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ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violet light) "damages" eyes

Posted: 06 Apr 2014, 18:00
by nuninho1980
WARNING: Blue violet light (smartphone, tablet, computer...) may damage eyes.

More info

Re: ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violent light) "damages" e

Posted: 06 Apr 2014, 20:43
by DICKTracy
You mean 'violet' not 'violent'

Re: ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violent light) "damages" e

Posted: 07 Apr 2014, 06:39
by nuninho1980
DICKTracy wrote:You mean 'violet' not 'violent'
AAh! Yeah. :)

Re: ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violet light) "damages" ey

Posted: 07 Apr 2014, 11:20
by spacediver
So "old" smartphones don't display blue-violet light?

Re: ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violet light) "damages" ey

Posted: 07 Apr 2014, 12:24
by Chief Blur Buster
spacediver wrote:So "old" smartphones don't display blue-violet light?
It is very dependant on the phosphor used in the high-efficiency white LED backlights on smartphones.
Some of them deep blue / violet light to light up white phosphor efficiently.
They are easily reformulated and engineered to reduce the amount of blue light, at low efficiencies.

Much newer OLED smartphones don't use this technique, so would be immune from this problem. So you Samsung Galaxy S3 users should be scots-free. ;)

I would imagine that phone manufacturers can reformulate the phosphor for white LEDs to fix the violet-light emission problem, if this ends up becoming a very serious issue. Alternatively, new tech such as OLED can avoid this problem entirely.

The average ownership lifecycle of a smartphone has tended to be about 2 years, so new tech can quickly solve this problem, if more scientific papers show an issue with this.

Re: ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violet light) "damages" ey

Posted: 07 Apr 2014, 13:30
by spacediver
Yea I'm not so sure how much stock to put in this information. It seems they're referring to blue light hazard, but I'm not sure whether smartphones are any worse than other displays.

Re: ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violet light) "damages" ey

Posted: 07 Apr 2014, 15:06
by Oofloom
Seems legit. Benq's new monitors feature a "low blue light" mode they say is better for your eyes. It's just a configurable preset that turns down the blue channel, so it's more convenient (especially with the S-switch) but doesn't really do anything about the underlying problem: the backlight's bias towards the blue-violet end of the spectrum. I'm no expert, but it looks like, with it turned on, you're either sacrificing color accuracy (turned on with no other adjustments to compensate for the reddened image) or brightness (turned on and then calibrated "on top" of the low-blue-light setting to regain color accuracy.)

Mark, any idea how much of a concern this was with the old CCFL backlights?

Re: ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violet light) "damages" ey

Posted: 07 Apr 2014, 15:23
by Chief Blur Buster
Oofloom wrote:Mark, any idea how much of a concern this was with the old CCFL backlights?
From what I know, it was more ultraviolet rather than violet light, that excited a phosphor quite efficiently. So there can be a sharper blue peak on some cheap white LEDs found in LED-backlit screens than CCFL. In addition, these lights were not nearly as bright as today's LED-backlit LCD screens, so total light output weren't as bright on yesterday's CCFL-backlit displays than on today's LED-backlit displays. You can use high quality fuller-spectrum white LEDs that are more natural than CCFL but at expense of battery power and brightness.

There is more of a blue-light emission peak with modern LED screens, so this should get further scientific study, and mitigation measures put into place. The use of low-blue-light modes and F.Lux helps this immensely, but only for colors brighter than black and at compromise to image quality. We need fuller-spectrum backlights that can achieve warmer color temperatures whenever needed, as excess blue light is known to have other issues -- it can keep a human awake at night, especially among users who uses a tablet (iPad, Android) in the evenings before bed -- myself included.

Re: ALERT: "new" smartphone (blue violet light) "damages" ey

Posted: 07 Apr 2014, 15:30
by peleh
How about using F.lux on notebooks to dial the blue down. Probably there is some apps that can do this on mobiles too.