Eye strain with iOS 16 and iOS 17 - do NOT update iOS

I also have trouble with what seems like most "new" screens on laptops, many cars, etc. I've been assuming that this was something to do with hardware/led wavelengths/etc. I guess the fact that a software update can make a perfectly usable phone "bad" gives me a little bit of hope in that some day someone will figure this out with a software fix.

ocean10 sounds like emulators. Thinking about how they emulate old games, we'll be emulating old devices heh.

[deleted] try the iOS17 RC release. Switch to grayscale mode in Accessibility and move the slider to left. You will get colour back but its less saturated and may reduce eye fatigue

m1ngw Thanks for mentioning this! I've wanted such a feature (greyscale with faint colors) for a very long time.

ocean10

ocean10 I was on iOS 17 Beta too but did not notice any good. That guy was lucky to find a beta version that worked for him. It seems that we may have to wait for the next iOS, the current one is clearly not usable.

m1ngw thanks for the suggestion. I’m trying greyscale now to see how it turns out. It’s ironic that the damn billion-color technology thing is forcing us to reduce colors as much as possible.

[deleted] I updated my iPad to iOS 17. At first it felt better than ios16.5 but I felt The Eye fatigue after prolonged usage. Guess I’m probably gonna keep my phone on iOS 15. Sucks that we’re stuck on older firmware :/

You should feel lucky that you still have a device on iOS 15 to use. Many already updated and there are no going back now.

I don't believe any IOS moving forward is going to work well. Until they change screen technology to something more eye friendly, I don't think we really have a chance unfortunately.

Can anyone with an iPhone SE 2020 confirm the gray-scale trick above has made the phone usable again?

My 15 pro arrived yesterday. Desaturated the colours - no luck. Eyes felt like they were burning. Sorry Apple it’s going back. I will stick with the SE2022. Maybe I will try a 13 mini again with the return policy.

m1ngw I don’t think anyone suggested this fix would work on OLED devices like 15 pro. It might help with LCD devices who those of us with dithering sensitivity

I’m on the ios 17.0.3 with iphone SE now. With ios 17, Apple seem to have already lost their mind in chasing billions of colors that they cranked up the color saturation all the way up and fked the color accuracy. The whole display and interface looks like cheap mobile phones for the poor people with no taste now.

And of couse it is still dithering like hell.

Cozzyb The popular tricks that people use - greyscale and reduce white point - help to ease the discomfort a bit. Essentially what these tricks do are reducing the amplitude of light modulation (dithering of all phones, and PWM of those with OLED screens) so that we perceive less flickering.

Unfortunately it is not enough to make the problem go away because the dithering and PWM are still there. So if you are on iOS 15 backwards, just hold on to it. Don’t update.

Anyone on iOS 16.2? I feel like that's at least useable for me on the iPhone XR. I don't really get eye discomfort using it. My iPhone 8 is still on iOS 14 though, and I feel like it's superior in terms of eye comfort. Just a shame a lot of apps don't even work on iOS 14 anymore.

I'm on 16.1.1 on my SE 2022

Take a look at my post here:

https://ledstrain.org/d/2683-severe-symptoms-updating-old-iphone-started-a-summary-of-goodbad-versions/4

Based on testing quite a few devices it seems that something changed between iOS 16.1.1 and iOS 16.3.1. (but to be fair I didn't test an XR)