reading internet is always exaggerated, those are the ones that had an issue not in line with a general customer service requirement and are no longer posting facts but feelings.
Well, this is the third phone I buy from them and I never had any issue. There are others that have, of course, but it's just the same with any other company. Actually, this time the shipping company lost my parcel, and the moment they notified Oneplus they sent me another device (unfortunately I have to wait for the shipping yet again).
Brandon, as you apparently care a lot for color management and appear (to me as a layman) very knowledgeable, I'd really be interest in your view on the True Tone feature of the new iPad Pro 9.7. Technically, color reproduction would be incorrect once the color management starts to kick in, and would be measured as such by your tests I assume. But to the eye of the beholder, color reproductions seems to look "righter" when managed by True Tone when I may believe all the reviews and hands-ons.
Have you noticed that apps like Skype does not remain online and even some apps don't notify when it's pushed to the background? Skype status turns offline!!
Be careful that you are not confusing two different things. "Color Management" and True-Tone solve two (apparently OPPOSITE) problems.
Color Management solves the PROFESSIONAL's problem: I want this content to be captured by a camera here, displayed on a device there, printed on a printer somewhere else, and to look IDENTICAL in all those situations, regardless of the camera, screen, and printer technology.
True-Tone solves the AMATEUR's problem: I want this content to look "optimal" under different lighting conditions. Optimal is a vague sort of word but it is not the same as "identical".
It's kinda like the difference between what a dermatologist wants to see when looking at skin (accuracy!) vs what a fashion photographer wants to see looking at the same skin.
The reason we need the color management is because we need an agreement as to exactly WHAT "240 units of red, 180 units of green, and 27 units of blue" MEANS. This meaning is given in terms of objective physical measurements.
The reason we need the second is that your brain doesn't actually see color in terms of objective physical measurements. This is not obvious --- after all your eye DOES see color that way. But your brain reinterprets the signal the eye sends to it depending on lighting conditions. So the question is --- do you want your visual device to be aware of and compensate for those lighting conditions or not.
And the answer depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to "see movies and pictures looking as nice as possible" the answer is "hell yes, compensate"; if you are trying to match colors for whatever professional purpose (even something as simple as shopping for a dress) the answer may range from yes to no depending on the exact purpose, but no is probably the usual situation.
[I do wonder how Apple handles this in terms of shopping for dresses. Has anyone tried this sort of thing? Are the shifts in color from True Tone enough that it would really make a difference?]
I thought the distinction was even simpler than that: do you want colours that are intrinsically luminous (like lightbulbs, stars or fireflies) or colours that reflect the light around them (like paint, ink, most surfaces)?
Not really. Issue raised by Brandon was about the OnePlus screen targetting a wider gamut screen without propre color managed OS. This resulted in oversaturated colors. ALL the time. Plus, targetting the NTSC color space, they were also completely wrong.. Now, TrueTone is not impacting the saturation level, to make it simple, it is shifting the white balance. We cannot say this is intrinsically wrong as there is not one true universal white point value as the external lightning is impacting how we see colors. It derived from the 6500K "standard", that's it. Still, the impact is very different because you do not end up with fluorescent grass or red carmin tomatoes.
Thank you Brandon, genuinely appreciate the follow up on several different levels. Couple things I wanted to point out following your article-
Many people enjoy the oversaturated colors that wide gamut displays provide when software isn't color managed. I have no issue with that, but users who want an accurate display should have the option to enable an sRGB color mode, and that was the issue with the OnePlus 3 when it launched.
I am not disagreeing with your sentiment *at all*- but would like to point out a bit of a double standard here. You find it a major issue if a person wants calibrated display but can't have it, but not once, not ever, have I heard you lament a sRGB calibrated display for *not* offering a wider color gamut option. In that same vein, I have what was, last time I looked, the best calibrated display for multi use purposes available and out of the two extremely accurate color modes and the one 'Vivid' option- every person I have asked liked the Vivid option the best(*horribly inaccurate*- this is with the option for ARGB or sRGB).
You bring up Apple places a great deal of importance on this matter, along with mentioning they have the highest profits. The Tab S from Samsung beat the iPads pretty easily and were in relative terms a catastrophic failure(in terms of profits vs the iPads). Just saying, calibrated displays are just that.
One final point, and one that I actually think is rather important.
I walked outside the other evening when the sun started getting low on the horizon and, with the utmost sincerity- the first thing that popped in my head was 'it looks like sRGB out here'- yeah yeah, what a geek, whatever. Point being, the location in which you live and the ambient light you are adjusted to will *greatly* impact what you think looks natural. 30 degrees below zero pictures calibrated for sRGB white points look comically bad and insanely unnatural- just as a summer evening picture from Florida calibrated for Japan's NTSC white point would.
One other minor thing, you bashed on the display pretty hard in your first review and I understand the point you were trying to make- but the reality of the situation seems to be that most of your issues had to do with the software the phone was using, outside of the pentile layout which nobody is a big fan of, it doesn't seem you had any issues with the screen. Not criticizing, mainly mentioning that you may want to stress the point in future phone reviews about the problems with the physical display(pentile) versus problems with the software(NTSC color target) that may or may not ever be fixed.
Once again, truly appreciate your follow up, it was a good read and I do greatly admire follow through when there is controversy :)
I appreciate your argument that the perception of natural color point is based on an individual's experience and perspective. One who lives in a cold, grey environment versus someone who lives is a warm, tropical environment, will have vastly different perspectives on white point and colors.
However, I think this is one of the many cases where the masses need smarter people than them to make the correct decision for them. When you tested your colleagues' color mode preferences, you presented them with a choice of which they prefer, and they gave you their honest answer. This approach to validating usage of technology is fraught with peril though. A stronger metric is what people prefer in daily usage. One test gives an opinion of the moment, another test factors in the gamut (pun intended) of experiences that the person has with the technology.
Now, consider a world where equipment manufacturers abandon sRBG for gamuts of their choosing, each pushing to have their own unique super-wide gamut that they think appeals to their customer base the most. I would argue that in such a world, customers (and businesses/artists/ect) would become frustrated with the inconsistency of how their content is being delivered (as argued by Brandon above). For example, online clothes shopping becomes perilous when the red tie bought ends up not matching... whatever a tie is supposed to match. In many ways, we just came from that world, with displays that notoriously poorly calibrated unless they were professional monitors. Why would we take a step backwards?
I think everyone acknowledges that sRBG is in no way a superior choice, but it is a standard that is widely adopted. Brandon is correct, Android (as all OSes) should be updated to properly manage color spaces to facilitate the transition to wider gamut standards. Apple really led the way here (as much as it pains me to say that).
Great update Brandon, way to hold OnePlus's feet to the fire! A friend of mine received his OnePlus 3 and was also super disappointed with the blue tint, he'll be thrilled to hear it will be fixed.
However, I think this is one of the many cases where the masses need smarter people than them to make the correct decision for them.
That, in a nutshell, is the difference between a loyal Apple enthusiast and the rest of the world. Personal choice vs decree from up high.
Now, consider a world where equipment manufacturers abandon sRBG for gamuts of their choosing
Like Adobe RGB which has been around and a vastly superior choice since the 90s? Wider color gamuts received no attention, until Apple decided they were important. Much like the abhorrent pixel density iPhones suffered for many generations- not important until Apple's "Retina" marketing campaign. OLEDs staggering advantages in contrast and pixel response also ignored- until Apple makes the swap at which point it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
For example, online clothes shopping becomes perilous when the red tie bought ends up not matching... whatever a tie is supposed to match.
That's as close to the worst scenario you could have used that I can think of. You want to make your decisions on what to wear under artificial cool lighting based on an afternoon sunlight model? Ambient light in a business environment is significantly 'cooler' than sRGB- it actually falls much closer to what would be considered a hard blue push versus what it seems most people are championing.
Asking people for their preference in colors WITHOUT a source image that's also accurately captured AND presents a familiar subject is pointless... Skin tones (on an accurately metered photo) are a good test that will often quickly dethrone the preference for over saturation.
It's like audio testing, crank one device just slightly louder than the other and people will generally prefer the louder one, the doesn't even really mean they like listening louder... It just means we're terrible at assessing certain things when presented with unfamiliar choices.
I think you have to look at this from Apple's point of view. Consider a person who owns a Mac, an iPhone, and an Apple Watch. Now suppose they see the same content on all three of them. It looks surprisingly irritating if the content looks different across the three. (I know this for a fact because it irritated me all the time.) This is especially obvious with faces because we are so sensitive to them --- it only takes a very slight color imbalance for a face to look too red or too green on one screen vs another, even when it is supposed to the same picture (eg the picture you have in Contacts for a person you communicate with frequently via messages).
That is why Apple cares so much about color accuracy --- it is part of their larger them that you are not so much buying individual Apple products as that you are buying "modules" that represents different user interfaces into a single common Apple Computer held together by your Apple ID and iCloud.
There's also (to put it bluntly) the issue of taste and price. I don't want to start a flamewar, but my experience is that the same people who are willing/able to pay more care more about visual fidelity/accuracy. I see lots of cheap TVs set up to stretch 4:3 content across a 16:9 screen; but I don't see the expensive TVs of my wealthier friends set up that way --- they're not prepared to put up with that visually inaccurate s***. Same thing going all the way back to QuickTime. Early MPEG (and some other codecs) used slightly non-square pixels (eg 1.1x wide compared to high). QuickTime, from day one, did the work necessary in the blitter to rescale the image to look correct on screens, whereas every Windows MPEG player of the era that I saw just couldn't be bothered --- it displayed the image with heads that were mis-shapen spheroids and nobody in the world of Windows appeared to care.
I think you have to look at this from Apple's point of view.
The issue at hand is they picked the MPEG of color standards- sRGB was so poor it was immediately replaced by the professional market for ARGB- in the 90s, yet Apple is just now getting around to supporting wider gamuts(Now that Rec2020 is out they move to close to the twenty year old standard).
Wanting things standardized across their product line I get- aiming for the lowest possible target I don't.
- sRGB was so poor it was immediately replaced by the professional market for ARGB -
I read this kind of claim all the time but people do not realize that having in real life colors more saturated than sRGB is very VERY rare. I champion every one to go out and try to take a picture where even a small area of the picture go beyond sRGB color space. It will not happen. Except if you are living maybe on a carribean island. The reality is that what you call "poor" is still enough in 99,9% of the real cases (not speaking of artificial colors created in Photoshop).
I champion every one to go out and try to take a picture where even a small area of the picture go beyond sRGB color space
Firetruck, eggplant- it isn't hard- tons of paints used on cars, I have a set of towels hanging in the bathroom right now- it's actually *very* easy to find objects that go outside sRGB. Even if the color is entirely inside sRGB- 256 gradients versus 1024- smoother and more realistic tones- for all pictures.
- Firetruck, eggplant- it isn't hard- tons of paints used on cars. it's actually *very* easy to find objects that go outside sRGB-
I take the bet. You think they go beyond but you would be surprised.
- even if the color is entirely inside sRGB- 256 gradients versus 1024- smoother and more realistic tones- for all pictures.-
Actually, it goes the other way around. Taking aRGB colors with 8bits coding (a JPEG) and transforming it in sRGB (still 8bits) means that you are potentially loosing a little bit of fine gradation info as the aRGB has to strech the 256 level with a wider range. Only if you work with TIFF or 16bits RAW files you are quite ok when manipulating / editing pictures between color spaces.
JPEGs while discussing accurate calibration...... wow. That's like having a discussion about Formula 1 and you comparing it to your radio controlled car thinking that is a real comparison.
No, I wouldn't be surprised what exceeds sRGB even a little bit- *TONS* of things you see in every day life. Firetruck red and eggplants both do exceed sRGB- that isn't an opinionated statement, it is one of fact.
I brought up lots of colors cars are painted with as I'm familiar with exactly what is involved in that process- I am in no way speculating- sRGB is just trash. It is a garbage color space worthy of your JPEG format.
- JPEGs while discussing accurate calibration...... wow -
What JPEG has to do with calibration? You seem to confuse a lot of things. The encoding of the image (8bits or 16bits or more) has nothing to do with if the color is correct or not. You can have a scene with variation of colors that could be code on 2 bits and still have color completely off.
That is clear that those things are totally misunderstood by the majority of people, even "geek" people commenting on those kind of web site. It is good that Brandon is trying to educate and explain those things.
- sRGB is just trash -
Saying so does not make it anymore true. But if you are dealing regularly with that, can you provide me a picture of one of your car with a color widely beyond sRGB gamut? Should not be that difficult, isn't it?
- It is a garbage color space worthy of your JPEG format. -
This comment is showing the size of your ignorance. JPEG is encoding in 8bits, which is the number of steps between the extreme colors (256 level on each channel). Color space is defining the maximum color saturation of the maximum value (be it 256 on JPEG or 65536 on RAW or TIFF).
You are comparing how high is going a ladder (gamut on the color space) and how many steps it has (the encoding bits).
JPEG as it relates to calibration is the crux of this discussion. The amount of color information in a JPEG is *extremely* limited- very easily displayed by taking any image with a range of 0-255 on any of the channels and looking at it. Very clear banding across the board. You talk about calibration- there are several billion colors that the human eye can see- the odds of you landing on exactly the right shade of any given color is akin to hitting the powerball. It may happen- but your odds of actually seeing the right color are minuscule.
So what we are actually looking at is the perception of what people see based on what the image was supposed to portray. In that element, your assertion is that a very narrow color space using a very lossy file format can be calibrated to be acceptable to your standards. My assertion is quite simple- perfectly 'calibrated' sRGB showing JPEGs are laughably inaccurate- they aren't remotely close to being the actual colors- the perceived difference between them and what you want to see aligns with that particular combination. In no way comprehensible is this a matter of accuracy, we are dealing with digital information and sRGB JPEGs are close to 0% accurate when judged in absolute terms- they just are 'good enough' for your end of the discourse.
That isn't a matter of personal preference, these are binary operations- you are looking for good enough for you. That is a matter of what you are looking for- nothing is wrong with that, getting on a soapbox because your wrong way of looking at things is better then someone else's wrong of looking at things is laughable.
Fire engine red is outside of sRGB. It is one of the most common colors in widespread use for the last fifty years. I also provided you a link showing how a box of crayons fails in sRGB space.
As to your attempts at trying to differentiate that there are both issues with width and granularity in the color space- that is an elementary issue- I assume any child would understand this. Internal rendering of image spaces swapped to 128bit floating point color in many fields long ago- Adobe RGB isn't *close* to being 'good enough'- it simply is a massive improvement over the insanely poor sRGB.
My stance still stands- championing that your way of looking at horribly inaccurate images is the 'right' way and any other way of looking at horribly inaccurate images is wrong comes entirely down to perception.
I see that you do not understand the notions developed by Brandon. I will try to explain one last time but it may be a subject to difficult for you to grasp (not trying to be pedantic but just my observation based on your feedback). So one last try:
- The amount of color information in a JPEG is *extremely* limited - What is the "amount" of information? JPEG is encoding in 8bits which means a given number of GRADATION of colors. But once again, if you have a ProPhoto or DCI3 JPEG, the level of saturation that you can code (and potentiall display) is the SAME as a 32 bits TIFF file.
- Very clear banding across the board. You talk about calibration- there are several billion colors that the human eye can see-
You are throwing a lot of different notion against the wall to see if it sticks. First, what is your point? What do you try to say in the context of this article on constraining in the sRGB gamut a Android phone screen as Android is not color managed ? Secondly, regarding the points you raised (for whatever reason) : yes 8 bits gives you less number of intermediate steps as more bits which means potentially more posterization when working on the image. But generally, no, it is very difficult or impossible for the human eye to discern the difference between a 16 bits TIFF and 8 bits JPEG in term of color gradation. JPEG is allowing 16 millions discrete different colors. You are not just able to see any banding because of the limitation on 8 bits nor is able anyone on earth, despite your claim. WHY is 16 bits important, it is because when you EDIT and CHANGE the image, then you can start to see posterization with extreme editing. So JPEG is not a problem for the display. 8 bits is a problem as a working space if you make serious editing.
I clarified this as you are confused on those notions.
- your assertion is that a very narrow color space using a very lossy file format can be calibrated to be acceptable to your standards - It is not an assertion. Let's not comment again on how narrow or large is the sRGB gamut. I asked you to provide a real example of a picture of yours exceeding the sRGB gamut and you are not able to provide so let's say that the burden of proof is still on yours. JPEG can be more or less lossy depending on the compression ratio. I defy you or anybody to see the difference between a JPEG with a good quality compression ration (80 or 90%) and the original TIFF. This is like your claim that you can see in 16 millions different colors "very clear banding across the board". That is just bullsh... And last, sRGB is not "my" standard. And yes, a LCD can be perfectly calibrated toward sRGB color space or another color space...or not. I do not even understand what you are trying to argue against?!?
- My assertion is quite simple- perfectly 'calibrated' sRGB showing JPEGs are laughably inaccurate- This phrase does not mean anything. Either the display is perfectly calibrated and the colors it shows are accurate (by definition) or they are not. You are basically telling me that you can have a tachymetre on a car that is perfectly calibrated to display the real speed of the car ... but the car of the speed is "laughably" inaccurate. I don't know if english is your mother tongue the phrase makes just NO sense.
- we are dealing with digital information and sRGB JPEGs are close to 0% accurate when judged in absolute terms- you are going further in the ridicule. Claiming that you can distinguish more than 16 millions different colors and now even claiming that it you cannot code more than 16 millions, the image that you see is 0% accurate. What to tell...
I propose you a simple 2nd bet (as you declined the 1st one): you can give me any image that you want with any encoding bit size (16 bits, 32 bits), in any color space of your choice. I will take it and make 2 versions of it: one reduced to 8 bits and saved temporarily in a 90% JPEG, and the other let at the original size. I will then give you back both in TIFF (so you cannot tell which is which) and ask you to tell me which one is the JPEG. Please take my bet, it will be enlightening for you?
I know already that you will also refuse the 2nd bet because you must have realized by now how wrong you are but if you do not believe it still, take the bet, and you will learn something.
- I also provided you a link showing how a box of crayons fails in sRGB space.- The link is showing in analysing the image what is going beyond sRGB. What is much more important for me is if someone is able to tell the difference. Thus my bet to you. Find me an image. I will restrict one to sRGB, another to aRGB and send you back both in aRGB and you will have to tell which is which. Image should be yours.
- I assume any child would understand this- I restrained myself, especially in forum, to make such comment. Although I am an engineer so those topics are for me quite elementary, I do realize they are not clear for everyone and you are a proof of it. Still, you are not a child and I understand that you could not grasp those notions.
- My stance still stands - This is why I asked not to take my word and common knowledge for granted and propose you to realize how wrong you are by yourself. Take my 2 bets and you will have a more clear understanding how mistaken you are. If you really want to learn and progress. Otherwise, have a good day.
- 30 degrees below zero pictures calibrated for sRGB white points look comically bad and insanely unnatural - Common confusion on white balance (what TrueTone on Apple devices is tackling) and the wider gamut than sRGB standard. The issue with the OnePlus or every wide gamut screen used in unmanaged OS is that the web, 99% of the camera and pretty much most picture you received and see are done or targetting sRGB color space. Displaying them in wider gamut screen than sRGB will make them all appeared oversaturated. That is simply not good.
- every person I have asked liked the Vivid option the best - Again a different story. you could perfectly have a screen, for which the gamut is constrained in the sRGB color space, and have an vivid option. Let's not forget that in 99,9% of the case (in fact, on 70 000 aRGB pictures, I took, there was less than 5-6 so it is more 99,99% of the case), the images of natural things (not flashy designed logos or colors that do not exist in real life) never exceed the sRGB gamut. It is VERY rare to have in real life colors beyond. What it means is that, even in a perfectly color managed OS and workflow, the benefit of going wider than sRGB is impacting only small areas of a very tiny number of pictures. And even on those small areas of those tiny subset of pictures, you probably cannot tell because the difference could only be spotted when seeing both side by side. On the opposite, in the case of the wide gamut screen of the OnePlus used on non color managed OS, 100% of the pictures and the entire areas of those pictures would appear oversaturated. Always.
As such, a vivid option could still oversaturate colors, even if still constrained within the sRGB gamut. One is not mutually exclusive from the other. But at least, you give the choice to user. For instance, i like adding some color saturation to my A7R photos. But the saturation still remains within level that exist in real life and everybody would find strange fluorescent green grass.
The question is: Is there any real need for device specific calibration if they can just ship a updated colour profile and hit well within "good enough" territory without worrying about device level differences?
I wonder if someone could test 20 "identical" OLED phones and 20 identical LCD phones / displays and see if there are any real variations?
Maybe you should have loaded a couple of big games too.Memory management seems to be all over the place and people care about it so including details on it in reviews might not be a bad idea.
Would also like to make a case for a 360 Mobile N4 review. Not that i expect you guys to review such a device since you are too commercial to review what's interesting instead of what's in the financial interest of the owner. Still, you got a 135$ device with 2xA72@ 2.1GHz and 8 more little cores pedaling behind , 4GB of RAM, a GPU that seems sufficient for 1080p gaming ( once again AT really needs to start testing the GPU in actual games at some point this century) and it makes one wonder how much sense does it make to pay 2 to 5 times more on a SD820 device.Sure you get better cam and wifi and other little bits but for a few years midrange was little cores and there was a huge theoretical perf gap.Theoretical because even A53 at high clocks results in a decent experience. Helio X20 and even SD65X changed the landscape in a substantial way and no publication seems to be willing to notice and take a look at that.
To comment on the phone you have mentioned, it does not have a stellar price/performance ratio. It costs $135 in China, if you're an international buyer be ready to pay $200 for it, and for that price you are better off with the Meizu Note 3 with Snapdragon 652, metal chassis and software support (this "360" company update record is either sketchy or non-existent).
Also, I don't really see the point of testing individual games. We don't care how well certain games are optimized for certain chipsets, Anand just tests the absolute performance of a phone (or relative to its resolution). I suspect that many readers, including me, don't play XYZ or ZYX game on their phone or any at all but want to know if their phone's gpu performance is gimped and may hinder the device's ability to playback videos.
It should also be mentioned that if you go with Mediatek chipsets, you can forget about any custom rom support or even a TWRP-like recovery. For many people that is a deal breaker and personally, I would never buy a phone with Mediatek SoC, altough I know that some people may not share this belief.
Whilst I agree with most of this post I have to disagree on some points - especially on the Custom rom and TWRP-like recovery. All Mediatek devices I've used and configured so far have custom rom support albeit lackluster. And I'm talking about a multitude of Mediatek devices I've used or configured for friends from manifacturers like Lenovo, Jayiu, Xiaomi, Doogee, Umi, etc. The code base is a nightmare when the source code is released at all and when no sources are released naturally you can't find support in places like XDA and have to go look elsewhere and there is a separate set of web pages for custom roms and modified roms for such devices (the 4pda Russian forum for example). But then again this is the case with these manufacturers even when the device has a Snapdragon SOC.
I do have to say the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 case with unlocked bootloader and sources you can work with for the Helio X10 is the exception and not the rule and yet after mingling with Mediatek devices for some time I decided to move back to using a dev-friendly device like a Nexus or Oneplus One and the Oneplus Three so far feels pretty great.
But indeed it's as easy to revive a softbricked Mediatek devices as it is to revive a Oneplus One just relying on Snapdragon drivers, flash tool and nand flashing. In fact often the custom roms for Mediatek devices came in this fashion and once a TWRP is compiled for the SOC it becomes a base to be used for all other devices with the same SOC revision.
I love the image of an engineer at 1+, who had a working sRGB mode before launch, because they new damn well the thing was shipping attuned to the incorrect mode and knew it would be so bad that it would almost certainly come in handy.
Brandon, I always find it helpful if significant updates like these are mentioned and linked back to in the original review as an update, either on the first page, or in the conclusion.
Of course regular readers like me will see all of the articles as they come out, but we're not the only ones who matter. Someone searching the internet for reviews of a particular device will likely only see the main review and I think it is especially important for those people to know that the reviewer's opinion of the device has changed.
Oh, I didn't mean to only post that. I also wanted to thank you for your diligence in doing the additional testing and for your well written objective analysis as well as your personal commentary on the topic of color accuracy.
I think that this is a topic that more people would care about if they knew about it, and articles like this are a step in that direction.
OnePlus One owner here. My one big gripe with the OPO is that, at least on T-Mobile, reception is pretty terrible. In your experience does the OnePlus 3 have any issues receiving LTE? In your review you wrote that "I'm still unable to achieve a strong enough signal over LTE to get results that are comparable to those run by Josh and Matt" which concerned me.
That's not due to the phone. My apartment just has terrible cellular reception on both our major networks on all my devices. I'm only pulling -97dBm, so I've decided to stop directly comparing my results, at least until I move at the start of August where I'll have to investigate the signal again.
There are likely other factors involved as well. First one off the cuff is that modern desktop OSes like Windows manage memory differently than Android. I guess there's a chance things have changed, but AFAIK Android does not use a pagefile to help alleviate memory pressure.
Also, on mobile devices, the VRAM is still allocated out of a chunk of RAM. If your desktop has a dGPU, that'd be extra memory available on desktop vs mobile.
Unfortunately I'm not terribly well versed in this topic and can't really provide much specific insight.
Hi, Look! It's a reviewer that clearly forgot what it was to be an average day to day consumer and only thinking like a reviewer - with only numbers in his mind .. (kind of like politicians these days..huh), and bashed an apparently really decent phone(..or a superb! if you take into account the cost of it which is half the cost of a new galaxy or Iphone) for nothing really. just because it wasn't amazing.
I swear, I thought about not buying this phone just because of your earlier review and what you said about the display, but thank god there are other decent reviewers out there. Once no one(literally no one) even mentioned the display I knew it was probably because you were relying too much on the numbers instead of actually looking at the screen. Then I went into youtube to watch vid reviews (and display reviews between the OP3 and other flagships) and clearly the OP3 was not the worse, as you said...and surprisingly enough, just from eye-to-eye, it was sometimes the best.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is an age old adage for a reason. As I think Brandon mentioned in the review, much of the consumer base actually prefers oversaturated colors. This is part of what won early AMOLED panels their consumer appeal.
The point of an thorough and critical review is not to say the same thing as every other site. It is to push the boundaries of what is examined. To perhaps find things that a device does particularly well, or in this case something a device might not do well.
Personally, I'd like to know there is a *potential* issue with a device and be able to make an educated decision based on that, rather than no one looking deep enough, me buying the device, and seeing something clearly different on the display than I was expecting.
The point of color accuracy isn't necessarily to provide picture that looks the best, but rather to display the colors that were actually called for.
My rather poor example is: Say you are helping a friend buy a used car. You take a picture of a car whose paint looks faded and send it to your friend. For the case of this example, lets say that the picture taken was perfect. The lighting, exposure, and color represented in the image are exactly as it looks in real life. When viewed on a device with an oversaturated display, that car might look better than it does in real life. It might not look faded.
If the conversation you're having is: "Hey <your friend's name>, I think the car is in good shape but the paint looks faded" <insert picture>
If your friend's phone has an oversaturated display, he might say: "Naw, it looks fine to me" when in fact the paint looks terrible. When he shows up to buy the car he's probably going to be disappointed.
I understand this is a very narrow example, but I hope it illustrates the difference between making an image look "good" vs accurate.
Spoken like a true biased fan who's trying to justify their purchase. Nice.
Maybe no other reviewer mentioned it because they're incompetent? Maybe they enjoy over saturated colours that make people's skin look orange like from the Simpsons? People such as yourself apparently.
The fact that Anandtech was the only outlet to properly test the OnePlus 3's display is why I still visit Anandtech today, even after the departure of Brian Klug and of course Anand himself. What I like about Anandtech is that they value thoroughness above timeliness. While as other sites are forced to compromise in order to publish a review in time for the NDA lift, Anandtech will generally go a lot more in depth and do this kind of time consuming testing. If all reviewers exhibited this degree of attention to detail, I believe that the overall quality of products in the industry would rise.
Also, nine times out of ten, I will trust numbers over subjective impressions. That is not to say that subjective judgments aren't valuable in themselves, but without hard data they don't mean much. Without numbers we can't quantify subtle improvements and regressions that can add up over several generations of a product line.
if you'd buy products only based on numbers you wouldn't been able to buy your house or car, everything would be a compromise (just like here only the flagships are praised)
"Android has no color management at the system level"
Unbelievable, isn't it? In 2016, we have a major operating system with zero support for colour management. Even Windows half-assing it is massively better than this.
First post only to say I received my phone today and was about to bring it back. I read the review before buying and thought it's not possible to be so bad in the screen department. It's. Googled oneplus 3 sRGB and thanks to this amendment I know it's going to be solved. Thanks to Brandon for pointing out and oneplus for listening.
Can you believe how many reviewers didn't even mention the screen? Just the usual "screen looks fine" and they move on.
That is why we need Anandtech or other sites striving to do the same. This subjective "looks good, feels good" subjective reviewers are nothing but a poor attempt at generating clicks for advertisers.
I stopped reading hardware reviews of all kinds at TheVerge because of this. There'd be 4-8 screens of text, some pictures, but no actual benchmarks, no actual quantifiable numbers, no hard data of any kind. Just "works for me, no complaints". Even the final scores were completely arbitrary and could not be compared between devices from the same reviewer, let alone across reviewers.
While one should not rely solely on benchmarks, one should not solely rely on "feel-good" reviews, either.
That's the main reason I bought it despite the screen review at AT. No other site complaining about it. I find it amazing. First photo I did was of a tree. Ouch!. Before my eyes appered an psychedelic green tree taken out of Avatar film.
Great!. I really suffered because of the color saturation. My eyes are getting tired and painful even after 10 mins of gaming. I hope this will resolved after this OTA. Great Review!
Have you noticed that apps like Skype does not remain online and even some apps don't notify when it's pushed to the background? Skype status turns offline!!
Brandon, Have you noticed that apps like Skype does not remain online and even some apps don't notify when it's pushed to the background? Skype status turns offline!!
Hi Brandon, there are apparently issues with both WiFi and Bluetooth, either slow speeds or it's disconnecting out of nowhere (on both 2,4ghz and 5ghz). How's your experience? Could you do a third part about WiFi and BT?
Thanks for revisiting OP3, it almost helped me in making my mind. However, can you also share your thoughts on the battery life (before and after the Display and Memory fixes). There are lot of reviews with battery life in terms of talk time and stand by time, but that hardly helps. The one I am looking at is what is the back up with normal usage. I pretty much use the same apps that you use.
I don't think I've ever been on an emotional rollercoaster about a phone before. I was very excited to first hear about OnePlus 3, then deeply disappointed to hear it has AMOLED, then grinning like a kid again to hear it has an sRGB mode. I'm a photographer and I check how my photos render on smartphone quite often. Thank you for this update!
Great news for me too. While I'm not exactly a super picky person when it comes to display accuracy, I still find it uncomfortable to use the display with quality or calibration issues.
Thanks Brandon! The OnePlus 3 looked really interesting till those horrid colour issues. If this fix makes it through to release firmware soon this phone will make it onto my shortlist.
I bought one plus 2 and have so many issues...for past 6 weeks I am trying to get some support fro the company. Customer service is awful...I feel as if my hard earned money is due the drain..
good. that was quick. for mw though, i have to wait and see for this year's Nexus' and Google's phone. Having the latest version of Android just feels very good value to me, almost compulsory.
Since I ordered the phone, I watched all reviews, and everyone said the screen was not top of the line but not that bad either. That was until I watched a review on Youtube and the reviewer said the display had issues and referred to this article. And you completely bashed it. Now it makes me wonder, since you are reviewing a piece of hardware, how a few software tweaks, made the difference between one of the worst to one of the best displays tested lately. I strongly doubt everyone that referred to the original Youtube review will also refer to this one, some of the damage done to the image of the phone will be permanent.
Very interesting, as I just read another review that had a completely different opinion on the sRGB profile:
"The sRGB mode that comes with the OxygenOS 3.2 update can be enabled in the developer options. However, we would not recommend doing this. As the measurements using maximum screen brightness show, the color reproduction is then very good, but the image looks very warm in dimmed screen brightness. Furthermore, it is no longer possible to counter this via the color balance slider since it is then disabled. The reduction of the reproducible color space is the worst thing: Up to 100 percent are still covered ex-factory, but paradoxically only about 70 percent is covered in sRGB mode. The AdobeRGB color space coverage even drops from 89 to almost 45 percent. The way things are now, the sRGB mode is just a sham. However, the factory calibration is absolutely acceptable and well-implemented."
Never had a problem with their phones, but I did deal with customer service when I needed a refund. Response was quick and resolved. They may have been bad in the early days, but OnePlus really impressed me.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
81 Comments
Back to Article
madwolfa - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Great job, OnePlus! Back to the top of my wife's Nexus 5 replacement candidates list!Mudpie - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
The color saturation is just weird compared to what I'm used to, meaning IPS displays, but apparently with the update it should be better.CoreyWat - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
...that is until you read the Customer Service Horror Storiesmadwolfa - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Luckily in many years of owning all kinds of phones, I never had to deal with CS.blzd - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I keep telling that to my insurance companies. Somehow I'm still paying thousands of dollars though!duploxxx - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
reading internet is always exaggerated, those are the ones that had an issue not in line with a general customer service requirement and are no longer posting facts but feelings.elkhantar - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
Well, this is the third phone I buy from them and I never had any issue. There are others that have, of course, but it's just the same with any other company. Actually, this time the shipping company lost my parcel, and the moment they notified Oneplus they sent me another device (unfortunately I have to wait for the shipping yet again).Philotech - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Brandon,as you apparently care a lot for color management and appear (to me as a layman) very knowledgeable, I'd really be interest in your view on the True Tone feature of the new iPad Pro 9.7.
Technically, color reproduction would be incorrect once the color management starts to kick in, and would be measured as such by your tests I assume. But to the eye of the beholder, color reproductions seems to look "righter" when managed by True Tone when I may believe all the reviews and hands-ons.
Brandon Chester - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I've already written about True Tone in a couple of articles:http://www.anandtech.com/show/10265/understanding-...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10286/the-97-ipad-pr...
Philotech - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Thanks Brandon. I'd searched Anandtech for your name plus iPad Pro before with no results, but apparently I made some mistake there, sorry.Brandon Chester - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Yes, using our internal search is unfortunately a mistake. I believe it just sends the queries into a black hole. Best to use Google for search :)pillai86 - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Have you noticed that apps like Skype does not remain online and even some apps don't notify when it's pushed to the background? Skype status turns offline!!name99 - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Be careful that you are not confusing two different things."Color Management" and True-Tone solve two (apparently OPPOSITE) problems.
Color Management solves the PROFESSIONAL's problem: I want this content to be captured by a camera here, displayed on a device there, printed on a printer somewhere else, and to look IDENTICAL in all those situations, regardless of the camera, screen, and printer technology.
True-Tone solves the AMATEUR's problem: I want this content to look "optimal" under different lighting conditions. Optimal is a vague sort of word but it is not the same as "identical".
It's kinda like the difference between what a dermatologist wants to see when looking at skin (accuracy!) vs what a fashion photographer wants to see looking at the same skin.
The reason we need the color management is because we need an agreement as to exactly WHAT "240 units of red, 180 units of green, and 27 units of blue" MEANS. This meaning is given in terms of objective physical measurements.
The reason we need the second is that your brain doesn't actually see color in terms of objective physical measurements. This is not obvious --- after all your eye DOES see color that way. But your brain reinterprets the signal the eye sends to it depending on lighting conditions. So the question is --- do you want your visual device to be aware of and compensate for those lighting conditions or not.
And the answer depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to "see movies and pictures looking as nice as possible" the answer is "hell yes, compensate"; if you are trying to match colors for whatever professional purpose (even something as simple as shopping for a dress) the answer may range from yes to no depending on the exact purpose, but no is probably the usual situation.
[I do wonder how Apple handles this in terms of shopping for dresses. Has anyone tried this sort of thing? Are the shifts in color from True Tone enough that it would really make a difference?]
stephenbrooks - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I thought the distinction was even simpler than that: do you want colours that are intrinsically luminous (like lightbulbs, stars or fireflies) or colours that reflect the light around them (like paint, ink, most surfaces)?jlabelle2 - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Not really. Issue raised by Brandon was about the OnePlus screen targetting a wider gamut screen without propre color managed OS. This resulted in oversaturated colors. ALL the time. Plus, targetting the NTSC color space, they were also completely wrong..Now, TrueTone is not impacting the saturation level, to make it simple, it is shifting the white balance. We cannot say this is intrinsically wrong as there is not one true universal white point value as the external lightning is impacting how we see colors. It derived from the 6500K "standard", that's it.
Still, the impact is very different because you do not end up with fluorescent grass or red carmin tomatoes.
BenSkywalker - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Thank you Brandon, genuinely appreciate the follow up on several different levels. Couple things I wanted to point out following your article-I am not disagreeing with your sentiment *at all*- but would like to point out a bit of a double standard here. You find it a major issue if a person wants calibrated display but can't have it, but not once, not ever, have I heard you lament a sRGB calibrated display for *not* offering a wider color gamut option. In that same vein, I have what was, last time I looked, the best calibrated display for multi use purposes available and out of the two extremely accurate color modes and the one 'Vivid' option- every person I have asked liked the Vivid option the best(*horribly inaccurate*- this is with the option for ARGB or sRGB).
You bring up Apple places a great deal of importance on this matter, along with mentioning they have the highest profits. The Tab S from Samsung beat the iPads pretty easily and were in relative terms a catastrophic failure(in terms of profits vs the iPads). Just saying, calibrated displays are just that.
One final point, and one that I actually think is rather important.
I walked outside the other evening when the sun started getting low on the horizon and, with the utmost sincerity- the first thing that popped in my head was 'it looks like sRGB out here'- yeah yeah, what a geek, whatever. Point being, the location in which you live and the ambient light you are adjusted to will *greatly* impact what you think looks natural. 30 degrees below zero pictures calibrated for sRGB white points look comically bad and insanely unnatural- just as a summer evening picture from Florida calibrated for Japan's NTSC white point would.
One other minor thing, you bashed on the display pretty hard in your first review and I understand the point you were trying to make- but the reality of the situation seems to be that most of your issues had to do with the software the phone was using, outside of the pentile layout which nobody is a big fan of, it doesn't seem you had any issues with the screen. Not criticizing, mainly mentioning that you may want to stress the point in future phone reviews about the problems with the physical display(pentile) versus problems with the software(NTSC color target) that may or may not ever be fixed.
Once again, truly appreciate your follow up, it was a good read and I do greatly admire follow through when there is controversy :)
3DoubleD - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I appreciate your argument that the perception of natural color point is based on an individual's experience and perspective. One who lives in a cold, grey environment versus someone who lives is a warm, tropical environment, will have vastly different perspectives on white point and colors.However, I think this is one of the many cases where the masses need smarter people than them to make the correct decision for them. When you tested your colleagues' color mode preferences, you presented them with a choice of which they prefer, and they gave you their honest answer. This approach to validating usage of technology is fraught with peril though. A stronger metric is what people prefer in daily usage. One test gives an opinion of the moment, another test factors in the gamut (pun intended) of experiences that the person has with the technology.
Now, consider a world where equipment manufacturers abandon sRBG for gamuts of their choosing, each pushing to have their own unique super-wide gamut that they think appeals to their customer base the most. I would argue that in such a world, customers (and businesses/artists/ect) would become frustrated with the inconsistency of how their content is being delivered (as argued by Brandon above). For example, online clothes shopping becomes perilous when the red tie bought ends up not matching... whatever a tie is supposed to match. In many ways, we just came from that world, with displays that notoriously poorly calibrated unless they were professional monitors. Why would we take a step backwards?
I think everyone acknowledges that sRBG is in no way a superior choice, but it is a standard that is widely adopted. Brandon is correct, Android (as all OSes) should be updated to properly manage color spaces to facilitate the transition to wider gamut standards. Apple really led the way here (as much as it pains me to say that).
Great update Brandon, way to hold OnePlus's feet to the fire! A friend of mine received his OnePlus 3 and was also super disappointed with the blue tint, he'll be thrilled to hear it will be fixed.
BenSkywalker - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
That, in a nutshell, is the difference between a loyal Apple enthusiast and the rest of the world. Personal choice vs decree from up high.
Like Adobe RGB which has been around and a vastly superior choice since the 90s? Wider color gamuts received no attention, until Apple decided they were important. Much like the abhorrent pixel density iPhones suffered for many generations- not important until Apple's "Retina" marketing campaign. OLEDs staggering advantages in contrast and pixel response also ignored- until Apple makes the swap at which point it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
That's as close to the worst scenario you could have used that I can think of. You want to make your decisions on what to wear under artificial cool lighting based on an afternoon sunlight model? Ambient light in a business environment is significantly 'cooler' than sRGB- it actually falls much closer to what would be considered a hard blue push versus what it seems most people are championing.
Impulses - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Asking people for their preference in colors WITHOUT a source image that's also accurately captured AND presents a familiar subject is pointless... Skin tones (on an accurately metered photo) are a good test that will often quickly dethrone the preference for over saturation.It's like audio testing, crank one device just slightly louder than the other and people will generally prefer the louder one, the doesn't even really mean they like listening louder... It just means we're terrible at assessing certain things when presented with unfamiliar choices.
name99 - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I think you have to look at this from Apple's point of view.Consider a person who owns a Mac, an iPhone, and an Apple Watch. Now suppose they see the same content on all three of them. It looks surprisingly irritating if the content looks different across the three. (I know this for a fact because it irritated me all the time.) This is especially obvious with faces because we are so sensitive to them --- it only takes a very slight color imbalance for a face to look too red or too green on one screen vs another, even when it is supposed to the same picture (eg the picture you have in Contacts for a person you communicate with frequently via messages).
That is why Apple cares so much about color accuracy --- it is part of their larger them that you are not so much buying individual Apple products as that you are buying "modules" that represents different user interfaces into a single common Apple Computer held together by your Apple ID and iCloud.
There's also (to put it bluntly) the issue of taste and price. I don't want to start a flamewar, but my experience is that the same people who are willing/able to pay more care more about visual fidelity/accuracy.
I see lots of cheap TVs set up to stretch 4:3 content across a 16:9 screen; but I don't see the expensive TVs of my wealthier friends set up that way --- they're not prepared to put up with that visually inaccurate s***.
Same thing going all the way back to QuickTime. Early MPEG (and some other codecs) used slightly non-square pixels (eg 1.1x wide compared to high). QuickTime, from day one, did the work necessary in the blitter to rescale the image to look correct on screens, whereas every Windows MPEG player of the era that I saw just couldn't be bothered --- it displayed the image with heads that were mis-shapen spheroids and nobody in the world of Windows appeared to care.
BenSkywalker - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
The issue at hand is they picked the MPEG of color standards- sRGB was so poor it was immediately replaced by the professional market for ARGB- in the 90s, yet Apple is just now getting around to supporting wider gamuts(Now that Rec2020 is out they move to close to the twenty year old standard).
Wanting things standardized across their product line I get- aiming for the lowest possible target I don't.
jlabelle2 - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
- sRGB was so poor it was immediately replaced by the professional market for ARGB -I read this kind of claim all the time but people do not realize that having in real life colors more saturated than sRGB is very VERY rare. I champion every one to go out and try to take a picture where even a small area of the picture go beyond sRGB color space. It will not happen. Except if you are living maybe on a carribean island.
The reality is that what you call "poor" is still enough in 99,9% of the real cases (not speaking of artificial colors created in Photoshop).
Impulses - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
I live in a Caribbean island... :(BenSkywalker - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Firetruck, eggplant- it isn't hard- tons of paints used on cars, I have a set of towels hanging in the bathroom right now- it's actually *very* easy to find objects that go outside sRGB. Even if the color is entirely inside sRGB- 256 gradients versus 1024- smoother and more realistic tones- for all pictures.
jlabelle2 - Monday, July 4, 2016 - link
- Firetruck, eggplant- it isn't hard- tons of paints used on cars. it's actually *very* easy to find objects that go outside sRGB-I take the bet. You think they go beyond but you would be surprised.
- even if the color is entirely inside sRGB- 256 gradients versus 1024- smoother and more realistic tones- for all pictures.-
Actually, it goes the other way around. Taking aRGB colors with 8bits coding (a JPEG) and transforming it in sRGB (still 8bits) means that you are potentially loosing a little bit of fine gradation info as the aRGB has to strech the 256 level with a wider range. Only if you work with TIFF or 16bits RAW files you are quite ok when manipulating / editing pictures between color spaces.
BenSkywalker - Monday, July 4, 2016 - link
JPEGs while discussing accurate calibration...... wow. That's like having a discussion about Formula 1 and you comparing it to your radio controlled car thinking that is a real comparison.http://ninedegreesbelow.com/photography/srgb-versu...
No, I wouldn't be surprised what exceeds sRGB even a little bit- *TONS* of things you see in every day life. Firetruck red and eggplants both do exceed sRGB- that isn't an opinionated statement, it is one of fact.
I brought up lots of colors cars are painted with as I'm familiar with exactly what is involved in that process- I am in no way speculating- sRGB is just trash. It is a garbage color space worthy of your JPEG format.
jlabelle2 - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
- JPEGs while discussing accurate calibration...... wow -What JPEG has to do with calibration? You seem to confuse a lot of things. The encoding of the image (8bits or 16bits or more) has nothing to do with if the color is correct or not. You can have a scene with variation of colors that could be code on 2 bits and still have color completely off.
That is clear that those things are totally misunderstood by the majority of people, even "geek" people commenting on those kind of web site. It is good that Brandon is trying to educate and explain those things.
- sRGB is just trash -
Saying so does not make it anymore true. But if you are dealing regularly with that, can you provide me a picture of one of your car with a color widely beyond sRGB gamut? Should not be that difficult, isn't it?
- It is a garbage color space worthy of your JPEG format. -
This comment is showing the size of your ignorance.
JPEG is encoding in 8bits, which is the number of steps between the extreme colors (256 level on each channel).
Color space is defining the maximum color saturation of the maximum value (be it 256 on JPEG or 65536 on RAW or TIFF).
You are comparing how high is going a ladder (gamut on the color space) and how many steps it has (the encoding bits).
BenSkywalker - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
JPEG as it relates to calibration is the crux of this discussion. The amount of color information in a JPEG is *extremely* limited- very easily displayed by taking any image with a range of 0-255 on any of the channels and looking at it. Very clear banding across the board. You talk about calibration- there are several billion colors that the human eye can see- the odds of you landing on exactly the right shade of any given color is akin to hitting the powerball. It may happen- but your odds of actually seeing the right color are minuscule.So what we are actually looking at is the perception of what people see based on what the image was supposed to portray. In that element, your assertion is that a very narrow color space using a very lossy file format can be calibrated to be acceptable to your standards. My assertion is quite simple- perfectly 'calibrated' sRGB showing JPEGs are laughably inaccurate- they aren't remotely close to being the actual colors- the perceived difference between them and what you want to see aligns with that particular combination. In no way comprehensible is this a matter of accuracy, we are dealing with digital information and sRGB JPEGs are close to 0% accurate when judged in absolute terms- they just are 'good enough' for your end of the discourse.
That isn't a matter of personal preference, these are binary operations- you are looking for good enough for you. That is a matter of what you are looking for- nothing is wrong with that, getting on a soapbox because your wrong way of looking at things is better then someone else's wrong of looking at things is laughable.
Fire engine red is outside of sRGB. It is one of the most common colors in widespread use for the last fifty years. I also provided you a link showing how a box of crayons fails in sRGB space.
As to your attempts at trying to differentiate that there are both issues with width and granularity in the color space- that is an elementary issue- I assume any child would understand this. Internal rendering of image spaces swapped to 128bit floating point color in many fields long ago- Adobe RGB isn't *close* to being 'good enough'- it simply is a massive improvement over the insanely poor sRGB.
My stance still stands- championing that your way of looking at horribly inaccurate images is the 'right' way and any other way of looking at horribly inaccurate images is wrong comes entirely down to perception.
jlabelle2 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
I see that you do not understand the notions developed by Brandon. I will try to explain one last time but it may be a subject to difficult for you to grasp (not trying to be pedantic but just my observation based on your feedback). So one last try:- The amount of color information in a JPEG is *extremely* limited -
What is the "amount" of information? JPEG is encoding in 8bits which means a given number of GRADATION of colors. But once again, if you have a ProPhoto or DCI3 JPEG, the level of saturation that you can code (and potentiall display) is the SAME as a 32 bits TIFF file.
- Very clear banding across the board. You talk about calibration- there are several billion colors that the human eye can see-
You are throwing a lot of different notion against the wall to see if it sticks.
First, what is your point? What do you try to say in the context of this article on constraining in the sRGB gamut a Android phone screen as Android is not color managed ?
Secondly, regarding the points you raised (for whatever reason) : yes 8 bits gives you less number of intermediate steps as more bits which means potentially more posterization when working on the image.
But generally, no, it is very difficult or impossible for the human eye to discern the difference between a 16 bits TIFF and 8 bits JPEG in term of color gradation. JPEG is allowing 16 millions discrete different colors. You are not just able to see any banding because of the limitation on 8 bits nor is able anyone on earth, despite your claim.
WHY is 16 bits important, it is because when you EDIT and CHANGE the image, then you can start to see posterization with extreme editing. So JPEG is not a problem for the display. 8 bits is a problem as a working space if you make serious editing.
I clarified this as you are confused on those notions.
- your assertion is that a very narrow color space using a very lossy file format can be calibrated to be acceptable to your standards -
It is not an assertion.
Let's not comment again on how narrow or large is the sRGB gamut. I asked you to provide a real example of a picture of yours exceeding the sRGB gamut and you are not able to provide so let's say that the burden of proof is still on yours.
JPEG can be more or less lossy depending on the compression ratio. I defy you or anybody to see the difference between a JPEG with a good quality compression ration (80 or 90%) and the original TIFF. This is like your claim that you can see in 16 millions different colors "very clear banding across the board". That is just bullsh...
And last, sRGB is not "my" standard. And yes, a LCD can be perfectly calibrated toward sRGB color space or another color space...or not. I do not even understand what you are trying to argue against?!?
- My assertion is quite simple- perfectly 'calibrated' sRGB showing JPEGs are laughably inaccurate-
This phrase does not mean anything. Either the display is perfectly calibrated and the colors it shows are accurate (by definition) or they are not.
You are basically telling me that you can have a tachymetre on a car that is perfectly calibrated to display the real speed of the car ... but the car of the speed is "laughably" inaccurate. I don't know if english is your mother tongue the phrase makes just NO sense.
- we are dealing with digital information and sRGB JPEGs are close to 0% accurate when judged in absolute terms-
you are going further in the ridicule. Claiming that you can distinguish more than 16 millions different colors and now even claiming that it you cannot code more than 16 millions, the image that you see is 0% accurate. What to tell...
I propose you a simple 2nd bet (as you declined the 1st one): you can give me any image that you want with any encoding bit size (16 bits, 32 bits), in any color space of your choice.
I will take it and make 2 versions of it: one reduced to 8 bits and saved temporarily in a 90% JPEG, and the other let at the original size.
I will then give you back both in TIFF (so you cannot tell which is which) and ask you to tell me which one is the JPEG. Please take my bet, it will be enlightening for you?
I know already that you will also refuse the 2nd bet because you must have realized by now how wrong you are but if you do not believe it still, take the bet, and you will learn something.
- I also provided you a link showing how a box of crayons fails in sRGB space.-
The link is showing in analysing the image what is going beyond sRGB. What is much more important for me is if someone is able to tell the difference. Thus my bet to you. Find me an image.
I will restrict one to sRGB, another to aRGB and send you back both in aRGB and you will have to tell which is which. Image should be yours.
- I assume any child would understand this-
I restrained myself, especially in forum, to make such comment. Although I am an engineer so those topics are for me quite elementary, I do realize they are not clear for everyone and you are a proof of it. Still, you are not a child and I understand that you could not grasp those notions.
- My stance still stands -
This is why I asked not to take my word and common knowledge for granted and propose you to realize how wrong you are by yourself. Take my 2 bets and you will have a more clear understanding how mistaken you are. If you really want to learn and progress. Otherwise, have a good day.
jlabelle2 - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
- 30 degrees below zero pictures calibrated for sRGB white points look comically bad and insanely unnatural -Common confusion on white balance (what TrueTone on Apple devices is tackling) and the wider gamut than sRGB standard.
The issue with the OnePlus or every wide gamut screen used in unmanaged OS is that the web, 99% of the camera and pretty much most picture you received and see are done or targetting sRGB color space. Displaying them in wider gamut screen than sRGB will make them all appeared oversaturated. That is simply not good.
- every person I have asked liked the Vivid option the best -
Again a different story. you could perfectly have a screen, for which the gamut is constrained in the sRGB color space, and have an vivid option.
Let's not forget that in 99,9% of the case (in fact, on 70 000 aRGB pictures, I took, there was less than 5-6 so it is more 99,99% of the case), the images of natural things (not flashy designed logos or colors that do not exist in real life) never exceed the sRGB gamut. It is VERY rare to have in real life colors beyond. What it means is that, even in a perfectly color managed OS and workflow, the benefit of going wider than sRGB is impacting only small areas of a very tiny number of pictures.
And even on those small areas of those tiny subset of pictures, you probably cannot tell because the difference could only be spotted when seeing both side by side.
On the opposite, in the case of the wide gamut screen of the OnePlus used on non color managed OS, 100% of the pictures and the entire areas of those pictures would appear oversaturated. Always.
As such, a vivid option could still oversaturate colors, even if still constrained within the sRGB gamut. One is not mutually exclusive from the other. But at least, you give the choice to user.
For instance, i like adding some color saturation to my A7R photos. But the saturation still remains within level that exist in real life and everybody would find strange fluorescent green grass.
zepi - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
The question is: Is there any real need for device specific calibration if they can just ship a updated colour profile and hit well within "good enough" territory without worrying about device level differences?I wonder if someone could test 20 "identical" OLED phones and 20 identical LCD phones / displays and see if there are any real variations?
Brandon Chester - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I sure wish that we could, but getting more than one device is already very difficult, let alone twenty.It's also worth noting that backlight variance probably makes post-ship changes more difficult on LCDs than on OLEDs.
JanSolo242 - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
It would be interesting to know what impact the memory management changes have on battery life, if any.jjj - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Maybe you should have loaded a couple of big games too.Memory management seems to be all over the place and people care about it so including details on it in reviews might not be a bad idea.Would also like to make a case for a 360 Mobile N4 review. Not that i expect you guys to review such a device since you are too commercial to review what's interesting instead of what's in the financial interest of the owner.
Still, you got a 135$ device with 2xA72@ 2.1GHz and 8 more little cores pedaling behind , 4GB of RAM, a GPU that seems sufficient for 1080p gaming ( once again AT really needs to start testing the GPU in actual games at some point this century) and it makes one wonder how much sense does it make to pay 2 to 5 times more on a SD820 device.Sure you get better cam and wifi and other little bits but for a few years midrange was little cores and there was a huge theoretical perf gap.Theoretical because even A53 at high clocks results in a decent experience. Helio X20 and even SD65X changed the landscape in a substantial way and no publication seems to be willing to notice and take a look at that.
Yesumanu - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I would refrain from calling Anand "too commercial" when they're reviewing niche devices like this:http://www.anandtech.com/show/9868/cubot-h1-smartp...
To comment on the phone you have mentioned, it does not have a stellar price/performance ratio. It costs $135 in China, if you're an international buyer be ready to pay $200 for it, and for that price you are better off with the Meizu Note 3 with Snapdragon 652, metal chassis and software support (this "360" company update record is either sketchy or non-existent).
Also, I don't really see the point of testing individual games. We don't care how well certain games are optimized for certain chipsets, Anand just tests the absolute performance of a phone (or relative to its resolution). I suspect that many readers, including me, don't play XYZ or ZYX game on their phone or any at all but want to know if their phone's gpu performance is gimped and may hinder the device's ability to playback videos.
It should also be mentioned that if you go with Mediatek chipsets, you can forget about any custom rom support or even a TWRP-like recovery. For many people that is a deal breaker and personally, I would never buy a phone with Mediatek SoC, altough I know that some people may not share this belief.
Yesumanu - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
*Redmi Note 3, not Meizudeyannn - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Whilst I agree with most of this post I have to disagree on some points - especially on the Custom rom and TWRP-like recovery.All Mediatek devices I've used and configured so far have custom rom support albeit lackluster. And I'm talking about a multitude of Mediatek devices I've used or configured for friends from manifacturers like Lenovo, Jayiu, Xiaomi, Doogee, Umi, etc.
The code base is a nightmare when the source code is released at all and when no sources are released naturally you can't find support in places like XDA and have to go look elsewhere and there is a separate set of web pages for custom roms and modified roms for such devices (the 4pda Russian forum for example). But then again this is the case with these manufacturers even when the device has a Snapdragon SOC.
I do have to say the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 case with unlocked bootloader and sources you can work with for the Helio X10 is the exception and not the rule and yet after mingling with Mediatek devices for some time I decided to move back to using a dev-friendly device like a Nexus or Oneplus One and the Oneplus Three so far feels pretty great.
But indeed it's as easy to revive a softbricked Mediatek devices as it is to revive a Oneplus One just relying on Snapdragon drivers, flash tool and nand flashing. In fact often the custom roms for Mediatek devices came in this fashion and once a TWRP is compiled for the SOC it becomes a base to be used for all other devices with the same SOC revision.
WoodyPWX - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Very good job! Both Brandon and OnePlus! Thanks for the updatemortimerr - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I love the image of an engineer at 1+, who had a working sRGB mode before launch, because they new damn well the thing was shipping attuned to the incorrect mode and knew it would be so bad that it would almost certainly come in handy.MrCommunistGen - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Brandon,I always find it helpful if significant updates like these are mentioned and linked back to in the original review as an update, either on the first page, or in the conclusion.
Of course regular readers like me will see all of the articles as they come out, but we're not the only ones who matter. Someone searching the internet for reviews of a particular device will likely only see the main review and I think it is especially important for those people to know that the reviewer's opinion of the device has changed.
I don't want to rustle any feathers, but when requested, Ganesh did this for his Skylake NUC article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10327/intel-releases...
MrCommunistGen - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Oh, I didn't mean to only post that. I also wanted to thank you for your diligence in doing the additional testing and for your well written objective analysis as well as your personal commentary on the topic of color accuracy.I think that this is a topic that more people would care about if they knew about it, and articles like this are a step in that direction.
Brandon Chester - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I do plan to do this. I'm just at work right now, will be updating both the display and conclusion sections of the original review around 5PM EST.MrCommunistGen - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Awesome!Stochastic - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
OnePlus One owner here. My one big gripe with the OPO is that, at least on T-Mobile, reception is pretty terrible. In your experience does the OnePlus 3 have any issues receiving LTE? In your review you wrote that "I'm still unable to achieve a strong enough signal over LTE to get results that are comparable to those run by Josh and Matt" which concerned me.Brandon Chester - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
That's not due to the phone. My apartment just has terrible cellular reception on both our major networks on all my devices. I'm only pulling -97dBm, so I've decided to stop directly comparing my results, at least until I move at the start of August where I'll have to investigate the signal again.Lolimaster - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Meanwhile I currently have my firefox with 200tabs and just 4GB of memory on my Athlon II X4 620, feels snappy.MrCommunistGen - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
There are likely other factors involved as well. First one off the cuff is that modern desktop OSes like Windows manage memory differently than Android. I guess there's a chance things have changed, but AFAIK Android does not use a pagefile to help alleviate memory pressure.Also, on mobile devices, the VRAM is still allocated out of a chunk of RAM. If your desktop has a dGPU, that'd be extra memory available on desktop vs mobile.
Unfortunately I'm not terribly well versed in this topic and can't really provide much specific insight.
thek - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Hi, Look!It's a reviewer that clearly forgot what it was to be an average day to day consumer and only thinking like a reviewer - with only numbers in his mind .. (kind of like politicians these days..huh), and bashed an apparently really decent phone(..or a superb! if you take into account the cost of it which is half the cost of a new galaxy or Iphone) for nothing really. just because it wasn't amazing.
I swear, I thought about not buying this phone just because of your earlier review and what you said about the display, but thank god there are other decent reviewers out there. Once no one(literally no one) even mentioned the display I knew it was probably because you were relying too much on the numbers instead of actually looking at the screen. Then I went into youtube to watch vid reviews (and display reviews between the OP3 and other flagships) and clearly the OP3 was not the worse, as you said...and surprisingly enough, just from eye-to-eye, it was sometimes the best.
thek - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
just adding, I started liking AnandTech less since your review.MrCommunistGen - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is an age old adage for a reason. As I think Brandon mentioned in the review, much of the consumer base actually prefers oversaturated colors. This is part of what won early AMOLED panels their consumer appeal.The point of an thorough and critical review is not to say the same thing as every other site. It is to push the boundaries of what is examined. To perhaps find things that a device does particularly well, or in this case something a device might not do well.
Personally, I'd like to know there is a *potential* issue with a device and be able to make an educated decision based on that, rather than no one looking deep enough, me buying the device, and seeing something clearly different on the display than I was expecting.
The point of color accuracy isn't necessarily to provide picture that looks the best, but rather to display the colors that were actually called for.
My rather poor example is: Say you are helping a friend buy a used car. You take a picture of a car whose paint looks faded and send it to your friend. For the case of this example, lets say that the picture taken was perfect. The lighting, exposure, and color represented in the image are exactly as it looks in real life. When viewed on a device with an oversaturated display, that car might look better than it does in real life. It might not look faded.
If the conversation you're having is: "Hey <your friend's name>, I think the car is in good shape but the paint looks faded" <insert picture>
If your friend's phone has an oversaturated display, he might say: "Naw, it looks fine to me" when in fact the paint looks terrible. When he shows up to buy the car he's probably going to be disappointed.
I understand this is a very narrow example, but I hope it illustrates the difference between making an image look "good" vs accurate.
blzd - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Spoken like a true biased fan who's trying to justify their purchase. Nice.Maybe no other reviewer mentioned it because they're incompetent? Maybe they enjoy over saturated colours that make people's skin look orange like from the Simpsons? People such as yourself apparently.
thek - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
didn't buy the phone yet. just stating facts.Stochastic - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
The fact that Anandtech was the only outlet to properly test the OnePlus 3's display is why I still visit Anandtech today, even after the departure of Brian Klug and of course Anand himself. What I like about Anandtech is that they value thoroughness above timeliness. While as other sites are forced to compromise in order to publish a review in time for the NDA lift, Anandtech will generally go a lot more in depth and do this kind of time consuming testing. If all reviewers exhibited this degree of attention to detail, I believe that the overall quality of products in the industry would rise.Stochastic - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Also, nine times out of ten, I will trust numbers over subjective impressions. That is not to say that subjective judgments aren't valuable in themselves, but without hard data they don't mean much. Without numbers we can't quantify subtle improvements and regressions that can add up over several generations of a product line.phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Where's the +1 link? Definitely needs to be clicked here. :)thek - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
if you'd buy products only based on numbers you wouldn't been able to buy your house or car, everything would be a compromise (just like here only the flagships are praised)Impulses - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
+1r3loaded - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
"Android has no color management at the system level"Unbelievable, isn't it? In 2016, we have a major operating system with zero support for colour management. Even Windows half-assing it is massively better than this.
Human_avatar - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
First post only to say I received my phone today and was about to bring it back. I read the review before buying and thought it's not possible to be so bad in the screen department. It's.Googled oneplus 3 sRGB and thanks to this amendment I know it's going to be solved. Thanks to Brandon for pointing out and oneplus for listening.
blzd - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Can you believe how many reviewers didn't even mention the screen? Just the usual "screen looks fine" and they move on.That is why we need Anandtech or other sites striving to do the same. This subjective "looks good, feels good" subjective reviewers are nothing but a poor attempt at generating clicks for advertisers.
phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
I stopped reading hardware reviews of all kinds at TheVerge because of this. There'd be 4-8 screens of text, some pictures, but no actual benchmarks, no actual quantifiable numbers, no hard data of any kind. Just "works for me, no complaints". Even the final scores were completely arbitrary and could not be compared between devices from the same reviewer, let alone across reviewers.While one should not rely solely on benchmarks, one should not solely rely on "feel-good" reviews, either.
Human_avatar - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
That's the main reason I bought it despite the screen review at AT. No other site complaining about it. I find it amazing. First photo I did was of a tree. Ouch!. Before my eyes appered an psychedelic green tree taken out of Avatar film.TamilK - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Great!. I really suffered because of the color saturation. My eyes are getting tired and painful even after 10 mins of gaming. I hope this will resolved after this OTA. Great Review!pillai86 - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Have you noticed that apps like Skype does not remain online and even some apps don't notify when it's pushed to the background? Skype status turns offline!!pillai86 - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Brandon, Have you noticed that apps like Skype does not remain online and even some apps don't notify when it's pushed to the background? Skype status turns offline!!Wojciech89 - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Hi Brandon,there are apparently issues with both WiFi and Bluetooth, either slow speeds or it's disconnecting out of nowhere (on both 2,4ghz and 5ghz). How's your experience? Could you do a third part about WiFi and BT?
blzd - Thursday, June 30, 2016 - link
Thank you for revisiting this topic. I have a feeling your original review is the (only?) reason One Plus is even pushing the sRGB mode this quickly.Great reviews and keeping OEMs honest. Keep up the good work.
Sudheendra - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
@Brandon Chester,Thanks for revisiting OP3, it almost helped me in making my mind. However, can you also share your thoughts on the battery life (before and after the Display and Memory fixes). There are lot of reviews with battery life in terms of talk time and stand by time, but that hardly helps. The one I am looking at is what is the back up with normal usage. I pretty much use the same apps that you use.
Thanks
georgejetson - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
I don't think I've ever been on an emotional rollercoaster about a phone before. I was very excited to first hear about OnePlus 3, then deeply disappointed to hear it has AMOLED, then grinning like a kid again to hear it has an sRGB mode. I'm a photographer and I check how my photos render on smartphone quite often. Thank you for this update!Impulses - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Even regular folks benefit from an accurate display when engaging in casual photography IMO.Rc1138 - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Great news for me too. While I'm not exactly a super picky person when it comes to display accuracy, I still find it uncomfortable to use the display with quality or calibration issues.dego - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
would you advice an upgrade from oneplusone to oneplus3 ?Impulses - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Nice update, super appreciated.prathya - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
How much did OnePlus pay you for this post ?pvdw - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
Thanks Brandon! The OnePlus 3 looked really interesting till those horrid colour issues. If this fix makes it through to release firmware soon this phone will make it onto my shortlist.Vinap - Friday, July 1, 2016 - link
I bought one plus 2 and have so many issues...for past 6 weeks I am trying to get some support fro the company. Customer service is awful...I feel as if my hard earned money is due the drain..zodiacfml - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
good. that was quick. for mw though, i have to wait and see for this year's Nexus' and Google's phone.Having the latest version of Android just feels very good value to me, almost compulsory.
PaulD87 - Monday, July 4, 2016 - link
Since I ordered the phone, I watched all reviews, and everyone said the screen was not top of the line but not that bad either.That was until I watched a review on Youtube and the reviewer said the display had issues and referred to this article. And you completely bashed it.
Now it makes me wonder, since you are reviewing a piece of hardware, how a few software tweaks, made the difference between one of the worst to one of the best displays tested lately.
I strongly doubt everyone that referred to the original Youtube review will also refer to this one, some of the damage done to the image of the phone will be permanent.
10basetom - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Very interesting, as I just read another review that had a completely different opinion on the sRGB profile:"The sRGB mode that comes with the OxygenOS 3.2 update can be enabled in the developer options. However, we would not recommend doing this. As the measurements using maximum screen brightness show, the color reproduction is then very good, but the image looks very warm in dimmed screen brightness. Furthermore, it is no longer possible to counter this via the color balance slider since it is then disabled. The reduction of the reproducible color space is the worst thing: Up to 100 percent are still covered ex-factory, but paradoxically only about 70 percent is covered in sRGB mode. The AdobeRGB color space coverage even drops from 89 to almost 45 percent. The way things are now, the sRGB mode is just a sham. However, the factory calibration is absolutely acceptable and well-implemented."
Source: http://www.notebookcheck.net/OnePlus-3-Smartphone-...
Justin Berta - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link
Never had a problem with their phones, but I did deal with customer service when I needed a refund. Response was quick and resolved. They may have been bad in the early days, but OnePlus really impressed me.Shelly_0011 - Saturday, February 25, 2017 - link
Free steam wallet codes are available on http://steamwalletcodeshub.com/ for redemption with simple steps. Kindly visit and get these for total free