $99 set of warby parkers now and the coating on there is pretty good. but this week i'll probably spend $500 or more for nice Alain Mikli glasses with Prevencia anti-glare and blue light coating. just be careful with eyeglass stores. it's like disney world and the doctors are there for sales leads. like on disney rides, you come out into the store and pressured to buy on the spot. research your frames first
I don't even run a screen protector any more. When I do get glare, I tilt the screen slightly and it goes away. I guess the answer is "wrists"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have one of these - https://yotaphone.com/gb-en/
It's brilliant, OLED screen on the front for normal use and an eInk on the back for sunlight/reading - i use it mainly with the kindle app, but you can reflect any app or the main screen to it; it's amazingly good at moving images too - there is something oddly satisfying about watching youtube on a eInk display!
That dude staring back at me is so fucking handsome, I just start giggling. What does everyone else do?
Oh, sorry. You don't have that problem.
it's not great but iphones have better sunlight usage screens i've seen. better than my Galaxy s6 too and better than every other android phone i've used. and turn the brightness all the way up
I have an LG Flex, the curved screen makes it easy to twist the phone so the glare isn't on the part of the screen that I'm reading.
In the third world they know that putting your hand over the screen and squinting works.
We can't use that method here in the first world. We need a solution, dammit!
No sig today...
1-2 years ago or so I was looking for a phone usable in a bubble-canopy (all glass roof) aircraft (not usable to do phone calls of course...).
I found this:
http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note3_ShootOut_1.htm ("the most impressive advancement for the Note 3 is its significantly brighter screen, which hits an incredible 660 cd/m2 in high ambient light, the brightest mobile display we have ever tested in the Shoot-Out series."), got one, and haven't been disappointed. Its readable pretty well even in high sunlight conditions. Also, the battery is big (large phone), lasting long enough even when the screen is running on max.
Looks like the successors got even better (http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note5_ShootOut_1.htm), but I haven't felt the need to upgrade.
The normal-sized ones have displays that aren't as bright, and I would guess that battery drain might be more of a problem than on the Notes.
Believe it or not, the blue sky on a clear day has about an order of magnitude greater luminous intensity than an overcast sky does, so even in the shade it is much easier to see a device when overcast. The total illumination on a cloudy day is only about 1% of that experienced on a sunny day in direct sunlight. This isn't generally perceived as most human sensory perception is relative rather than absolute and human eyes have utterly astonishing dynamic range.
I wouldn't call any device today exceptional in it's outdoor visibility, but FWIW some of the brighter AMOLED screens seem to work best for me. A matte screen cover can help.
for the longest worded question i have seen in a while
The solution is More Government!
I have a Lumia 1520 and the sunlight readability is awesome.
I live in Brazil, the sun is my friend.
I've been dreaming for years of a display that's full color, high resolution (print quality, 300 dpi at least), fast unlike e-ink, and completely 100% reflective. Like the page of a magazine. From cars with their now ubiquitos center console screens to farm machines would be ideal uses of such a screen. Heck I'd prefer watching TV and movies on a large, reflective screen in a well-lit room. Perhaps even photo editing on a such a screen would be useful as the image could look just like the print final copy.
I had high hopes for the several transflective technologies that came and went over the years like Pixel Qi. Too bad they never panned out, though for some applications grey scale in the sunlight would be okay.
We can dream. I'm not hopeful, but it sure would be awesome for so many applications.
I've never experienced this problem and I'm outside all the time. The only problem I encounter is the screen not being bright enough to be visible in the sun. That's usually solved by putting my hand over the phone so less light hits it, and became a nearly non-existent problem when I got a new phone that was bright enough.
I don't think I've ever even heard someone complain about -glare- on a smartphone before. I thought that was a problem that only really happened with monitors and televisions.
These days?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
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Printed paper hasn't any glare issue.
The guy posting the question, obviously. The premise of the question and the way in which it has been posted makes it out as a serious issue, almost a crisis.
Hipsters...
I'm in the PNW, I know what the sun is like here. I run BlackBerry 9900 or Q10 and haven't had any problems outdoors with the screens and readability. I've even got them cranked to _minimum_ brightness
Have you tried polarized glasses or those hi contrast glasses that shooters where?
That Motorola F3 is a hershey bar phone. The type that started the term "butt dialing."
A better type of phone is the "flip phone" or the "slider phone." The Flip phone in particular
is popular with construction workers etc. where a smart phone would die in a day or two.
A friend of mine is a welder, and his flip phone skin looks like the surface of the moon, yet
it keeps on working. And like Bearhouse said, the battery lasts all week or more.
I epoxied one of these to my cellphones screen, no more glare, and the resolution is like watching a wide screen HDTV. http://amzn.com/B005INALWG
...glare becomes a common problem. Maybe its time to get a checkup on your eyes. It can't hurt to rule out glaucoma while your getting checkup.
Greed is the root of all evil.
If there's enough ambient light, especially sunlight, to cause glare on your phone screen, the first thing you should do is put your goddamn phone away and do something else. It's nice outside. The Sun is shining. Take your dog for a walk. Throw circular plastic discs with your girlfriend. Fly a kite. Go for a bike ride.
There are so many better things to do than to waste life away twiddling on a cell phone.
You're holding it wrong.
But if the screen is anti-glare, making funny faces at it isn't going to work.
Ezekiel 23:20
Sunlight was never an issue. Sadly Microsoft did everything they could to kill Windows Phone.
I've used CRTs in offices full of overhead fluorescent lights, and just ignored the terrible reflections
You're working in some really fucked up offices if you actually have fluorescents reflecting off your monitors, must be a bay-area hipster douche.
I like my Yotaphone 2 ... use it anywhere ... no glare problems at all
http://www.amazon.com/Smartpho...
His biggest problem is that he's a privileged cocksucker who probably complains about every inconvenience in his precious widdle life.
... on my Samsung S5, full brightness in 12Noon sun is quite usable... never had an issue.
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
First, get into the shade.
Second, wear a black t-shirt.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
For more than a decade I've been waiting for the "interferometric modulator" (iMod) display to be perfected enough for mass production. Quallcomm bought the technology and has had difficulties with the yield quality of its production runs. I keep thinking that if I wait long enough, the bugs will get ironed out, and then finally someone will be making a smartphone I would actually want to own.
You do mention driving, but I'm going to assume you're not operating your phone or laptop while you're actually driving. If this is not a valid assumption, then don't do that. I'm assuming at the very least that if you're in a motor vehicle, when you're operating your device the vehicle is stopped and not in gear. You state, "even the brightest Samsungs, Motorolas, and LGs I've seen cannot hold a candle to the summer sun north of Seattle." One other thing there is a lot of in the area north of Seattle is trees. Put one between you and the sun. Problem solved. If that's not enough, throw a towel over both your head and the device. If it was good enough for Douglas Adams, it's good enough for me. If that's not sufficient, you could bring your device down here and try to use it in the less well vegetated parts of the Mojave Desert, at which point I'm betting that the Seattle sun wouldn't seem so bad.
iPhones will wash out and be unreadable in direct sunlight. No problem. People just look at me funny while I intone "Call Mother?" or "Navigate to Joseph Blow!"
Summary asks to reduce glare, but then describes a problem with brightness. Glare is a hotspot created by a bright light source reflecting off a screen displaying a dark image. Even though coated glass only reflects less than 1% of the light that strikes it, with a sufficiently bright external light, the reflection can be brighter than the image. And you get glare. The easy fix for glare is to orient the screen so you no longer see the reflection, or a matte screen protector which will diffuse the reflection (spread it out so any one part is no longer brighter than the image on the screen).
Insufficient brightness is a different matter. It has to do with the brightness of the the screen relative to the surroundings. Your pupils will contract to restrict light based on the brightness of the surroundings. Unfortunately this will also restrict light coming from the screen. So the only thing you can do is to reduce the brightness of the surroundings. Cupping your hands around the screen to block outside light is one obvious way, if clumsy. A more practical way is to move to an environment where the background is not so bright. Looking down at your phone while you're walking on a white sunlit sidewalk will just make your pupils smaller and the screen harder to see. Walking on dark green grass will allow your pupils to dilate a bit, allowing more light from the screen into your eyes. (This is also why a viewing bright screen in a dark room causes eyestrain - your pupils constantly try to adjust between the bright screen and the dark surroundings. The most comfortable viewing is when the screen and the surroundings are about the same brightness.)
To a lesser extent the problem is also the brightness of your black point. The contrast ratio (ratio of brightest white to darkest black) of your screen is a big factor in legibility. In sunlight, the black point is raised by sunlight bouncing off the black screen. It's not perfectly black, so the black screen basically becomes gray in sunlight. Meanwhile, the white point is still limited by the strength of your backlight (unless you've got a transreflective screen). This reduces the contrast ratio and reduces legibility. The simple fix is to hold the screen in the shade, out of direct sunlight.
One trick that might work is polarized sunglasses. Most LCD screens give off polarized light. Most of the light from the background is unpolarized. Polarized sunglasses will cut the brightness of this unpolarized background light by 50%, but will not appreciably dim the brightness of the LCD screen. The downside is that this will only work in one orientation. On most phones it's portrait mode - in landscape mode the screen becomes completely black when viewed through polarized glasses. Some LCD screens attempt to allow both orientations to be used with polarized glasses by polarizing at 45 degrees. This means polarized glasses will only be most effective if viewing the screen at this 45 degree angle. In landscape or portrait mode, the glasses will allow 70.7% of the screen light through, which is better than the 50% of the background light, but not the optimal 2:1 ratio. (There are some very rare screens which use a quarter wave plate to eliminate the polarization entirely. And AMOLED screens are unpolarized, though I've seen polarized stress lines in some of the screen glass from manufacturing. Basically, get yourself a cheap pair of polarized glasses and try it out on different screens.)
People love to hate on Windows Phone, but the Nokia/Lumia hardware is top-notch. Even their low-end phones are quite readable in bright sunlight, and the touch screens work with modestly thick gloves, too.
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I'd love something like that too, I'd even settle for color eink for the time being (since reading would be my most important application) but it seems we're not getting nearer to it.
Some years ago eink was all the rage, nowadays I don't follow the news so much but it seems there's no progress in that area.
"Yeah, you see, I couldn't even make out the swipe area to accept your call, the phone was all reflecting and stuff. Yeah, I was outside all day long."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not much problem to me - I am using prescription glasses with polarized filter anyway.
It is enough to check time, and select caller from the contact list.
Uh oh - I am using dumb-phone with physical keys.
with an E-Ink display.
Damn... I'm looking good!
No, you misunderstand. The screen doesn't really prevent glare, it is merely against glare. It's a philosophical position rather than an effective solution.
Look, you know those "Take Back the Night" marches? It's like that. It's seriously bad karma to speak against them, but for those of us with a cynical bent we think, "well if marching is all it takes then I guess the problem is now solved."
And now that I think about it, most anti-glare technology has about the same level of effectiveness too.
I don't think the FBI ever really needed to get into the phone. They have all the metadata and they know he never used the phone for personal business. They are chasing a pig in a poke. I would love to get a FOI on what was on the phone for data. That being said I believe that the FBI always had at their disposal to get the data themselves. It's just an iPhone 5c so it does not even have the fingerprint deal yet. Also I think the FBI might have thought hey we might just throw Apple a bone and let them help us out so people don't think their protection is crap, which it probably is. Since Apple did not play nice the FBI is now saying, hey we got and guess what Apple security is crap. Poor Apple they are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. One thing I do know is they now need to go back to square one with their security...
Paul E. Bahre
I use a big dense OLED screen and an anti-glare film applied (Aiino). Very good results. (The OLED will be instrumental in also using the device in the opposite environment of relative darkness: since "black pixels are simply off", the light emission can be very efficient if you use light-on-dark configurations, and easy on the eyes). Although, to some research OLED screens may suffer from direct sunlight more than traditional displays.
Maybe you could be interested in phones offering an EPD side, like the Yota 2
For actual work outdoors, there are Android tablets using ElectroPhoretic (E-Ink) Displays, and - depending on the task - they can be *very* effective.
Get out of the harmful rays of the sun and get under some shade. Your phone is telling you that you don't need all that UV. So it's a helpful feature for the sake of your own health.
Paul E. Bahre
To avoid glare, I configure my cellphone to use ground start. Loop start is, like, soooo 1990's.
Before anyone accuses me of posting an Apple advertisement, I'll say that I am sure that recent phones from other brands have probably also improved a lot in terms of daylight usability. They all buy their screens from the same small group of manufacturers, after all. But what I really mean to point out is: if you have an older smartphone that is difficult to use in broad daylight, shop around and try some of the newer models.
I doubt you'll have much luck finding phones with e-ink screens. My experience running a modified version of Android on a Nook convinced me that that just doesn't work well; e-ink updates really slowly, and needs to be "shaken up" periodically (where the screen goes all black and then all white, before repainting the UI), all of which looks like crap when you're trying to use standard smartphone apps that are constantly doing things that e-ink sucks at, like scrolling or animations.