The quality of the displayed image on mobile devices is affected by the varying ambient illumination conditions. Determining appropriate viewing conditions for particular visual tasks requires time and the appropriate instrumentation. To this end, the usefulness of more practical visual tests for use in clinical environments were explored. Experiments to determine the limitations of mobile displays in terms of the visibility of subtle targets for different background luminance and ambient illumination with two mobile devices were conducted. A noise-embedded text detection task and a threshold estimation staircase technique for a range of illuminance between 1 and 80,000 lx encompassing conditions found in dark reading rooms, office spaces, and outdoor scenarios has been compared. It was found that the text detection method holds promise as a surrogate for more complicated tests in the framework of a clinically practical implementation.

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The authors' proposed methodology for characterizing the grayscale degradation in chromaticity for color monitors that can be used to establish standards and procedures aiding in the quality control testing of color displays and color measurement instrumentation.