Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- One UI 8.5 has leaked, and one new feature we’ve already spotted appears to be a system for combatting photosensitive epilepsy.
- Your phone will detect when video contains flashing lights, and automatically dim the screen.
- It’s still unclear if this will be available for all devices getting One UI 8.5, and if it will work for gaming.
Photosensitive epilepsy (PSE) may often be played for comic effect on shows like The Simpsons, where characters are briefly disabled by a strobing light. The reality of the condition is far from a laughing matter, though, and for vulnerable individuals, everything from playing video games to streaming media can feel like navigating a minefield, never sure when you’re going to run across triggering conditions. Thankfully, Samsung appears to be working on a handy solution.
OneUI 8.5 has just entered testing, and we’re already starting to dig into the release in the hopes of spotting some of the changes and new features Samsung’s developing. In addition to our first mention of the Galaxy Buds 4 family, that also includes evidence of a new system Samsung’s been preparing to lower the risk for users with PSE.
Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority?
As you can see here, we’ve identified a handful of text strings that make reference to an option for automatically dimming your device’s screen when the system detects flashing lights:
Code
<string name="reduce_flash_lights_dimming_intensity">Dimming intensity</string>
<string name="reduce_flash_lights_intensity_high">High</string>
<string name="reduce_flash_lights_intensity_low">Low</string>
<string name="reduce_flash_lights_intensity_medium">Medium</string>
<string name="reduce_flash_lights_title">Reduce flashing lights</string>
<string name="reduce_flash_lights_title_desc">When watching video content, any part that includes a repeated strobe effect exceeding a certain level will be dimmed. This effect can only work on the display of this device and may not be supported depending on some app development environments.</string>By dimming the screen in such cases, the impact of those flashes should be significantly reduced, with the idea of getting them under the PSE threshold. It appears that users will be given some degree of control over just how severe that dimming is, recognizing that not everyone will be impacted by this condition equally. What we haven’t seen, though, are any options for controlling the degree of flashing that sets this off — though Samsung may intentionally want to avoid letting users change that.
We’re most curious about that “only work on the display of this device” caveat, and would love to know what exactly Samsung means by this — if this is a system that just won’t work with external screens, or if it might rely on device-specific hardware, and may only support the S26 series.
We also wonder if that mention of “video content” suggests that this will only work with media streaming, and won’t function with games running natively on your phone — that would be a shame, but we can at least technically appreciate why Samsung might take that kind of more restricted approach. Hopefully we’re able to start filling in some of these blanks as we get to check out future One UI 8.5 builds.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Thank you for being part of our community. Read our Comment Policy before posting.
