Hello everyone!

I am currently researching the topic, experimenting and trying to find a solution.

I made a huge post with the results here (in russian):

Forum 4pda.to

Thread Второй смартфон - болят глаза. Помогите с выбором

Post 568

Sorry for these directions, link approval takes time. I'll post direct link in the next comment.

(Might probably later translate my findings for this forum)

If there are any russian-speaking engineers here, could you please join and contribute? I am coming to conclusion that it might be connected not to backlight but to polarizing film, need to check it out somehow.

I am facing this only on modern phones, but super severe.

Whatever this is, it is some characteristics of light. I have an excellent binocular vision, but this light immediately breaks it leading to my inability to accomodate (or rather vergent) my eyes for far objects. Other than the modern smartphones, nothing can affect my vergence or binocular vision. This light is invisible to vision (brain), or interpreted as non-bright, while for an eye it is super bright. My subjective feeling is that screen is extra bright with any brightness settings and this feeling is widespread when people with this issue have excellent vision. I have no problems with sun or any artificial sources of light except for modern phones. I am trying to find what can create this effect if not PWM. I tested for invisible spectrum and blue light and both were negative in tests. It may be something in direction of light rays.

There also could be something like this: this characteristic is present in led light, becomes much worse with polarizing film and then becomes even worse with pwm or software.

Or other path of light that makes this characterisitic worse and worse, untill it hits even non-sensitive eyes. And then no matter how good is binocular vision, people get eyestrains both from something breaking vergence and from bright light with the physical symptoms like redness or immediate light sensitivity.

Those two things could be connected through the pupil somehow, cause pupil reflectively reacts on light, but also, independently from light, pupil reflectively reacts when focal point is changing distance. This reflex is initiated by movement of vergence muscles and accomodation.

    Btw, what helped me after a week of inability to see anywhere except near me was a simple parallel view stereogram. It unclenched my eyes back in 10 minutes. That is when I understood that it is not an accomodation spasm but broken vergence (or maybe broken accomodation reflex that includes both accomodation and vergence, and pupil).

    Then I realized what influences a lot of healthy people with no eye issues is the same that influences people with some problems with convergence on this forum.

    Broke string test shows that my vergence is excellent, and both eyes work.

    Unlike many of you, me and a lot of people on russian-speaking tech forums are feeling effects of light or brightness. For me these effects are very severe, after looking on new phone some real-life objects change their color to neon. Bright objects like windows or white things are printed for a long time on retina. Phone screen feels like brightest object in the room. Looking at lights at night becomes super painful. My pupils look super tiny in usual environment instead of medium. Even if these effects are not present after prolonged eye rest, white screen on these phones somewhere near me could give me pain.

    All these effects are triggered by screen light emission of some particular phones. After three weeks of exposure it takes up to three weeks to things return to normal. Vision recovers to excellent and I have no further problems with other screens. Unless I look again at these phones.

    Stereogram did not help me with any light oversesitivity. It did not help me to use my phone, its screen immediately gives me back light issues and breakes vergence.

    I haven't tested how far they can damage my eyes, if used longer than three weeks.

    We desperately need someone who is professional in physics of light and optics.

      …and yes, my pain with my perfect vergence starts in 1-2 seconds.

      Mrak0020

      привет) подозреваю, что мы все на одних и тех же форумах сидим)

      could you please tell me which monitors and gadgets don't cause such problems for you? I also become light sensitive. Currently I can only barely use eizo monitor at the very low brightness level because of this.

        anyone

        Привет ) а куда еще податься ))

        So this is my story in brief.

        I am absolutely not light sensitive. I have never been.

        First time in my life I faced severe eyestrain after I upgraded my phone this spring to Samsung Note 10 lite. I tried software to reduce pwm, tried using it with 100% brightness and sold it after three weeks. It took another three weeks for me to recover.

        This september I made second attempt to upgrade, checked everything that was present in the malls in the price range starting from $270 and found out that my eyes react with immediate severe pain to every single phone.

        I was shocked, purchased S20 FE and started to research and test.

        I cant help you with the monitor problems because:

        1. My eyes do not react badly on any other of my tech, unless I was usIng a dangerous phone several days before
        2. I generaly use noteboks, last one by year was 2017 MPB
        3. I lIterally see on my retIna the result of phone usage, It temporarily damages photoreceptors of retIna, so that Is the sole reason of my temporary lIght sensitivity

        I wonder how it manages to damage my retina without my brain registering this light, though I percieve it as bright nonetheless.

        Right now I am writing from my tablet and nothing hurts, and 20 minutes ago I looked at my phone and felt eyestrain. I am light sensitive right now, led lights and light bulbs are a problem after phone usage, but my old tech is not.

          anyone

          What connects me to this forum is that something, and I blame this invisible light (that damages my retina up to red objects appearing neon orange next morning and light objects staying on retina for a long time, while pupils remain tiny and can't be blamed for this) also breaks my perfect vergence in mere seconds. I get impossible pain like not only eye muscles but even joints are breaking and inability to look far. This is something I never faced.

          Mrak0020

          thanks! that's very interesting, never seen such a case before but of course, we all have different problems.

          maybe Samsung Note 10 damaged something and your eyes haven't fully recovered? Maybe you should try to give your eyes a long break without any gadgets. In my case, that helps, but only until the next long screen usage. Note 10 screen is AMOLED, right? I saw a lot of complaints about AMOLED, and a lot of complaints about Samsung screens hurting people's eyes.

            anyone

            Nope! My eyes completely recovered after it.

            My pain doesnt start immediately, when my eyes are ok it takes 20 minutes to 1 day to feel any symptoms. After that time my vision cant longer take the damage. Next time I look at the phone it takes few seconds, even if I look 1 minute per day.

            I used samsung amoleds from the beginning. More than 10 years. You might check my 4pda post for much more details. My eyes literally recovered with another samsung amoled screen in constant usage.

            Probably you never seen such a case because you monitor this forum and ixbt monitors thread, if my guess is correct.

            You might want to check 4pda where a lot of people have problems with phones. The minority of them are like me and the majority have smaller problems which they attribute to amoled pwm, but no one actually checks pwm influence. (They are in the IPS vs AMOLED thread)

            So things often go like this: a person purchases amoled phone and gets eyestrain. This person learns about pwm, complaints about it and purchases ips phone. This person gets eyestrain with ips display, complaints about it and gets responses like: this is a bad ips, find a good one; this is a wrong ips, find a good one; this is a bad matrix and this very model has another good matrix etc. The person tries 3-4 phones and eventually settles on something.

            I suppose we all react on something in common, you, me, other people here and people on 4pda.

            But:

            • the intensity of some light characteristic
            • and our individual sensitivity to it
            • and our ability to compensate the breaking vergence
              are different.

              anyone

              Most people with complaints say "как смотреть на сварку" which is a direct hint on some light.

              Mrak0020

              ok, that's interesting, thanks.

              yeah, I have mostly been looking for monitors information because I barely use my smartphone lately.

                anyone

                Yep and those people have no complaints about monitors but new phones are a disaster for them.

                I believe some might be affected by pwm but not everyone, based on all the evidence.

                Dear person who split the threads,

                could you rename it into Light/version problem?

                Thank you

                Thread split as requested by OP

                Mrak0020 Sorry for these directions, link approval takes forever here. I'll post direct link in the next comment.

                As a fyi, there is no link approval for users that have been here for a small period of time. I'll manually mark it for you.

                  Slacor changed the title to Light/version problem .

                  Slacor

                  May I also ask you to switch tags to smartphones or something like that?

                  Thank you again!

                  3 years later
                  dev