Pure black themes looked cool until I tried them on an OLED phone

I switched my app from #000000 to a dark gray like #121212 about 6 months ago after reading about smearing on OLED screens. The difference was night and day, everything felt less harsh and the contrast actually looked better. Anyone else moved away from pure black or am I the only one who noticed this?

1 comments

1 Comment

logansullivan17h ago

Saw a display engineer talking about this exact thing a while back. They said pure black makes the pixel transitions slower, especially when stuff moves around on screen, which is where that purple smearing comes from. Also something about how your eyes actually have a harder time focusing on pure black against white text, so the gray is easier to read for longer periods. I switched my own phone to a dark gray theme after that and honestly scrolling through feeds feels way smoother now. It's one of those things you don't notice until you go back to pure black and it just looks wrong somehow.