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Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

I've been experimenting with greyscale on my Android phone, it is nowhere near the comfort level of real E-Ink.

Yeah I don’t disagree. But on the whole I think it gets you a long way towards it without the cons of having two devices for example.

Alright, I just spent the entire day on greyscale yesterday to check.

I think that I suffered more eyestrain than usual, mostly because I could not tell icons and other UI elements apart. Yet I don't have this issue on the E-Ink device, interestingly, even though I use many of the same apps e.g. Telegram.

I would say that the difference is due to the reflective vs radiative screen, not the greyscale palette.

Maybe it's a mismatch in requirements. For me, I move it into greyscale to give my monkey brain less reason to want to play with it. The intention when it's enabled is that if I need to set a timer or jot down a note that I don't get sucked into the device. When I'm done in a deep work mode, I switch it back to normal screen.

So for me, the whole point is I won't be using it enough to notice eye strain or something like that. If I'm messaging or doing something the device is designed for, it's a benefit for me to be able to have it in full fidelity.

How did you do that?

On Samsung devices, there's is an option under the Accessibility menu. Then go to something like "Improve Display" (mine is in Hebrew, so that is a rough translation that might not be exact) and then "Customize Colours" (again, rough translation).

Additionally, I believe that there exists an additional method to enable greyscale in Developer Options if you have that enabled.

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