OnePlus 12 - Its Complicated...

The OnePlus 12 features an amazing display as well as a great camera, the fastest charging I've ever seen, and a ton of other features all at a great price. But we're here for the display and the flicker test. This is one I had to test, and retest, and then read and dig and research what in the world was going on with this phone.

To start, under the "Display and Brightness" settings you will find another group of settings called "Eye Comfort and Sleep". Here there are a variety of adjustments to make the screen more gentle on your eyes, including color and temperature adjustments and an auto dark mode based on sunrise to sunset. Then you will notice the "Ultra Anti-Flicker" setting. This setting does not work how you think it works. One would think that turning it on would make the screen flicker less, but actually the opposite is true. Let's dig into this.

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In the screenshots above from the Opple reading we see that at 25% and below the screen behaves the same way regardless if the "ultra anti-flicker" is on or off. It ups the screen refresh rate to 2206hz, and ups the modulation to 99.5%. As we can see from the graph this is ok for the eyes. I did some additional testing and it seems this setting kicks in around 35% brightness. This is a good thing and is easier on the eyes for those sensitive to pwm and modulation.

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Now here is where it gets interesting. As we can see with the brightness level at 50% and the "anti-flicker" off we get a fairly low flicker rate of 280hz - some research on the internet suggested that this may be due to us seeing dc dimming and this is the refresh rate of the screen, but I tested at various refresh rates and got the same answer. I am not convinced this is dc dimming as I still see evidence of a flicker, just at an extremely low rate. The modulation is around 49.2% which is good as there are less extremes between the highest lux and lowest lux. If we turn the "anti-flicker" on it increases the frequency to 375hz, which is better, but in doing so it also increases the modulation to 60% which is not horrible, but slightly worse that before. I wish that oneplus would of at least kept a higher rate here, but it appears they didn't.

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At 75% brightness we see about the same results as at 50%. With the "anti-flicker" setting off we have low frequency of 280hz, and a low modulation of 35%. With the "anti-flicker" on the frequency is increased to 375hz and the modulation also increases to about 55%. As we can see the only thing that really is changing is the high and low lux points in the modulation cycles. The frequency rates about about the same in each.

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Overall this device is probably one of the better devices out there for those with sensitive eyes. Its really close in the upper brightness levels that ambient light around you will reduce the impact the low frequency will have. Then once the device is under 35% brightness the higher frequency kicks in which is much easier on the eyes. Over all I wish they would increase the frequency on the levels about 35%, but I guess this is close enough for now. I would however only recommend this device for people that are only midly sensitive. If you are extremely sensitive to pwm and modulation, this device will not work for you unless you only use it at 35% brightness or lower.