Other Eye-strain while using iPhone X and up

[john g.]

Well, my return window for my 14 pro is rapidly closing.
I think I'm going to keep it, but of course doubt occasionally plagues me 🙂

Just wondering who in this forum has made peace with their 14 series phone and is keeping it?

And if so, what was your experience if you don't mind sharing.

 

[dstow]

Notebookcheck have the preliminary results of the iPhone 14 Plus in their PWM list; they list it as 59Hz:

View attachment 2097707

I'm curious to see what @kerplunknet finds out with his measurements; when I'm back from overseas, I'll take my meter around to an Apple Store and measure the flicker across the 14 range.

Reading the comments here over the past few weeks, it does seem like the non-Pro variants are generally better to use for us PWM-sensitive people, even though they seem to run at a lower Hz; this would also fit with the measurements I took of the 13 range (see my very first post), where the non-Pro variants had significantly lower flicker at 100% brightness.

I also did a short "pass by" test in an Apple Store here, and while using the Pro and non-Pro ones, the Pro ones would immediately give me a nice burning feeling in the eyes, whereas the non-Pro ones seemed fine for the short usage period.

Exactly as suspected, fantastic - not out the woods yet, but the 14plus is the most promising out of the hellscape that is the 14 line-up, need more hands on results

We need to collate more hands on 14/Plus experiences to get a better overall picture of the trend

 

[jimmy_uk]

Exactly as suspected, fantastic - not out the woods yet, but the 14plus is the most promising out of the hellscape that is the 14 line-up, need more hands on results

We need to collate more hands on 14/Plus experiences to get a better overall picture of the trend

My take (classing myself as one of the more sensitive as I cannot use any OLED iPhone, Mini-led iPad Pro or iphone 11):

14 > 14 Plus > 14 Pro

14 - was the most usable with motion sickness feeling and general unease. Might have got used to it but after a week of use I felt 100% better when I went back to my 7 Plus.

14 Plus - was bad quickly, head tension and eye strain with mild motion sickness. Was alot like the iphone 12 and 13.

14 Pro - felt OK for a few hours, although felt some brain tension on setup, then blinding migraine and eye fatigue the next day which wiped me out for 24hrs.

14 Pro Max - not tried as 14 Pro experience was so bad.

All used with motion reduced, light mode, attention aware off, reduce white point, true tone off, brightness above 50%.

 

[DJTaurus]

I just bought 14 plus. And the testing begins….again!

 

[john g.]

My take (classing myself as one of the more sensitive as I cannot use any OLED iPhone, Mini-led iPad Pro or iphone 11):

14 > 14 Plus > 14 Pro

14 - was the most usable with motion sickness feeling and general unease.

14 Plus - was bad quickly, head tension and eye strain with mild motion sickness.

14 Pro - felt OK for a few hours, although felt some brain tension on setup, then blinding migraine and eye fatigue the next day which wiped me out for 24hrs.

14 Pro Max - not tried as 14 Pro experience was so bad.

All used with motion reduced, light mode, attention aware off, reduce white point, true tone off, brightness above 50%.

It's so interesting how we all experience these phones a bit differently. Although I've tried the 14 pro max and the 14 plus in the Apple Store, the only ones I've tried at home are the regular 14 and the 14 Pro; the 14 pro twice.

I thought the regular 14 was the answer, but close to the end of my return window, I had moderately severe dizziness. Most of the other symptoms were super mild and never got any headaches. But that dizziness really concerned me so I returned it.

I then gave the 14 pro a second chance which is what I'm still trying right now. Mostly it seems to be the best of the bunch for me. I wish it was easier for me to go back-and-forth between that and the 14.

This second 14 pro has a better screen than the first one. At least better for me in that it's not so blinding white, there was no way to tone those glaring whites down except for making everything else very dim. On this iPhone 14 Pro I'm not even using reduce white point.

 

[AJTC]

I’m getting on very well so far with my iPhone 14 take two. No image retention this time which is a good start and makes me think since the screen was clearly defective what else could’ve been wrong with it?

It’s day 2. Zero migraines, zero eye strain, zero bloodshot eyes.

I don’t want to get my hopes up yet. But if this works out for me either the defective display, different display manufacturers or having Covid was the cause of the issues with my first iPhone 14.

 

[john g.]

I’m getting on very well so far with my iPhone 14 take two. No image retention this time which is a good start and makes me think since the screen was clearly defective what else could’ve been wrong with it?

It’s day 2. Zero migraines, zero eye strain, zero bloodshot eyes.

I don’t want to get my hopes up yet. But if this works out for me either the defective display, different display manufacturers or having Covid was the cause of the issues with my first iPhone 14.

Good luck! Please let us know how it works out

 

[happy orchard]

I also did a short "pass by" test in an Apple Store here, and while using the Pro and non-Pro ones, the Pro ones would immediately give me a nice burning feeling in the eyes, whereas the non-Pro ones seemed fine for the short usage period.

Many people keep seeming to have a similar experience, and for me, it was the exact opposite. I felt pain and my eyes almost scrunching to shield from the 14 Plus screen almost immediately in the store. While I can look at the Pros for hours at home, and think this isn't my favorite screen, but maybe it's not so bad. The experiences are just worlds apart.

 

[happy orchard]

It's so interesting how we all experience these phones a bit differently. Although I've tried the 14 pro max and the 14 plus in the Apple Store, the only ones I've tried at home are the regular 14 and the 14 Pro; the 14 pro twice.

I thought the regular 14 was the answer, but close to the end of my return window, I had moderately severe dizziness. Most of the other symptoms were super mild and never got any headaches. But that dizziness really concerned me so I returned it.

I then gave the 14 pro a second chance which is what I'm still trying right now. Mostly it seems to be the best of the bunch for me. I wish it was easier for me to go back-and-forth between that and the 14.

This second 14 pro has a better screen than the first one. At least better for me in that it's not so blinding white, there was no way to tone those glaring whites down except for making everything else very dim. On this iPhone 14 Pro I'm not even using reduce white point.

Wow, not evening using RWP at all?! That's...I can't even imagine.

 

[happy orchard]

I’m getting on very well so far with my iPhone 14 take two. No image retention this time which is a good start and makes me think since the screen was clearly defective what else could’ve been wrong with it?

It’s day 2. Zero migraines, zero eye strain, zero bloodshot eyes.

I don’t want to get my hopes up yet. But if this works out for me either the defective display, different display manufacturers or having Covid was the cause of the issues with my first iPhone 14.

How did you decide to try the 14 model again? As opposed to the Pro or any other?

 

[1369281]

Notebookcheck have the preliminary results of the iPhone 14 Plus in their PWM list; they list it as 59Hz:

View attachment 2097707

I'm curious to see what @kerplunknet finds out with his measurements; when I'm back from overseas, I'll take my meter around to an Apple Store and measure the flicker across the 14 range.

Reading the comments here over the past few weeks, it does seem like the non-Pro variants are generally better to use for us PWM-sensitive people, even though they seem to run at a lower Hz; this would also fit with the measurements I took of the 13 range (see my very first post), where the non-Pro variants had significantly lower flicker at 100% brightness.

I also did a short "pass by" test in an Apple Store here, and while using the Pro and non-Pro ones, the Pro ones would immediately give me a nice burning feeling in the eyes, whereas the non-Pro ones seemed fine for the short usage period.

After a few failed attempts, I am temporarily pausing my efforts on this. However, I spoke with @user1234 (he graciously answered all of my oscilloscope-related questions) and believe that he is well suited for the job! Very intelligent and already has a great setup.

 

[user1234]

After a few failed attempts, I am temporarily pausing my efforts on this. However, I spoke with @user1234 (he graciously answered all of my oscilloscope-related questions) and believe that he is well suited for the job! Very intelligent and already has a great setup.

Thank you for the kind words. Happy to help!

I have the setup, all I'm missing is the iPhones. I'm hoping to find a solution to that but I'm not a big youtuber with sponsors or anything. At least not for now.

 

[john g.]

Wow, not evening using RWP at all?! That's...I can't even imagine.

I’m actually going to try it tonight again and just play around with it. Any recommended settings?

 

[jm31828]

Quick question for everyone here, apologies if it's been asked before (I just couldn't find it).
The 13 Mini is said to have the best PWM frequency from the 13 series, and Notebookcheck mentions that the PWM ranges from something like 150Hz up to 510 Hz PWM from 15% to 100% brightness. It said that below 15% no PWM was detected, only the 60Hz refresh rate.

Am I reading that correctly to mean that in theory, there is literally no PWM on that display if you tried to keep your brightness below 15%? Has anyone else here tried that to see if it helps at all?

I know the working theory has often been to max out brightness for better PWM, and to use Reduce White Point to darken it so it doesn't feel like staring at the sun. I tried a 13 Mini (LOVE that phone in every way except for the PWM) and only used it at higher brightness as noted above- and had just a bit of that dry/burning feeling in my eyes when using it. May have gotten used to it, maybe not- hard to tell. But at the time I didn't want to take the chance and returned it.

I am so tempted to buy one again and try it out, try it at lower brightness and see how it goes. However I have an SE3 that I just bought and am really liking (especially the fact that the LCD display has no PWM), and I'm only a few days from the end of my two week return window, so it would get tricky to try to see if I could use the 13 Mini before deciding to keep or return my SE3.

 

[AJTC]

How did you decide to try the 14 model again? As opposed to the Pro or any other?

Just because I felt the Covid headaches played a big part during my time with the first iPhone 14. So I wanted to give it a proper try now that I’m recovered.

 

[matthijst]

What gets me every time is if I set the screen too bright.
As if OLED burns straight into your retina 😀

 

[john g.]

What gets me every time is if I set the screen too bright.
As if OLED burns straight into your retina 😀

I know, Apple’s OLED compared to LCD is sharp and clear, but kind of harsh!

 

[Chrispy]

Hi all! Random bit of info to contribute that I discovered by accident. I have above cabinet LED lighting that I use as my primary evening lighting for the kitchen and family room (open concept layout). In all the testing for PWM on the iPhones, I discovered those had a horrible PWM flicker. So much so that I had to go into another room to film the iPhone screen flicker, otherwise the LED lights also got picked up as additional flicker. I decided with how much I use those lights, it was worth grabbing one of those Waveform Lighting Flicker-Free LED dimmers. Not cheap at $80 but it works! I swapped out the old dimmer that came with the kit, dropped the flicker-free one in, and flicker is completely gone at all brightness levels. YAY!

HOWEVER, what I discovered along the way was my iPhone XR no longer picks up the PWM flicker from the lights before I changed out the dimmer. I just updated to 16.0.3 and now none of my LED lights that flicker get picked up in slow motion video. Apple did something to compensate for the pulse frequency it seems. I ended up using my OnePlus 7T's slow motion feature to verify the new dimmer was working properly because that phone does nothing to process out the flicker so it's perfect for finding it. I even found a few lights I didn't realize were PWM using the OnePlus. The iPhone was able to pick up on the OLED flicker of the OnePlus' screen, but not as much as it used to. The OnePlus OLED flickers A LOT and thus it's always been my "verify it works on Android" testing phone that then goes back in the drawer before I get a headache. I guess it's now my PWM detector as well, haha.

So, if you are running 16.0.3, you may notice less flicker gets picked up in video after the update, including slow motion. This is probably a good thing overall, but not great when trying to detect PWM flicker. Just putting that out there as a PSA for anyone using their iPhone slow motion feature to find lights with PWM. You know, like the strange folks we are that track down such things, haha.

 

[MICHAELSD]

Quick question for everyone here, apologies if it's been asked before (I just couldn't find it).
The 13 Mini is said to have the best PWM frequency from the 13 series, and Notebookcheck mentions that the PWM ranges from something like 150Hz up to 510 Hz PWM from 15% to 100% brightness. It said that below 15% no PWM was detected, only the 60Hz refresh rate.

Am I reading that correctly to mean that in theory, there is literally no PWM on that display if you tried to keep your brightness below 15%? Has anyone else here tried that to see if it helps at all?

I know the working theory has often been to max out brightness for better PWM, and to use Reduce White Point to darken it so it doesn't feel like staring at the sun. I tried a 13 Mini (LOVE that phone in every way except for the PWM) and only used it at higher brightness as noted above- and had just a bit of that dry/burning feeling in my eyes when using it. May have gotten used to it, maybe not- hard to tell. But at the time I didn't want to take the chance and returned it.

I am so tempted to buy one again and try it out, try it at lower brightness and see how it goes. However I have an SE3 that I just bought and am really liking (especially the fact that the LCD display has no PWM), and I'm only a few days from the end of my two week return window, so it would get tricky to try to see if I could use the 13 Mini before deciding to keep or return my SE3.

Already well ahead of you on that.

Locking the brightness to 12% or 3% still led to the similar tension headaches. Unfortunately there’s no level I’ve found that I can correlate to not causing issues.

The “refresh rate” text in the review is slightly misleading, as it’s still 60Hz PWM.

Thanks to @pwm away’s excellent and comprehensive measurements, we know that iPhone 13 Mini has the best amplitudes of any OLED iPhone—which explains why I got along so well with that iPhone, yet still got headaches. The goal would be for flicker coefficients under 1% like any LCD iPhone.

 

[MICHAELSD]

Hi all! Random bit of info to contribute that I discovered by accident. I have above cabinet LED lighting that I use as my primary evening lighting for the kitchen and family room (open concept layout). In all the testing for PWM on the iPhones, I discovered those had a horrible PWM flicker. So much so that I had to go into another room to film the iPhone screen flicker, otherwise the LED lights also got picked up as additional flicker. I decided with how much I use those lights, it was worth grabbing one of those Waveform Lighting Flicker-Free LED dimmers. Not cheap at $80 but it works! I swapped out the old dimmer that came with the kit, dropped the flicker-free one in, and flicker is completely gone at all brightness levels. YAY!

HOWEVER, what I discovered along the way was my iPhone XR no longer picks up the PWM flicker from the lights before I changed out the dimmer. I just updated to 16.0.3 and now none of my LED lights that flicker get picked up in slow motion video. Apple did something to compensate for the pulse frequency it seems. I ended up using my OnePlus 7T's slow motion feature to verify the new dimmer was working properly because that phone does nothing to process out the flicker so it's perfect for finding it. I even found a few lights I didn't realize were PWM using the OnePlus. The iPhone was able to pick up on the OLED flicker of the OnePlus' screen, but not as much as it used to. The OnePlus OLED flickers A LOT and thus it's always been my "verify it works on Android" testing phone that then goes back in the drawer before I get a headache. I guess it's now my PWM detector as well, haha.

So, if you are running 16.0.3, you may notice less flicker gets picked up in video after the update, including slow motion. This is probably a good thing overall, but not great when trying to detect PWM flicker. Just putting that out there as a PSA for anyone using their iPhone slow motion feature to find lights with PWM. You know, like the strange folks we are that track down such things, haha.

Avoiding PWM on film has been a goal for as long as modern cinematography has existed. Apple certainly doesn’t want flickering iPhones on camera, and neither does the director. By that same extension, it would be distracting and scene-ruining to have the lighting flicker on camera.

I have wondered sometimes if Apple chose a rate of 240Hz so that it appears more consistent on camera, although I assume they choose the implementation that they think will have the lowest impact on users and that’s just an additional benefit.

 

[happy orchard]

I’m actually going to try it tonight again and just play around with it. Any recommended settings?

Mostly at night I keep it 90-100%. Yes, 100%.

During the day, if inside, I play with it 60-90%.

I’ve been trying to not keep brightness at 100%, as I seemed to need to in the past, but I’ve been trying auto brightness ON, and it’s…tolerable? Enough that sometimes I have to remember to check the level. That’s moving in a good direction.

But I use RWP on my 11 at night, too. I just don’t particularly like bright screens. Outside, all those nits are awesome. Inside, not so much.

Have you tried the RWP and not noticed any difference? Or are you starting to experiment now?

 

[Chrispy]

Avoiding PWM on film has been a goal for as long as modern cinematography has existed. Apple certainly doesn’t want flickering iPhones on camera, and neither does the director. By that same extension, it would be distracting and scene-ruining to have the lighting flicker on camera.

I have wondered sometimes if Apple chose a rate of 240Hz so that it appears more consistent on camera, although I assume they choose the implementation that they think will have the lowest impact on users and that’s just an additional benefit.

Whatever they did with the update, it completely eliminated all PWM flicker on video from all my lights. It's actually impressive how much they improved it. My kitchen LED strip was so bad on the old dimmer that even standard 60 fps video would pick it up when panning sometimes. What's kinda cool is if you watch closely, when you first jump into slow motion mode, you can see the flicker show on screen for a brief second before the phone corrects for it. Pretty cool really and I'm surprised it just floated in as part of a general update. Now I'm curious how the 14 and 14 Pro would register in slow motion post update. I'm sure most people don't have these thoughts or notice a change so small that only PWM obsessed people would see the fix, lol.

BTW, I'm catching up on some of the good news in the thread, and I'm happy to see some of you getting along with your 14/14 Pros enough to keep using them. And sorry for those of you who tried again and failed. Fingers crossed the next SE saves us!

 

[happy orchard]

Quick question for everyone here, apologies if it's been asked before (I just couldn't find it).
The 13 Mini is said to have the best PWM frequency from the 13 series, and Notebookcheck mentions that the PWM ranges from something like 150Hz up to 510 Hz PWM from 15% to 100% brightness. It said that below 15% no PWM was detected, only the 60Hz refresh rate.

Am I reading that correctly to mean that in theory, there is literally no PWM on that display if you tried to keep your brightness below 15%? Has anyone else here tried that to see if it helps at all?

I know the working theory has often been to max out brightness for better PWM, and to use Reduce White Point to darken it so it doesn't feel like staring at the sun. I tried a 13 Mini (LOVE that phone in every way except for the PWM) and only used it at higher brightness as noted above- and had just a bit of that dry/burning feeling in my eyes when using it. May have gotten used to it, maybe not- hard to tell. But at the time I didn't want to take the chance and returned it.

I am so tempted to buy one again and try it out, try it at lower brightness and see how it goes. However I have an SE3 that I just bought and am really liking (especially the fact that the LCD display has no PWM), and I'm only a few days from the end of my two week return window, so it would get tricky to try to see if I could use the 13 Mini before deciding to keep or return my SE3.

Oh that does sound like a timely situation you have there.

I share your curiosity. I have to replace an 8 I have for work when the next iOS comes out, and I’ve been wondering about a 13 mini then. So I love the idea that the phone might actually work well at such low brightness—please share if anybody knows. 🙂

Trying in Apple, they didn’t feel great to me, but the higher PWM rate made me wonder if I was just not catching it in its best advantage?

Keep us posted. 🙂

 

[happy orchard]

Just because I felt the Covid headaches played a big part during my time with the first iPhone 14. So I wanted to give it a proper try now that I’m recovered.

How great would it be if you got through Covid AND an OLED phone?!

 

[thejadedmonkey]

How great would it be if you got through Covid AND an OLED phone?!

I mean they do have 5G radios 😱