iPhone 17 Models Include Toggle to Disable Screen Flickering (PWM)

[Brapple]

60/75Hz iirc was what most CRT could handle and was in settings, and oh to stand aloft, in an open plan office looking out over a sea of flickering screens.

No one ever noticed. Except me.

Same. 85hz was the mainstream top-end CRT. I managed to surround myself with those as they were the best I could find. I could work on 85hz all day and still stay sane. 60 and 75 were headache / nausea inducing within a short time.

And yes, I could spot when someone had their 85hz screen misconfigured from across the dept. Windows would often revert back to 60hz for stupid reasons.

Do you remember the era of high-end rear-projection TVs? Big time blurry flicker-fest those were - even the $6,000 Mitsubishi Diamond ones. Then DLP sets came out with their own issues. Mirrors!

 

[Jensend]

Agreed, though I almost consider it a case of PWM-sensitive people having more capability (not a disability) to detect the flickering which is why they're affected. For me it wasn't Covid - I've had this sensitivity for decades. For example, when I first started in IT in the mid-1990s people of course used CRT monitors and I could immediately tell visually when someone's monitor was set to 60Hz as opposed to 72Hz. I'd tell them to check their settings and "fix" it since 72Hz is better for them and every time I was right.

Disability or superpower is irrelevant. I just hope they fixed it.

I can't use 60Hz pulsing displays, and 72/75Hz has noticable flickering for me, especially in my peripheral vision.

Discomfort with PWM on modern displays is categorically different. At ~75 Hz and below, flickering is directly visible. At ~90Hz and above there is no visible flickering (this is part of the reason many VR headsets choose 90Hz as the default—they use pulsed displays).

At the much higher pulsing rate of modern screens, I believe that most of the discomfort is due to eye movement: saccades. Usually when you vision jumps from one point to another, there is a blur that averages out the brightness of the scene you are viewing and your brain can hide that transition period. With a pulsing display, you instead see a bunch of sharp intermediary images that your brain has a harder time ignoring.

Discomfort with 60Hz flicker may not be linked to discomfort from 240Hz flickering.

 

[pdoherty]

At the much higher pulsing rate of modern screens, I believe that most of the discomfort is due to eye movement: saccades. Usually when you vision jumps from one point to another, there is a blur that averages out the brightness of the scene you are viewing and your brain can hide that transition period. With a pulsing display, you instead see a bunch of sharp intermediary images that your brain has a harder time ignoring.

You might be onto something there. I guess a way to test that would be to leave a static image onscreen and simply stare at one thing on the screen for however long it usually takes for PWM symptoms to happen and see if they still do.

 

[Populus]

Just a FYI: the new M5 OLED iPad Pro doesn’t have this toggle. It uses PWM at its fullest.

 

[dakicka]

I had NO eye issues until updating my 16 Pro to iOS 26. Now I have severe eye strain, recurrent headaches, and nausea. This is absolutely ridiculous. I’m convinced Apple added this so people will upgrade to the newest phones. Class action lawsuit incoming.