I just get a FP5 for Christmas () and I directly put the blue light screen protector (which quality is amazing). I only have an issue: I’m living on an island (it’s summer here) and when I wear polarised sunglasses the screen becomes difficult to see: there are a lot of weird colored light reflections. It is not agreeable at all. This issue happens only with polarised sunglasses and only when the phone is on portait mode, not in landscape mode.
My question is: is it a screen protector issue or a phone issue ? If it is only the screen protector I will remove it, but I’ll not if it is the phone. I also had this issue with my FP3 without the screen protector but only in landscape mode. It was even worse, I couldn’t see anything on the phone.
So, if anyone has a FP5 without this screen protector and has polarised sunglasses, could you make a little test to see if this problem occurs please ? It would be a great help for me
I tried my FP4 and my wife’s FP5 with my Polaroid’s on and they behaved slightly different due to LCD vs OLED screens on them. The FP4’s LCD screen blacks out in landscape orientation, but the FP5’s OLED is polarized in different direction and blacks out in -45°/135° angle (clockwise halfway between portrait and landscape).
I think this is less disturbing than either landscape or portrait blackened out, but might cause some issues when accidentally slightly rotating the device. I didn’t see any weird reflections or artefacts though, so that might be the blue light filter. It’s not probably optically as uniform as the screen’s glass. It might cause the polarized light to rotate differently on different parts of the screen, resulting in some areas of the screen appearing dimmer and even show coloured artefacts.
Thank you for your answer and experiment. It is interesting as I don’t have any black screen in -45°/135° angle with my FP5. I’m wondering if it is the screen’s glass which creates the difference or all FP5/sunglasses are not identicals (although I have similar results with 2 polarised sunglasses)…?!
I think polarised sunglasses should always be polarised horizontally, to filter out reflected light from vertical surfaces. I’m pretty sure it’s the blue light filter, as there shouldn’t also be that kind of differences in displays, unless Fairphone sources different kind of OLED displays from multiple manufacturers.
If you decide to try the phone without the filter, please update here, would be nice to now if it’s that.
I finally removed the filter (for some reasons bubbles appeared in one corner few months after I put it…). And yes I have the same thing as you have @CyclingEngineer. So it was the filter fault, unfortunately. I’m gonna stay without it !
Can a fairphone engineer explain how their screens are polarized and how they are different from other phones? From what I noticed, even an iPhone 6 from 2014 doesn’t have this problem with polarized sunglasses.
For example, my FP3 gets blacked out in landscape mode with polarized sunglasses, while my Google Pixel 3 (released at about the same period 2018-2019) doesn’t get blacked out at any angle. It does appear that the color temperature changes at different angles with the polarized sunglasses.
So why does that happen? What could be the difference in the specifications of these display panels and why is one kind of panel chosen instead of the other, because of cost or the availability of parts?
Thanks for the article @Incanus. It also might explain why there’s a polarizing filter in the OLED screen of FP5. I was wondering about that because it isn’t typically necessary for OLED screens.
Pixel 3 has an OLED screen and doesn’t seem to have a polarizing filter, so it works fine with sunglasses. Iphone 6 must have some polarization filter, because it has a LCD screen. It should black out with polarizing sunglasses in some angle.
Usually, to preserve usability, screen manufacturers try to make the polarization angle something non-standard (neither vertical nor horizontal), since nobody will use (and thus needs to see) their phone in such an angle.
Polarizing sunglasses are great, and a boon for drivers – and even more, mariners! Cutting through the reflections and being able to see what’s beneath the surface has often saved my bacon while sailing. My point is, polarizing sunglasses aren’t going anywhere, and smartphone screen manufacturers will have to adapt.
Why isn’t the FP3 screen polarized at 45 degrees angle or something other than portrait or landscape? Sounds like this still hasn’t become an industry standard with display manufacturers still using a suboptimal design.
) and I directly put the blue light screen protector (which quality is amazing). I only have an issue: I’m living on an island (it’s summer here) and when I wear polarised sunglasses the screen becomes difficult to see: there are a lot of weird colored light reflections. It is not agreeable at all. This issue happens only with polarised sunglasses and only when the phone is on portait mode, not in landscape mode.
