Other Eye-strain while using iPhone X and up

[PwmMen]

I always have True Tone on, and Night Shift on from 7 p.m. onwards.
120 Hz makes the difference here, which I wouldn't have thought. The 120 Hz isn't
important to me, but if it works better at 120 Hz, that would certainly be a blessing.

 

[Siylence]

I'm a little crazy, but I tested the iPhone 17 Pro Max again today.
PWM switch on, and instead of 60Hz I switched to 120Hz. After 3 hours of display on time
I have no more symptoms. Eyes, neck, back of the head, everything feels excellent. I will don't
send it back today and test it this week. Of course I also report again, keep my fingers crossed.

Since release day, I have also tested the iPhone 17 Pro.

My main device is currently the iPhone 15 Pro, and I tested the iPhone 16 Pro last year, which was unusable due to severe eye strain. The iPhone 17 Pro is much better. I can look at the screen for one to two hours without having to look elsewhere while reading. Afterwards, I experience mild eye strain, which is much more tolerable than with the 16 Pro. Which was the worst phone for my eyes ever. All in all, though, I will return the 17 Pro and keep the iPhone 15 Pro, which causes almost no eye strain.

It's really strange. These phones were excellent for my eyes: The 12 Pro, 13 Pro, and 14 Pro.

The 15 Pro is almost excellent.

The 16 Pro is not usable at all.

Usable and much better than the last generation: 17 Pro.

12,13,14,15 > 15 >> 17 >>>… 16

But we are maybe on the right track. Keep in mind, we now have a PWM toggle, which has almost no effect but the code could be tweaked in the future. (Better than have no PWM code in the iOS codebase at all…) and also I wrote multiple suggestions and feedbacks to the iPhone feedback formula, where I told them about fixing the PWM toggle in general and for higher brightness levels. Also I brought up a suggestion to add a disable Temporal Dithering toggle for the GPU and/or display. Because I am not sure if it is causes by PWM or TD … but I would like to have both options to play around even at the cost of loosing some colours and not utilising the full P3 colour range.

It would be great if you guys could also give them your feedback for PWM and TD.

 

[PwmMen]

@Siylence
120 or 60Hz, what do you prefer?

 

[Siylence]

@Siylence
120 or 60Hz, what do you prefer?

120Hz. I don’t feel a difference in wellbeing while using 60Hz.

 

[PwmMen]

For me 120Hz feels better, i don't know why. 😎

 

[Abiyork]

I've still no idea how I used the Iphone X for 3 years without any issues and then since then cant even glance at an OLED.

 

[Siylence]

I've still no idea how I used the Iphone X for 3 years without any issues and then since then cant even glance at an OLED.

I think the simple answer is temporal dithering. In my opinion, we focus too much on pulse width modulation (PWM), but temporal dithering (TD) is also aggressive to some eyes. So far, we have no chance to disable it.

In your case, you've used the same phone and hardware for three years without problems, and then suddenly it started hurting. I think that, due to major iOS updates, such as iOS 15 to 16, TD is enabled or becomes more aggressive and causes this.

We have to raise our voices, as we did with PWM, and demand that we be given the option to disable it in the iOS settings in the near future.

 

[Heman87]

The iPhone air just came in. First impression wow this phone is gorgeous! And so thin and nice to hold. I think also the perfect size (6,5 inch). What I did notice the Dynamic Island is lower than other models. Couple mins in no symptoms yet. I didn’t change anyt setting. Still 120hz. No pwm disabled. Just playing the phone as it is. Keep you guys posted

 

[orange23]

If I'm Cook, I will offer at least one model with LCD or flicker-free OLED iPhone every 3 to 4 years, to ensure those eye-sensitive loyal users catch up the new tech! Arrogant and irresponsible Apple!

 

[Artvandelay1212]

Yeah. ios26 even made iphone 11 worse. I am thinking to downgrade back to ios 18...... but what about apple watch which i also updated to ios 26.......will it become useless?

I'm not sure if my Apple Watch updated to ios26, but it wouldn't pair after I reset my phone so I had to reset that too. Now everything is working good.

 

[BigBen2493]

If I'm Cook, I will offer at least one model with LCD or flicker-free OLED iPhone every 3 to 4 years, to ensure those eye-sensitive loyal users catch up the new tech! Arrogant and irresponsible Apple!

Yeah they should have made the iPhone 16e LCD and $499

 

[jimmy_uk]

Call me mad - but not fully content my the 17 Pro so I picked up and Air today in black. This feels better in the hand, looks better in black and is very light. I want this phone. But…

I immediately felt the screens wasn’t as sharp/easy to focus on as 17 Pro. It’s got a LG GVC display and it’s shifts to green on the whole bottom half when tilted away. I find this display shimmers on my eyes like all other OLEDS I’ve tried in the past.

I don’t think I will continue to use for fear it will trigger my PWM sensitivity + I find the colour shift to aggressive. It’s a damn shame as it’s much nicer to hold than the 17 Pro.

 

[BigBen2493]

Call me mad - but not fully content my the 17 Pro so I picked up and Air today in black. This feels better in the hand, looks better in black and is very light. I want this phone. But…

I immediately felt the screens wasn’t as sharp/easy to focus on as 17 Pro. It’s got a LG GVC display and it’s shifts to green on the whole bottom half when tilted away. I find this display shimmers on my eyes like all other OLEDS I’ve tried in the past.

I don’t think I will continue to use for fear it will trigger my PWM sensitivity + I find the colour shift to aggressive. It’s a damn shame as it’s much nicer to hold than the 17 Pro.

what kind of screen did the 17 pro have? alot of people are liking the air screen over the 17s on reddit

 

[PwmMen]

Call me mad

Aren't we not all a little crazy, and just want a nice new iPhone that won't give us any problems?
Today, after a whole day with the PWM switch on and 120Hz on, I'm pleasantly surprised. I had no
problems at all today. 120Hz instead of 60Hz really helped me. I'll report back in the next few days.
At the moment i love my iPhone 17 Pro Max.🥰

 

[benh911f]

Can someone who understands all this better than me explain why the Air might be more usable than the regular 17 or the Pro?

 

[super chimp]

@Siylence
120 or 60Hz, what do you prefer?

At least with my 13 Pro having 120Hz on makes the phone virtually unusable for me. With 60Hz it’s mostly fine.

 

[VadimVV]

I think the simple answer is temporal dithering. In my opinion, we focus too much on pulse width modulation (PWM), but temporal dithering (TD) is also aggressive to some eyes. So far, we have no chance to disable it.

In your case, you've used the same phone and hardware for three years without problems, and then suddenly it started hurting. I think that, due to major iOS updates, such as iOS 15 to 16, TD is enabled or becomes more aggressive and causes this.

We have to raise our voices, as we did with PWM, and demand that we be given the option to disable it in the iOS settings in the near future.

I also think temporal dithering can have a strong negative effect.

Last year I swapped the screen on my 15 Pro Max for an LCD. I checked it with a Radex meter — flicker was under 1%, same as iPhone 11, 8 Plus, etc. No PWM at all. But even with that, I still couldn’t use it comfortably.

It’s not as horrible as the XS Max, but even with an LCD, modern iPhones just don’t work for regular daily use.

Same story with the iPad Mini 5 — factory LCD, but still caused problems.

We really need a way to disable both PWM and dithering.

 

[jimmy_uk]

what kind of screen did the 17 pro have? alot of people are liking the air screen over the 17s on reddit

My 17 Pro has a Samsung G9N display.

Display shifts to what I think is a cool light blue (maybe a little green) when tilted to more an extreme angle top and bottom. I’ve always seen colour shift on OLED devices when viewed outside of a normal angle - this is minimal on this phone.

I have an even white that’s a little yellow/red which I considered a normal warm colour for an OLED display, and I’m coming from a cooler blue/yellow LCD on my iPhone 11.

Not seeing any yellow splotches that I normally see when I struggle to focus on previous OLED iPhones.

The Air in hand with the LG screen, has all the worst traits of OLED I’ve experienced before, any movement in my hand and I can see colour shift and shimmer. Because it feels too bright/shimmery (40% brightness), my eyes are dilating making the screen text seem less sharp. This would build up eye strain as I force focus. 10 minutes was enough for me to know this isn’t going or work for me.

It's been packed back up for return - kind of wish I hadn't scratched the itch as the Air is the nicest hardware by far.

I will keep trying the 17 Pro in the evenings (not taking out of the house and risking damage if I need to return). If I’m totally honest, the edges of my eyes do feel a little irritated 4 days later. Gonna try 120hz.

If I win with the 17 Pro, I will have to face the reality of needing to get a case to protect the Blue paint - Boooo!

 

[DJTaurus]

delete post

 

[now i see it]

Ok -
I just thought I'd post this info here to put everything into perspective...

I received my 'new to me' flawless refurbished iphone SE3 today and just finished setting it up. It is a fantastic iphone (compared to my 6S) and is super fast on ios 18.7. I couldn't be happier with it. Its really great.
I'm not into iPhone photography - (I used to be an actual real photographer in a different life) so the SE3 camera is fine for a quick snapshot for my uses.
And of course ..... zero eyestrain on the SE3 cuz its a LCD display. Its also superior to my iphone 8 too - which I never use.

Sooo a great iphone with zero flicker still does exist and its cheap to buy. The 2022 iPhone SE Third Generation.

If you're hemming & hawing over one, my advice is to buy one today and install ios 18.7 on it now and don't update it for a long time. It will be good for another 5 years at least.
If you wait too long, Apple will stop signing ios 18 and you'll have to run ios 26 which you may hate.

Thats why I got a SE3 today. To have the last LCD iphone running on ios 18.
Its a good phone.

 

[AshX]

I think the simple answer is temporal dithering. In my opinion, we focus too much on pulse width modulation (PWM), but temporal dithering (TD) is also aggressive to some eyes. So far, we have no chance to disable it.

In your case, you've used the same phone and hardware for three years without problems, and then suddenly it started hurting. I think that, due to major iOS updates, such as iOS 15 to 16, TD is enabled or becomes more aggressive and causes this.

We have to raise our voices, as we did with PWM, and demand that we be given the option to disable it in the iOS settings in the near future.

This. I can tolerate some PWM if the frequency is high and modulation is low and stable. But dithering? I can’t tolerate any screen that uses it significantly. It makes sense, though, as GPU dithering and FRC are connected to the refresh rate and the amount of dither frames per cycle. The 60Hz MacBook Airs are dithering at 15Hz over 4 frames per 60Hz refresh cycle *and* utilize FRC somewhere in the 30Hz range.

If you’re having trouble with 240Hz PWM then it makes sense being exposed to literal epilepsy seizure risk frequencies of 15-30Hz would be a problem. I wish more people here would talk about it because it is infinitely easier to disable dithering than it is to disable PWM. All it takes is a software update or program that disables GPU dithering (Stillcolor does this on Mac) and then another command to tell the TCON on laptops to not apply FRC.

 

[jimmy_uk]

Aren't we not all a little crazy, and just want a nice new iPhone that won't give us any problems?
Today, after a whole day with the PWM switch on and 120Hz on, I'm pleasantly surprised. I had no
problems at all today. 120Hz instead of 60Hz really helped me. I'll report back in the next few days.
At the moment i love my iPhone 17 Pro Max.🥰

I’ve also switched on 120hz and it feels fine - well, better than fine because it’s so smooth. I hope this is the future 🤞

 

[ghanwani]

Ok -
I just thought I'd post this info here to put everything into perspective...

I received my 'new to me' flawless refurbished iphone SE3 today and just finished setting it up. It is a fantastic iphone (compared to my 6S) and is super fast on ios 18.7. I couldn't be happier with it. Its really great.
I'm not into iPhone photography - (I used to be an actual real photographer in a different life) so the SE3 camera is fine for a quick snapshot for my uses.
And of course ..... zero eyestrain on the SE3 cuz its a LCD display. Its also superior to my iphone 8 too - which I never use.

Sooo a great iphone with zero flicker still does exist and its cheap to buy. The 2022 iPhone SE Third Generation.

If you're hemming & hawing over one, my advice is to buy one today and install ios 18.7 on it now and don't update it for a long time. It will be good for another 5 years at least.
If you wait too long, Apple will stop signing ios 18 and you'll have to run ios 26 which you may hate.

Thats why I got a SE3 today. To have the last LCD iphone running on ios 18.
Its a good phone.

SE 3 works for me but barely. It does cause eye strain and I can't use it for very long, although it is better than the newer ones. I think for me, I have a big problem with temporal dithering, which is why none of the macs or ipads work either. I get dry eyes, eye pain, and eyes going out of focus with any of these devices. I have no problems at all with my Windows laptops. In particular for personal use I have a Dynabook which has an EyeSafe display and I can use that for hours with zero issues.

 

[now i see it]

SE 3 works for me but barely

I always use my iphones display set to grayscale.
Try it

 

[arc of the universe]

Call me mad - but not fully content my the 17 Pro so I picked up and Air today in black. This feels better in the hand, looks better in black and is very light. I want this phone. But…

I immediately felt the screens wasn’t as sharp/easy to focus on as 17 Pro. It’s got a LG GVC display and it’s shifts to green on the whole bottom half when tilted away. I find this display shimmers on my eyes like all other OLEDS I’ve tried in the past.

I don’t think I will continue to use for fear it will trigger my PWM sensitivity + I find the colour shift to aggressive. It’s a damn shame as it’s much nicer to hold than the 17 Pro.

very useful post. thanks.