I am disappointed that many phones/tablets don't go very dim.
From flagship to cheap, it seems that if you're in a pitch black room and check the time on your phone, the light will illuminate the whole room, even on the dimmest setting.
I actually modded my phone by putting a resistor in the LED backlight circuit, which divided the brightness by 1000 - and it was still plenty bright at night (human eyes are logarithmic, so dividing the brightness by 1000 doesn't have as much visual impact as you'd expect).
A Macbook's minimum brightness is quite bright. The thing that annoys me no end is that if you hit the "dim" button when it's at minimum brightness, it goes black - but fades out slowly and smoothly. So they're clearly capable of being dimmer, but Apple decided we're not allowed that.
I used to feel this way, but since learning that much of the advanced functionality is unlocked by Opt/Shift/Ctrl or some combo of them + click, I find myself digging that consistency more and more. At this point if I don’t see the option I need, I know 9/10 it’ll show up when I opt+click.
I have a small python script responsible for dimming my thinkpad + external display; it takes an argument like 'b * 0.95' for 5% reduction, reads HW + SW brightness, and lowers HW brightness to minimum before then reducing the SW brightness.
Pretty nice and the only recent change I've made is making it re-evaluate the expression based on frequency of keystrokes (so 3 brightness-down keys in 1s becomes 9 evaluated decreases in brightness).
iOS actually has a hard to find setting that lets you make the screen super dim. It's been a lifesaver when using my phone in the evening. To enable it go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Zoom and then tap the Zoom toggle switch.
Once that's enabled iOS will now bring up a super secret popup menu whenever you double tap the screen with three fingers. From the little popup menu go to Choose Filter -> Low Light and your screen will go dimmer than is normally possible. With this on and the normal brightness mode set to its lowest setting the screen can get quite dim indeed.
There’s two settings you can use in tandem to get an OLED iPhone brightness even lower than that.
First is the zoom trick you’ve already described, then you can use the “reduce white point” display accessibility setting to apply even more darkening.
With minimum display brightness, low-light zoom mode and white point reduction set to 100%, the display gets very very dim. If you do this in normal lighting conditions, the display is basically impossible to see.
> Once that's enabled iOS will now bring up a super secret popup menu whenever you double tap the screen with three fingers.
On current iOS you don't need to be in zoom and double tap. The zoom filter is also available by tapping the "Zoom Filter" setting which is 6 items below the Zoom setting in Settings -> Accessibility -> Zoom. The double tap in zoom thing is there to make it easy to quickly change the filter while zoomed.
This and the white point setting void-pointer suggested are both controllable from Shortcuts.
There is a Zoom action that supports turning zoom on, off, or toggling it, a White Point action that supports turning it on or off, and a Brightness action that supports setting the brightness to a given percentage or asking for the brightness.
I just tried making two Shortcuts, "Low Light" and "Normal Light".
Low Light:
Turn Zoom On
Turn White Point On
Set Brightness to 0%
"Hey Siri, Low Light" then works. It does leave you zoomed, so you need to cancel that, but then you are left at 0% brightness and whatever Zoom filter you have set is in effect. "Turn White Point On" will set the white point reduction to whatever percentage you have it set to in the Reduce White Point system settings.
Normal Light:
Turn Zoom Off
Turn White Point Off
Set Brightness to <ask each time>
That does what you'd expect. Siri asks you what brightness you want from 0 to 1. You can change that to a specific percentage if you don't want to be prompted.
PS: This only fully works on iOS. On iPadOS zoom filters only work while actually zooming, and then only apply to what is shown in the zoom rectangle. On iOS the zoom filter applies when zoom is enabled regardless of whether or not you are actually zoomed.
The white point reduction does work on iPadOS so you do get some lowering of minimum brightness but not as much as on iOS when you can use both.
Yes, I use this trick. You can adjust the filter to your heart's content. But I agree with the parent here that it should go dimmer as-is and we shouldn't need this. I'm not sure how light perception works, if it's a logarithmic thing like noise, but if not, this scale should probably be logarithmic instead. Or even moreso if it already is. Because I think we generally don't care exactly how bright it is if it's bright daylight and we need to max it, but conversely care much more for reaching the dimmest levels if we're in bed (or if we don't care, we probably should according to the article).
iphones are all OLED now, so there is no distinction.
On an old LCD display there are some filters that do a linear/nonlinear mapping from 0->255 brightness to 0->64 for example, leaving the actual backlight at the same brightness. The downside is that colour banding and quantization start to get really bad - and 'black' starts to look very non-black.
My older iphone is not oled so that would explain why I did not like this setting when I tried it some time ago like what you say about blacks looking out of balance. Thanks
My iPhone can go super dim, to the point that it's hard to see in a dark room. I use no special features.
Also, Kobo's eBook readers can go very very dim, and can be comfortably read in a zero light room. The max brightness I use is 29%-31%, dependent on lighting. My reader has a fixed light, but newer ones also adjust light temperature automagically, and much more comfortable to read (got one as a present for my dad).
I keep Extra Dim on at all times to lower the peak nits and to further dim the screen when using Night Light to read after dark.
The biggest saviors to my longtime night reading habits, though, have been OLED and how many websites and ebook apps have competent true black dark modes.
Another solution may be to use filtering glasses. Not "blue light glasses" but an FL-41 tint, which can help with migraines, light-sensitive conditions, and circadian rhythm issues[0]. This is a pinkish or amber-ish color tint.
What I find far more concerning is the brief mention in the article about the explosion in outdoor lighting, which is massively disrupting the little remaining wildlife we have left (and nevermind destroying any hope of a glimpse t a dark sky). And there is absolutely zero reason for it other than ignorant wrong ideas that it helps traffic accidents or reduces crime (it does the opposite). Calling it cargo-culting would be kind.
One of my favorite features on my Pixel 7 Pro is the "Extra Dim" feature, especially since the Netflix app has started enforcing a minimum brightness level that's much too high in dark environments.
There’s a full-color dimming filter in Accessibility -> Zoom -> Zoom Filter -> Low Light. You can assign it to the accessibility shortcut for quick access.
They do... But thats down to poor design decisions.
Human vision extends from about 10^5 cd/m^2 to 10^-5 cd/m^2 [1].
Typical backlights use something like PWM to modulate the brightness. That means you need to be able to scale your backlight by a factor of 10^10 to cover the whole human vision range. And if your CPU runs at 1 Ghz (10^9), then at the dimmest setting then even being on for a single clock cycle would be a flash every 10 seconds - clearly unacceptable, and even then, few backlight controllers could handle a 1 nanosecond pulse!
The fix is to use PWM combined with settable 'modes'. The modes could be 'bright light' (using all the backlight LED's, perhaps a few watts total), and a dim light mode, which uses just one LED through a high value resistor, of just a few tens of microwatts. Your two modes have a factor of 10^5 between them in brightness. So now the PWM on your CPU only needs a resolution of 10^5, which it can do.
> That means you need to be able to scale your backlight by a factor of 10^10 to cover the whole human vision range.
Uh, phones don't produce brightness that high. And the low range is "too low" for usefulness anyway. Your math is off by few factors
> And if your CPU runs at 1 Ghz (10^9), then at the dimmest setting then even being on for a single clock cycle would be a flash every 10 seconds - clearly unacceptable, and even then, few backlight controllers could handle a 1 nanosecond pulse!
CPU is not doing PWM, it's separate chip
And you can't realistically have more than few kHz of PWM frequency anyway coz of losses.
It's not really a technical problem in the first place, it's easy technically, just have 2 current sources, when you need low light you just PWM the low current one. And not "just putting resistor in series", that's extremely wasteful, or "single led" that would just not illuminate evenly.
Unfortunately at these low currents, you tend to get a tiny amount of leakage across the LED junction - just a few microamps, but trying to make a small amount of light it becomes an issue. Worse, you can't even calibrate for it because the leakage is highly temperature dependant.
Compare your hypothetical 10^10 range to the range offered by typical LCD monitors, where maximum is in the 300...400 cd/m² range and a minimum brightness less than 30 cd/m² is "outstanding". I.e. a 1:10 range.
This is how I activate/deactivate the “Zoom” accessibility setting with the “Low Light” filter (and the zoom level stays at 100% unless I double triple-finger tap!)
Also a Pixel owner - Try wiggling the light as you walk.
Your motion sensing kicks in before either your focus or dark vision, and even if you can't "see" it, your brain can get enough information to let you navigate.
From flagship to cheap, it seems that if you're in a pitch black room and check the time on your phone, the light will illuminate the whole room, even on the dimmest setting.
I actually modded my phone by putting a resistor in the LED backlight circuit, which divided the brightness by 1000 - and it was still plenty bright at night (human eyes are logarithmic, so dividing the brightness by 1000 doesn't have as much visual impact as you'd expect).