sunlight readable iphone

Good point. It looks like the Fire Stick only does landscape. I don't know if there is any app which would enforce a rotation during the mirroring process.


Does the Fire Stick do portrait? Seems like most of the devices built for TV do not. In other words, if I have my HDMI display in portrait orientation (TV turned sideways), and my app on the phone is in portrait orientation, do I see the correct thing? What many of them do it show a portrait image sized down to fit upright on a landscape (TV) display. For almost all TV use that is what you want, but in a glider it is not.

So far I have been using XCSoar on Galaxy Note 4 and the sun readability was just good enough even in bright sunshine and with sun glasses on my nose. Now I have the Galaxy S8+ and the brightness is simply impressive (over 1000 nits). If only there was a 7 inch bezel-less tablet with a similar bright screen!


Not to stray off the original question but I use my Android Galaxy S5 phone running Top Hat or XCSoar as a back up incase of a flight computer failure, also for local flights in the two seater club world.
The S5 is a good phone, had it for nearly three years but it is anything but sunlight readable.
I am contemplating updating it, as it is time, to perhaps to an S8 but not convinced it would be much better.
Any other suggestions in the Android world??

On Sunday, September 17, 2017 at 8:09:11 PM UTC-7, Tom BravoMike wrote:
Good point. It looks like the Fire Stick only does landscape. I don't know if there is any app which would enforce a rotation during the mirroring process.


Does the Fire Stick do portrait? Seems like most of the devices built for TV do not. In other words, if I have my HDMI display in portrait orientation (TV turned sideways), and my app on the phone is in portrait orientation, do I see the correct thing? What many of them do it show a portrait image sized down to fit upright on a landscape (TV) display. For almost all TV use that is what you want, but in a glider it is not.

All it would take is to have the app (XCSoar?) lock in portrait mode and tell the interface it is in landscape. The HDMI interface and further on couldn't care, but it respects what the app says. App says it's portrait, so the interface says I'll squish you onto a landscape screen. You could probably prevail upon the XCSoar developers to do this. I use iGlide and I doubt they will add this.

There is another problem with a Fire Stick type of implementation: the encoding - IP - decoding delay is significant, enough to keep the mirrored display behind a disconcerting amount. For that reason, you really want a fast serial interface dumping the screen contents to the mirrored screen frame buffer, if the device can't have a true HDMI output.

On Monday, 18 September 2017 08:29:07 UTC+10, 6PK wrote:
On Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 2:26:27 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Does anyone have any data on whether the iPhone X OLED screen will be more sunlight readable than previous iPhones? The brightness spec looks the same (625cd/m2), but I see no data on the screen reflectance.

Not to stray off the original question but I use my Android Galaxy S5 phone running Top Hat or XCSoar as a back up incase of a flight computer failure, also for local flights in the two seater club world.
The S5 is a good phone, had it for nearly three years but it is anything but sunlight readable.
I am contemplating updating it, as it is time, to perhaps to an S8 but not convinced it would be much better.
Any other suggestions in the Android world??

I like my Note 5 - barely ever had an issue reading it and resolved with a slight move of my head. Running XCSoar.

Cheers Ben

All smartphones with glossy display are just useless mirrors in cockpit, no matter what the nits are. Just look at avionics industry, all displays have non-reflective matte surface, for a reason.

Yesterday I experimented with the Galaxy S8Plus-Fire Stick-Samsung TV combination, and the delay was minimal and negligible, I estimate it at 0.1-0.2 seconds.

There is another problem with a Fire Stick type of implementation: the encoding - IP - decoding delay is significant, enough to keep the mirrored display behind a disconcerting amount. For that reason, you really want a fast serial interface dumping the screen contents to the mirrored screen frame buffer, if the device can't have a true HDMI output.

On Monday, September 18, 2017 at 7:14:58 AM UTC-7, Tom BravoMike wrote:
Yesterday I experimented with the Galaxy S8Plus-Fire Stick-Samsung TV combination, and the delay was minimal and negligible, I estimate it at 0.1-0.2 seconds.

There is another problem with a Fire Stick type of implementation: the encoding - IP - decoding delay is significant, enough to keep the mirrored display behind a disconcerting amount. For that reason, you really want a fast serial interface dumping the screen contents to the mirrored screen frame buffer, if the device can't have a true HDMI output.

That's pretty good. Now you just have to have XCSoar add a little code.

On Monday, September 18, 2017 at 5:43:50 AM UTC-7, krasw wrote:
All smartphones with glossy display are just useless mirrors in cockpit, no matter what the nits are. Just look at avionics industry, all displays have non-reflective matte surface, for a reason.

glossy displays. It isn't that simple. My iPhone 6 plus looks quite glossy when turned off, but has no more reflection problems than the matt faced Oudie. You can add a matt overlay onto the phone, but it makes no difference (makes it worse, actually). These phones have very fancy coatings, the latest ones absorb something like 95% of the incident light. The technology in an iPhone far exceeds anything in the aircraft industry. In fact Apple buys more aluminum than the entire aircraft industry. When ramping up the iPhone 7 they were said to be shipping the equivalent weight of aluminum in a B747 every 23 hours in iPhone housings.

I have flown a number of flights with the Oudie/V2/Avier and the iPhone 6 plus side by side on the panel, both running. Most of the time the iPhone is as good or better. The only time the Oudie clearly wins is when you are pointed into the sun, your iris closes down, you are wearing dark glasses. Then the slightly brighter Oudie wins. An iPhone 6 Plus tests at around 550 nits. The Oudie is claimed to be 1000. At sun angles when reflections are a problem, they are equally a problem on both.

I'm looking forward to buying an iPhone X when they come out.

There is sth else very interesting coming up ($850): DJI CrystalSky 7.85" UltraBright monitor (2000 nits) for drone enthusiast. It runs a locked version of Android, limited to the company's firmware, but who knows, some good people may be able to unlock it and install the Google Play Store. However, there seems to be a delivery issue as the model, announced and marketed now for many months, continues to be 'Coming Soon' but does not appear on the shelves.

That's pretty good. Now you just have to have XCSoar add a little code.

Sorry to hear the IOIO does not prevent USB glitches. And I thought it was the OTG Y-cable method that was to blame. But does the IOIO actually need the main device to run in OTG mode (i.e., being the USB host)?

If you like an older version of Tophat better, you can still use it. I keep the old .apk files just in case. Of course you do then give up some improvements done in the more recent versions.


On Friday, September 15, 2017 at 6:41:12 PM UTC-4, kinsell wrote:
On 09/15/2017 02:40 PM, moshe wrote:
A third way is via an "IOIO box" but that seems overkill to me.

Compared to buying a $1000 phone to try to get enough brightness, seems
like a terribly minimalist solution to me. I'm using IOIO-OTG and have
a secondary input wired to give a big PF display. Worked great for a
while, then TopHat dropped the capability out of current releases for
some reason. Maybe XCSoar still has it, but never liked their UI.

Reliability of the system is marginal, usually takes a couple
unplug/replug cycles of the usb to keep things running on a long flight.

-Dave