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shankar2

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 7, 2009
1,020
54
Hi I have an Iphone XR now and I read in low light conditions or even during night. Is there anyone who can tell me the optimum settings to avoid eye strain? It's a problem now. Should I just turn on the light and read? Or some other rec. settings? Please advise! Thanks much!
 
Does dark mode in apps help in low light or dark (night) room?
 
Are you reading on the Kindle app?, you can change bacground colour, pageb brightness etc in the app settings.
 
I do quite a bit of surfing/reading in bed and am a big night vision guy. Yes, dark modes (white letters on black background) helps a lot, brightness set at near lowest levels, and I have True Tone and Night Shift on too.

However one of the best things for night reading is using bounced ambient light from a dim flashlight - ‘moonlight mode’ or <1 lumen - bounced off the wall behind my head. If you really want to get technical, get a high CRI (color rendering index) tint like a Nichia 219 emitter.

This provides background lighting in your field of view so minimizing the contrast to the lit phone screen. An example of this is watching your TV in a pitch black room (painful) vs an evenly matched lit room (comfortable).
 
Looking at any smartphone in a black room will give anyone eye strain. Either use a little flashlight or light to bounce light off the surrounding walls or just don't use it in the total darkness. A good rule of thumb is: if you can't read something on a printed page on paper, then it's too dark to comfortably use a smartphone
 
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