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Go Gray, Not Cray: Why You Should Grayscale Your Phone

sami.eljabali.org

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: Go Gray, Not Cray: Why You Should Grayscale Your Phone

#11
You know avoiding the pain, struggle and pseudo-science of gray pixels… you could just turn every notification off and remove any social media. Call me crazy, but I reckon this will go a lot further than any monochromatic color scheme in achieving the desired results.

Re: Go Gray, Not Cray: Why You Should Grayscale Your Phone

#12

You know avoiding the pain, struggle and pseudo-science of gray pixels… you could just turn every notification off and remove any social media. Call me crazy, but I reckon this will go a lot further than any monochromatic color scheme in achieving the desired results.

I tried everything under the sun including the grayscale trick, and at the end of the day there were three things that worked. Putting the phone on silent, putting it out of sight, and simply turning it off.

This resulted in 5 hours of phone time per day declining to 1 (it's my companion at the gym plus during most meals and that's OK).

Everyone's approach is going to be a little different depending on the rhythm of their life. For me the phone usually stays turned off for most of the morning now. It's in a drawer for most of the afternoon/evening. If I'm out and about it's in my pocket or bag on silent. It briefly gets unmuted at times when I'm expecting a delivery, appointment etc. and that's about it. The bar is high because the peace of mind is too great to lose.

Re: Go Gray, Not Cray: Why You Should Grayscale Your Phone

#13
post #9

I tried it for a while, it was fun explaining it to people, but didn’t actually help much. I ended up blocking all time wasters except HN, which is almost monochrome anyway.

This was my experience as well. While it is less straining on the eyes, that was the only benefit I saw. I didn't see a reduction in screen time or less anxiety about notifications.

Re: Go Gray, Not Cray: Why You Should Grayscale Your Phone

#17
post #16

«Color pixels drain more energy than grayscale ones. Personally found my phone lasting twice as long as before.» Is this a joke? Is there a real physical effect at play?

I can't imagine. AFAIK no phone has "grayscale" pixels. Grey or white light is achieved by blending the other colors equally.

A true monochrome screen is a thing, but they are for specialized applications and not used in phones.

Re: Go Gray, Not Cray: Why You Should Grayscale Your Phone

#18
post #10

> Color pixels drain more energy than grayscale ones. Personally found my phone lasting twice as long as before. Over time, a considerable extension of your phone’s lifespan. What? Why? Why would you even entertain that as a hypothesis?

I questioned the same thing over a decade ago with my then-shiny Samsung Galaxy S5: At the lowest of its low-power battery-saving modes, it drained the color from the screen and made it greyscale. Perhaps it can make sense for LCDs: After all, LCDs operate by blocking backlight. Blocking less backlight (by area ) by using greyscale might make sense: It seems obvious that a higher perceived brightness can be achieved…

> It seems obvious that a higher perceived brightness can be achieved for any given pixel if using greyscale instead of using colors, just because less of the backlight's area is occluded.

When converting to grayscale, you typically calculate the value of the pixel and then set all color components to that value. The point of this is to keep the luminance the same as it was in the original color pixel. If you’re doing this correctly, the perceived brightness stays the same.

And just as a smell test: have you ever converted an image to grayscale and flinched away because it seemed twice as bright? Of course not; it just loses its color.

The only way you would get more perceived brightness at lower backlight intensity would be if you physically removed the color gels that overlay the LCD matrix. Which is obviously not what they’ve done here.

I’m pretty sure the increase in battery life they observed is simply because they’re using their phone less, which is very much the main upshot of the other benefits they listed. The idea that color pixels drain more energy is just obviously nonsense.

Re: Go Gray, Not Cray: Why You Should Grayscale Your Phone

#19
post #16

«Color pixels drain more energy than grayscale ones. Personally found my phone lasting twice as long as before.» Is this a joke? Is there a real physical effect at play?

some oled displays have white subpixels, i dont know if the power cost is a thing though

Re: Go Gray, Not Cray: Why You Should Grayscale Your Phone

#20

> Color pixels drain more energy than grayscale ones. Personally found my phone lasting twice as long as before. Over time, a considerable extension of your phone’s lifespan. What? Why? Why would you even entertain that as a hypothesis?

They said they found themselves using their phone far less due to the grayscale, which would be the real thing extending battery life here. Or at least, this was what I assumed on reading.
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