Readability of Characters on Liquid Crystal Displays in Mobile Phones

Subject performance in reading characters on mobile phone liquid crystal displays was researched with the use of: (1) sentences without meaning, made from randomly ordered alphanumeric characters having 3 different sizes of characters and 4 different contrasts (n=78; age=39.9±17.6), (2) Japanese characters of 5 different sizes and 2 types of font (n=98; age=44.5±18.5), and (3) Japanese characters vertically enlarged 1-4 times (n=120; age=46.9±18.6). Readability was higher with higher contrast displays, and with Gothic than with Mincho font in Japanese. Readability of Japanese characters improved when they were vertically enlarged to approximately twice the width.