sunlight readable iphone

On Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 9:19:32 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
I doubt consumer electronics will ever be suitable as a cockpit
display under a bubble canopy.Â* They're designed mainly for
teen-aged girls who sit in McDonald's and poke at them with their
thumbs all day.Â* Under those lighting conditions they're perfectly
adequate.Â* And who cares about the UI?Â* Do you want to poke at the
display during your entire flight or simply set it and forget it?



I'm far from expert in display technology, but I have a little bit
of experience having tried and replaced many consumer products
before settling on what I have now.Â* I've tried the Mio (total waste
outside a darkened room), Samsung Galaxy II (wonderful, vibrant
colors, but useless in sunlight), Motorola Moto-X (great phone, but
useless outside), Nexus-7 (same, same), Dell Streak 5 (perfectly
readable in direct sunlight but occasionally has to be shadowed with
the hand).Â* The Streak 5 uses a TFT display which seems to be
exactly what's needed for our use but is prohibitively expensive for
the consumer market.Â* Dell quickly retired the Streak 5, probably
for that reason.



If you have the knowledge and skills to roll your own, so to speak,
take a look at something like THIS.






On 9/18/2017 10:29 PM, jfitch wrote:



On Monday, September 18, 2017 at 4:04:45 PM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:


I'll stack my ClearNav II display or my Dynon D10a against your iPhone
any day of the week.Â* Or are we only talking phone displays?

On 9/18/2017 11:17 AM, jfitch wrote:


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.


--
Dan, 5J


The problem with the Clear Nav and Dynon displays is that they run exclusively ClearNav and Dynon software. If you are happy with that, and continue to be happy where ever they lead you at whatever price, then you a "s*****g in tall cotton" as they say down south. If you want a non-proprietary solution with the ability to pick the software you want to run and upgrade whenever you chose, then consumer electronics based hardware is the way to go. Neither is Right - just Different. The OP started the thread talking about iPhones. The UI on iPhone apps is miles and decades ahead, if you are sensitive to that sort of thing.





--

Dan, 5J

Well I do care about the UI. Doesn't sound like you have tried any of the more modern phones we are talking about. Most of the software offerings in soaring - no matter what the platform - do about the same things in feature set. It is UI and presentation that differentiates.

Same impression on my part. Dan got stuck with the Dell Streak 5 and doesn't want to hear opinions like mine, based on my experience in flight, that beginning with the Galaxy Note 4 every new edition (Note 5, Note 7, now S8, S8+ and Note 8) IS simply sun readable and getting better and better. With the split screen on S8+ I can run XCSoar and iFlyGPS or Google Maps simultaneously. What for? I like to see the geographical names of towns, rivers and lakes I am flying over, and they are not there on the generic aviation/navigation maps unless they are huge.

BTW, I wish Samsung stayed with the idea from Note 7 to have front and back light sensors. In circling, the brightness stayed the same and didn't go up/down/up/down like it does with the front sensor only. Worth keeping in mind if you ever consider importing the refurbished Note 7, supposedly being sold in Asia.

On Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 4:29:57 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 9:19:32 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
I doubt consumer electronics will ever be suitable as a cockpit
display under a bubble canopy.Â* They're designed mainly for
teen-aged girls who sit in McDonald's and poke at them with their
thumbs all day.Â* Under those lighting conditions they're perfectly
adequate.Â* And who cares about the UI?Â* Do you want to poke at the
display during your entire flight or simply set it and forget it?

(...) Snip

Dan, 5J

Well I do care about the UI. Doesn't sound like you have tried any of the more modern phones we are talking about. Most of the software offerings in soaring - no matter what the platform - do about the same things in feature set. It is UI and presentation that differentiates.

On Wednesday, 20 September 2017 00:29:57 UTC+3, jfitch wrote:

Well I do care about the UI. Doesn't sound like you have tried any of the more modern phones we are talking about. Most of the software offerings in soaring - no matter what the platform - do about the same things in feature set. It is UI and presentation that differentiates.

Screens are not getting noticeably brighter in latest phones, and reason is pretty simple, current brightness level is adequate and brighter screen requires huge amount of current and not so fashionable LCD screens. Only mass market use of sunlight readable screen might come from drone industry, but we have been waiting for mass market sunlight readable colour touchscreens for, what, 15 years now, so do not hold your breath.

On Monday, September 18, 2017 at 9:31:43 PM UTC-7, jfitch wrote:
The specs for the iPhone X have been publicly available for a while now. Yes it will have an OLED screen, so it does not "remain to be seen what apple will do", they have already done it and publicly announced it.

The iPhone 8 has the same LCD display of the 7, so it will be the same brightness. The hope for the iPhone X is that it uses a Samsung OLED display, capable of much higher brightness. It remains to be seen what Apple will do, but it is a competitive market and Samsung phones with the OLED display are brighter in sunlight.

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, I guess.Â* I'm so completely sold
on the XCSoar (free) and the Dell Streak 5 ($50-150 AND you can actually
read it in direct sunlight) that I kept them in my Stemme. I'm sure
you're happy with the $800 or so that you spent for iPhone and iGlide
and the $600 or so you'll spend next year when the New, Improved iPhone
X+1 comes out.

Looking back at the subject line, I guess the real question is: "Is
there a sunlight readable *iPhone*?", not "Is there a sunlight readable
*display*?".Â* I think the current answer to the first is, "No", and the
answer to the second is, "Yes, but not with an iPhone yet."


snip

Well I do care about the UI. Doesn't sound like you have tried any of the more modern phones we are talking about. Most of the software offerings in soaring - no matter what the platform - do about the same things in feature set. It is UI and presentation that differentiates.

--
Dan, 5J

Not stuck, Tom, only speaking from experience.Â* I will now see if I can
find someone to demonstrate one of the new Galaxies to me since I've not
seen one.Â* You are the first person to state unambiguously that your
Galaxy is sunlight readable.Â* The split screen is a wonderful capability
that's not available on the Streak.

On 9/19/2017 6:01 PM, Tom BravoMike wrote:
Same impression on my part. Dan got stuck with the Dell Streak 5 and doesn't want to hear opinions like mine, based on my experience in flight, that beginning with the Galaxy Note 4 every new edition (Note 5, Note 7, now S8, S8+ and Note 8) IS simply sun readable and getting better and better. With the split screen on S8+ I can run XCSoar and iFlyGPS or Google Maps simultaneously. What for? I like to see the geographical names of towns, rivers and lakes I am flying over, and they are not there on the generic aviation/navigation maps unless they are huge.

BTW, I wish Samsung stayed with the idea from Note 7 to have front and back light sensors. In circling, the brightness stayed the same and didn't go up/down/up/down like it does with the front sensor only. Worth keeping in mind if you ever consider importing the refurbished Note 7, supposedly being sold in Asia.

On Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 4:29:57 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 9:19:32 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
I doubt consumer electronics will ever be suitable as a cockpit
display under a bubble canopy.Â* They're designed mainly for
teen-aged girls who sit in McDonald's and poke at them with their
thumbs all day.Â* Under those lighting conditions they're perfectly
adequate.Â* And who cares about the UI?Â* Do you want to poke at the
display during your entire flight or simply set it and forget it?

(...) Snip
Dan, 5J
Well I do care about the UI. Doesn't sound like you have tried any of the more modern phones we are talking about. Most of the software offerings in soaring - no matter what the platform - do about the same things in feature set. It is UI and presentation that differentiates.


--
Dan, 5J

"Sunlight readable" does not mean the same brightness to different people. Different strokes for different folks indeed. Some are willing to look at a display with lower contrast, others (perhaps correlated with being older) like higher contrast. Some desire color strongly and are willing to squint for it, others give up on color in return for more contrast. I've seen the Dell Streak display that some other members of my club use, and they've seen my Nook, and we're all sticking to our choices. Nothing wrong with that.

Many web pages (and apps, and OSs) are designed these days with very low contrast choices of foreground and background colors for text and icons, I personally hate that, but apparently many, at least those who designed it, think it's cool.

On Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 11:49:11 PM UTC-7, krasw wrote:
On Wednesday, 20 September 2017 00:29:57 UTC+3, jfitch wrote:

Well I do care about the UI. Doesn't sound like you have tried any of the more modern phones we are talking about. Most of the software offerings in soaring - no matter what the platform - do about the same things in feature set. It is UI and presentation that differentiates.

Screens are not getting noticeably brighter in latest phones, and reason is pretty simple, current brightness level is adequate and brighter screen requires huge amount of current and not so fashionable LCD screens. Only mass market use of sunlight readable screen might come from drone industry, but we have been waiting for mass market sunlight readable colour touchscreens for, what, 15 years now, so do not hold your breath.

Phone screens are getting brighter. In the last two generations they have gone from 500 to 1000 nits. The OLED screens are quite capable of 1000 nits, they are just not driven that bright out of concerns about battery life. In yachting navigation displays, very bright, sunlight readable screens have been available for a couple of decades now.

On Wednesday, September 20, 2017 at 6:54:47 AM UTC-7, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
On Monday, September 18, 2017 at 9:31:43 PM UTC-7, jfitch wrote:
The specs for the iPhone X have been publicly available for a while now. Yes it will have an OLED screen, so it does not "remain to be seen what apple will do", they have already done it and publicly announced it.

The iPhone 8 has the same LCD display of the 7, so it will be the same brightness. The hope for the iPhone X is that it uses a Samsung OLED display, capable of much higher brightness. It remains to be seen what Apple will do, but it is a competitive market and Samsung phones with the OLED display are brighter in sunlight.

As I explained before, the OLED screens are capable of that brightness, and Samsung drives them to that brightness when left in Auto mode and in bright ambient light. Will Apple do the same? that is what remains to be seen. Neither Samsung or Apple give you much information in the specs as to how they handle this. The best information is on the Display Mate website, as these are actual tests of of the shelf phones.

I run Top Hat on a Kobo e-reader; i.e., gray scale. Very legible. As good as my old Compaq Aero but a much larger display.

I also have a Dell Streak 5 in the pocket as a backup, which I was forced to go to at Cordele this summer when the Kobo stopped getting GPS data from my PowerFLARM. I much prefer the color (Dell)...but it's not nearly as readable. It's "good enough". So if I could get a more readable color display at comparable or even moderately higher cost, I'd go with that.

I like having a completely independent backup, though (self contained battery, GPS, CPU, display), so I'll probably keep the Dell Streak in the cockpit for a long time.

Chip Bearden