What color mode do you keep your phone’s display in?

I’m not sure if there’s a more important component on your smartphone than its display. Sure, everything under the hood matters quite a bit — you don’t want to deal with slow performance or poor battery life — but the display is the thing you’re going to be directly interacting with the most. A good display can make your smartphone a perfect travel companion; a bad display can literally result in headaches and eye strain. But it’s not just the quality of the screen that matters. It’s also the color tuning.

Practically every Android phone these days sports a couple of different color modes you can swap between, with some phones featuring additional settings for more specific adjustments. In most cases, the more saturated option — usually called “Vivid,” though Pixel refers to it as “Adaptive” — is enabled by default out of the box. Think of this like any TV you’d buy at Best Buy; these smartphone OEMs want you to have the most impressive experience right from the start, even if it’s not particularly accurate.

Thankfully, you’ll usually find a “Natural” setting alongside it, which tones down the saturation and delivers something a little more muted and realistic. It can be tough to swap to this if you’re used to Vivid mode, which might explain why some manufacturers — including OnePlus — include Pro modes on certain devices to act as a middle-ground solution. In theory, these options are tuned perfectly to deliver the best experience possible, without appearing over or undersaturated.

People — especially enthusiasts and early adopters — care a lot about what their displays look like, and with good reason. When you’re spending well over $1,000 these days on a new flagship, you want everything to look and feel right as soon as you’re done unboxing. Think about the reaction the Galaxy S24 Ultra saw earlier this year when a bug seemingly prevented Samsung’s Vivid mode from properly functioning. While I appreciated the more toned-down appearance in my review, it’s clear that plenty of Samsung fans wanted the company’s signature punchy colors as, at the very least, a third possible option.

So, how do you prefer your display? Do you want rich, vibrant hues, or something a little less extreme? Maybe you prefer smartphones with calibrated Pro modes, or perhaps you’re diving into the advanced settings on skins like One UI to properly tune your RGB levels. Whatever your experience, let us know below.