I'll start with what I know:
- Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) flickering
What is it?
PWM is a method used to increase and decrease brightness of LED-based display. PWM produces screen flickering which is not detectable with naked eye, but can be detected using smartphone cameras. These flickering can cause eye strain to certain people.
How to detect it?
PWM can be detected using a smart phone camera, especially older ones. Newer smartphone camera sometimes could not detect the flickering because of the advanced auto-correct shutter speed that it uses. PWM can also be detected by using the Blur Trail test from this site: http://www.testufo.com/#test=blurtrail
How to solve it?
Most LED display that uses PWM, the flickering can be eliminated by setting the brightness to 100%. The downside is that the screen becomes too bright and need third party display program to reduce the brightness / contrast artificially. However, for some display, there are still flickering even when increasing the brightness to 100%, especially on certain Samsung display.
Additional info:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1677617
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pulse_width_modulation.htm
http://www.eizoglobal.com/library/basics/eyestrain/
- Graphics Driver
What is it?
Certain graphics driver, especially newer Intel graphics driver can cause eye strain. Certain updates in operating system (e.g. android, blackberry, IOS) can also cause eye strain.
How to detect it?
As far as I know, there is no known way to detect it, except you feel eye strain when looking at the screen. The challenge is to determine if the eye strain that you are feeling is because of graphics driver, or because of other factors.
How to solve it?
Use older version (if available), or use Standard VGA (Win 7) or Microsoft Basic Display (Win 8) driver. Standard VGA has its drawback, such as graphics will be slower and cant use projector, but at least you wont get eye strain. I read that on Windows 10, even Standard VGA driver can now cause eye strain. So need to be wary of that. Several of us has highlighted this issue at the Intel forum, and Intel graphics team are investigating this to find a solution. You can follow the discussion here:
https://communities.intel.com/thread/53309