Comment by mahboi

8 hours ago

Someone was complaining to me that Apple took a long time to add 120 Hz displays to phones. I didn't even know what my iPhone had, turns out it's 60 Hz cause it's a 12 mini. I've used 120 Hz displays before. Cannot tell the difference.

23 comments

mahboi

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blehn  7 hours ago

If you use a 120 Hz iPhone for 6 months and then switch back to your 12 mini, you'll notice immediately.

  • freehorse  42 minutes ago

    What you definitely notice between 60Hz vs 120Hz on a phone is the battery drain.

    Depends a lot on the usage I guess. In a tablet where you may draw etc you can notice the difference definitely. Or if you play games on the phone. But otherwise I don't think the difference is that important as it is sometimes claimed.

  • foldr  36 minutes ago

    I used to switch between a MacBook Pro with a 120Hz display and a MacBook Air with a 60Hz display and never noticed any difference. I think I could probably have noticed if I'd put them side by side and compared the feel of the scrolling, but why would I do that?

    There's a minority of people who really do notice stuff like this, which is fine. The problem is that for some reason, they sometimes have difficulty accepting that they're a minority.

  • apparent  7 hours ago

    If something is not noticeable when it gets "better", but it leads people to notice other stuff is "worse" over time, then I'd argue it's not actually a good thing to get.

    Imagine if someone said "this food won't really taste better to you when you first eat it, but after 6 months you'll find other food tastes worse". To me, this would not be a selling point.

    • olyjohn  6 hours ago

      I didn't know how bad TV looked in the 90s. We watched a low res 19 inch TV from across the room. Did moving to HD make any real difference in our lives? Do we really enjoy TV that much more? Once the excitement wears off about 20 minutes into watching it, its still the same thing. If the story is good, you get into it either way and forget what you're watching it on.

      6 replies →

    • comboy  4 hours ago

      It's the same dynamic as with how we optimize for web pages speed. People don't immediately think that website responding 200ms faster is better. But they enjoy the experience more anyway (even if at some subconscious level) and they end up liking it more and spending more time with it.

      With food also you could be incrementally getting better and better food and when you then try v1 it would taste bad.

      It seems that we might also be noticing slight degradation more than slight improvement in general? No idea if that's true.

    • koyote  7 hours ago

      I don't think that's a good comparison.

      I've often had new phones that are 'faster' but I barely notice the fastness until I go back to my old phone and realise that my finger-memory needs adapting because things take just a bit longer to load.

      I'd assume it's similar for screen refresh rates.

      1 reply →

    • alsetmusic  6 hours ago

      I always wondered why Windows users didn't notice the jagged text in 2001 and see a Mac as obviously better. You don't know what you aren't missing until it's gone.

7e  8 hours ago

Some people are born with nervous systems which aren’t capable of noticing the difference, just like there are people who can’t see better than 20/20 no matter how good their optical acuity is.