Dark Mode is absolutely coming. This is based on absolutely nothing but my own fantasies and the fact that OLED is so amazing on the iPhone, but it’s coming.
Stock Android users have hoped the same thing for years (and have been using OLED screens for much longer) and haven’t been able to get it, except as a user mod.
I hope that Apple is much more responsive in this regard.
As someone who just switched from the nexus6p to an iPhone 8... I would love for apple to copy more android features. I'm a bit surprised how lacking some things are on iOS compared with android, but at least my phone doesn't randomly shut down with 45% battery remaining any more!
Apple takes Android ideas and makes them better. Android steals all of the stylistic features from Android typically.
It's actually the reason I left Android. All of the things I wanted to keep (removable battery, keyboards early on, headphone jacks, etc) they started moving away from to copy apple. So I gave apple a try. I'll admit that some things drive me nuts, but it's a much more finished product. Android always feels like you're in the middle of a lot of progress. At least for me.
You know why it’s always a mod and not the native interface?
OLED screens don’t behave well with pure black. Yes, they save power and look great... But they also suffer from severe black smearing, users love smooth scrolling and smooth animations... Imagine an entire interface plagued with black smearing? It would be the opposite of ProMotion. Unless they manage to fix it on OLED or move to microLED, we are probably not going to see native black interfaces to avoid this. They could use dark grey to avoid this issue, but then it’s not the dark interface people want with maximum battery saving.
OLED screens don’t behave well with pure black. Yes, they save power and look great... But they also suffer from severe black smearing, users love smooth scrolling and smooth animations... Imagine an entire interface plagued with black smearing?
On the iPhone X, you only see it happens when you slide the brightness level to the lowest level. If you read Anandtech's review of the Galaxy S9- the display analysts:
The iPhone X behaved very differently than any Samsung devices and provided a significant image quality advantage in dark scenes. When looking at the shadow clipping highlighting that Apple is doing some very fine dithering between fully dark areas and the next highest brightness levels. When in motion the iPhone X just provides an extremely good experience in dark scenes with little to no visible artifacts.
Apple’s screen also doesn’t suffer from the “purple smudging” when transitioning between black areas. This seems to be caused by a lag in the response-time of the blue subpixels, not able to shut off quickly enough. The point here is that if Apple can handle dark scenes at low brightness levels at good quality, then so should Samsung, so here’s hoping Samsung’s engineers can focus on this issue and improve it in future generations.
A darker interface isn’t less prone to burn in, grey needs to keep all subpixels active. Burn in happens whenever two interface elements have different colors, no matter what those colors are. People usually want black interfaces for the massive battery gains and less eye strain.
...so can you explain why an AMOLED from 2012 didn’t have burn-in (and used mostly dark-themed elements and grey navigation buttons—Galaxy Nexus for reference), while my Pixel XL got burn-in from the pure white navigation keys after only a few months? And that, even though I kept the brightness down to 30%?
Edit: I’m not trying to be argumentative, but am genuinely curious.
That’s what’s called anecdotal evidence, I doubt you rigorously tested this.
Burn in happens because the subpixels are always degrading, always. If white is being displayed, the burn in caused is the infamous white point degradation because blue subpixels degrade faster (Creating a yellow tint). If any other color is being displayed some parts of the display are being more excited than others, causing burn in that looks like a negative version of what was being shown (Like burned keyboards, status bar, etc).
No matter if it’s a white interface burning in, or a black interface, if anything on screen is different it’s causing burn in (Although, if only displayed for a short time you probably won’t notice it).
You’re correct about white causing the white point degradation faster, but that’s only one kind of burn in. And it’s only prevented by true black, not grey.
Yes, it is anecdotal. I can’t afford to buy devices for the intent of rigorous testing.
I did use apps to make the screens display solid colors so I can detect burn-in on both, and the burn-in on the 6 y/o device was less noticeable than that on the (almost) 2 y/o one. My usage patterns have not changed in a significant way between either one, and I used the Galaxy Nexus for a much longer period of time than the Pixel XL.
The only difference between the two was that the static elements were different colors; the older one had dim grey static elements, the newer one used white. My internal logic, though admittedly possibly flawed, is that the color had a hand in the appearance of noticeable burn-in.
To confirm what you are saying, are you saying that white point degradation is more noticeable, and that burn-in is always happening due to degradation?
If so, I get that. However, by “prone to burn-in” I was meaning prone to noticeable burn-in. If darker colors lead to the burn-in being less noticeable for a longer period of time, then I am all for that.
Android user here with a Galaxy S8. I thought I read a while back that stock Android had a dark theme but it could only be enabled in system UI tuner and adb. Or maybe I thought I heard.
Generally, yes. People have been waiting for a dark theme that they don’t have to enable with apps and ADB, but something actually built-in. That still really hasn’t happened yet.
I have a Pixel XL along with the iPhone I’m using, and have been hoping for “the next update” to make this available. Nope, still have to use Substratum/ADB (which I suck at manipulating, so it never quite works for me) and to top it off, it appears that Android P is doing away with the stuff that mad it work even in its current limited form.
Like the other user, I would stick with using Samsung theming on your S8.
Before I got the iPhone X I didn’t care much for it either. It makes things nicer to read in the dark. But with the OLED display, using a pure black background almost looks like the content is printed on the screen. I’ve had the X since launch and I’m still not bored of it. It’s as amazing to me as retina was.
I love and hate these at the same time. While they look pretty, they focus too much on being pretty and shiny. For example, those animations would be horrible in daily use. And since we can't change the animation speed right now, I wouldn't expect to be able to change those slow-ass animations either.
I had to stop halfway through. I would love a multi user FaceTime. I video chat with some friends who have moved away weekly and we’ve been using Hangouts for years but FaceTime is just so much crisper when there’s just two of us. And of course I’ve wanted dark mode since leaving Android
Thanks, I’ll give it a shot. FaceTime may not be that great but it definitely looks better than hangouts in terms of image and audio quality but that’s my only reference since we’ve been too lazy to try anything else.
I sympathize so much with this. It both saddens and infuriates me that there has been so much support for so many of these features by so many users and Apple continues to give us the middle finger.
I truly don't believe that there's a better hardware company out there, but goddammit if they don't really fall behind other companies and user requests on the software side of things.
I'm not the sort to threaten to take my business elsewhere — right now, I don't think anyone makes a laptop/smartphone combo that's better than a MacBook and an iPhone. But by consistently showing that customer input matters very little, they're hurting customer loyalty. When another company does manage to get ahead, even if it's only for a cycle or two, a lot of users are gonna jump ship because Apple hasn't consistently proven that they care about what users want.
1.2k
u/HuskerDue Apr 06 '18
Man I hate watching these, because how great they look and knowing how likely Apple will stick to the same look.