Even 720p annoys in longer use. But that is the smallest amount of pixels that you can get on phones these days. Can't watch TV if picture(any screen) is Hd ready or better. Cable Box is set to progressive 50 hz SD (720x576, p50, no problem) Even with that, if I adjust more sharpness to my Sony TV (set to 0) It starts to irritate and activate my migraine…

  • Maxx replied to this.

    QlaGzr OK. Interesting. Having had the PWM issue for close to 30 years, and researched the topic, I've yet to hear that anyone would have an issue with a higher resolution.

    I had the Sony Xperia XZ Premium that had a small screen but still 4k resolution. I would think it would be simply impossible for anyone to sense the difference, especially if watching the screen from a yard/meter if it is a 4k resolution or 720p, thus I would think that this would be a way to verify that it is not the resolution, it is something else.

    Before I knew about PWM, I also kept playing with display resolutions and scalings, thinking that it could be the source of the problem, but after I learned about PWM and got a PWM free display, I realized that resolution does not have anything to do with the problem.

    But yeah, sorry to say this, there is a large group that has a problem with flicker (PWM, temproral dithering, other sources of flicker) and there is no doubt about it that the problem is the flicker, even very high frequency flicker, like 2500 Hz, which absolutely is not perceivable to the eye. Then there seems be a large group with issues that seem to affect a very small group, like those who have issues with certain driver versions or amount of blue light or like you now, resolution.

    For the blue light, I'm pretty sure it is rather the flicker. For the driver versions, I think it is also flicker. For the resolution - could it also be flicker?

    Problem is that if we have a 1000 sources of problems with the displays, we will never be able to fix the issue because no manufacturer will manufacture a device that does not flicker, conforms to a certain old driver version, has a resolution of only 720p, has no blue light etc. etc.

      I tried the Asus Zenfone 8. It was definitely a significnt improvement over the Samsung Galaxy S21 that I'd tried before. I set it to 60hz refresh rate which enabled the DC dimming. My experience with it on that setting was quite comfortable, and not like that almost aggresive type of feeling I felt from the Samsung. However, there were other issues such as significant colour shifting which caused pink/purple discolouration and banding when the display was moved only slightly. This in itself became really annoying and was enough to give me some eye strain and headaches. Alas, it had to go back.

      I am thinking of trying the Zenfone 6 with its LCD display, though can't really find it for a reasonable price even 2nd hand. This is a phone from 2019 but it seems it was quite rare here so second hand examples and any new old stock are like gold dust. The only other options after that are the giant phones with LCD displays from Xiaomi etc…or the Motorola as mentioned above.

      But what I still can't move on from is that my Oneplus 3 from 2016 wiith its OLED display has been extremely comfortable for 5 years of use. There must be something different in these new OLED panels aside from/as well as PWM that is causing some of us these issues? The comparison Maxx made above is a good one, I find it almost just like reading a book in terms of how non-aggressive it is to my senses.

        9thfloorprod There must be something different in these new OLED panels aside from

        I've just found out I have eyestrain from looking at reflected light from the screen. You can test it on paper. So it is the light in my case.
        You can test it by going to the dark room and looking at the screen reflection at the piece of paper, even on low brightness.
        Be careful, i found out that looking at bad screens in darkness may be way worse than doing it in full light. No matter what is the screen brightness. Avoid looking on screen, avoid any light directly from the screen, the screen should be turned away from you.
        To get the best results it makes sense to test it with your worst phone. Compare with the reflected light from normal tech at the same perceived brightness at the same room.
        I am also having problems with new oleds, no problems with old oldes, no matter what the pwm is.

        P.S. This result with reflected light is so weird, I will double check it myself a few extra times.

            If you look at this MacForums post here, you'll see an "Anti-Flicker" option -- but it looks like an Android device and not an Apple one.


            Does anyone know what phone this is? Is it a OnePlus device?

            I have been using Poco X3 Pro more than one month now. At beginning, I had some eyestrain and mild headaches, but now it is all normal and I can use phone without problems. Just to say, I could not use iPhone 11, Samsung 20. These are the phones that I have sent back.

            One problem with the Poco is it sheer size. I would like to try Xiaomi 11 Lite 11, as it is lighter and smaller phone.

            Does someone have experience with Xiaomi?

            To add, I have been also using new MacBook Air M1 few months without eye strain.

              neca980 Xiaomi 11 Lite

              Got the eyestrain at the store, similar to iPhone 11 and slightly better than Samsung 20

                  ryans

                  I've been using iPhone SE 1st gen for 3 years daily and have no strain from it. One of updates in the past caused some strain for a while (in connection with the movement and animations), but now it's good with iOS 15.

                    For me is iPhone SE 2020 one of rare phones that I could use without a strain. Newer iPhones are unusable for me.

                    If they only would be produced in format of 7+ and 8+ phones.

                      My last usable smartphone was the Samsung Galaxy A5. It never gave me any problems. I tried after that a Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S and Samsung Galaxy A51. Both gave me eyestrain and headaches and it was worse with the A51.

                      I don't understand. What has changed in this last 5-6 years in smartphone technology that we have to suffer these symptoms? Why does the Redmi have milder effects than the A51, when the A5 is also an AMOLED and it never gave me any problems?

                        DiegoRojo this is what I am trying to find out.
                        Would you like to try out if a reflected light from the screen does the same?

                        I posted here a couple days ago:

                        Mrak0020 I've just found out I have eyestrain from looking at reflected light from the screen. You can test it on paper. So it is the light in my case.
                        You can test it by going to the dark room and looking at the screen reflection at the piece of paper, even on low brightness.
                        Be careful, i found out that looking at bad screens in darkness may be way worse than doing it in full light. No matter what is the screen brightness. Avoid looking on screen, avoid any light directly from the screen, the screen should be turned away from you.
                        To get the best results it makes sense to test it with your worst phone. Compare with the reflected light from normal tech at the same perceived brightness at the same room.
                        I am also having problems with new oleds, no problems with old oldes, no matter what the pwm is.

                        P.S. This result with reflected light is so weird, I will double check it myself a few extra times.

                        I have a hypothesis about this light, checking it out right now.
                        In the last few years manufacturers were fighting for increased brightness and readability outdoors, under the sun, for increased amount of colors. Most probably some of these improvements lead to the eyestrain. It is not a well-known characteristic of the screen, visible in the screen specs. It it something subtle within the screen, can be found out only by disassembling.
                        By disassembling ips screens, it was found out that a part called polarizing film makes an impact to the problem. But it is not a source, its replacement leads to very subtle improvement. There should be something else.

                            @"Mrak0020" Thanks for your reply. I will try this later after i return from work. I agree with you, i feel like symptoms are a lot worse when using the phone when it is dark.

                            After reading the last posts in this thread, i believe we can agree the problem is more complex than reducing it to PWM issues and display type. As i said in my previous post, the Samsung A5 never gave me any problems even after hours of using it on the same day, while the Samsung A51 gave me the worst kind of headache i've experienced watching a screen. And it's strange that the Redmi Note 9S, being an IPS LCD with supossedly no PWM flicker, or at least flicker at higher frequency than most OLEDS, it's in a middle ground in terms of symptoms between the A5 and the A51, both AMOLEDs with bad PMW from what i've seen on some reviews. So Wtf 🤣

                            I will try using the Redmi for a few more days to see if my vision somehow adapts to this screen. If the symptoms don't lower i'll try to find another phone (Any recommendations?)

                              DiegoRojo i believe we can agree the problem is more complex than reducing it to PWM issues and display type

                              Oh you don't even imagine how far it is from display type and pwm and things like that. I am doing all the research in another language so there's little of it on this forum right now; but there's a community of people who face this smartphone problem and a lot of tests are already done. For me old Samsung Note 5 (super amoled with low pwm rate) is the last normal phone, and iPhone 11 and Xiaomi with ips bring me a lot of pain immediately.

                              No recommendations right now, unfortunately. Only one: avoid pushing through pain, bad phone will just damage eyes more and more. If your redmi has something like "reduce contrast" in settings, try it, it is helpful on some devices. Contrast has something to do with this, but not per se, it just messes up some physical qualities of this light.

                              Ledstrain generally is visited by people with other types of problems, so this smartphone problem is less covered here. But I have to say it is not exclusive on smartphones, it has something to do with the basic screen technologies and eye sensitivity to this specific kind of damage. So some people have the same problem with notebooks, monitors etc. It is definitely most present in new tech (starting from 2017), but could be found earlier sometimes.
                              It is definitely not connected to any eye pathology, a lot of people I contacted have been to ophthalmologists. Me too, I had a complete checkup with a lot of tests and my eyes are absolutely healthy.
                              Neither it is connected with BVD, discussed here; most probably this light makes eyes to immediately excessively converge reflectively. But that is only a top of an iceberg; somehow it makes little red blood vessels to appear or break immediately, leads to light sensitivity (hopefully by damaging only cornea and not a retina, but it is impossible to define) and so on. The longer it is used, the more damage a person feels, but muscle pain from excessive convergence will slowly go down.

                                  Hi!....first of all: sorry for my bad english, and sorry if the post is too long.

                                  I didn't know about pwm until some months ago....and now i found this forum (and this thread) i am glad i did. 😃

                                  Long story short, i am looking to replace my current phone (an motorola one fusion...the standard model...not the fusion plus) mainly because it weights like a stone... but i wanna go with caution.

                                  The thing is, i have confirmed that i am sensitive to pwm flickering, i was getting serious eyestrain with my older phone (galaxy s3 mini...with an amoled) but interestingly i get a even worse "burning" sensation and headaches with an zte a3 lite from an family member wich has an lcd (and yes...i tested it with my fusion ' s camera and it flickers) then there is my one fusion wich is maybe the most "eye friendly" phone i ever had...but still far from perfect (i cant find information about the display online)

                                  The problem is that although i am pwm sensitive i also have others problems with my eyes (i am very sensitive to lights in general... including sunlight, i also cant tolerate certain colors on screens on certain conditions) So even with my fusion sometimes i cant enjoy watching something, is like some colors are disgusting to my brain...idk.

                                  So i have these options in my city:

                                  • The realme 8 5g (is the same as narzo 30 5g...)

                                  • One plus nord n10 (i read contradictory things about pwm in this one)

                                  • And realme x50 5g -not pro- that is at the same price here for some strange reason..but it weights too much for my taste.

                                  So it seems like my only real option is the realme 8 5g.

                                  Can someone say me if the realme 8 5g display is really 100% flicker free? Now i know notebookcheck is not always correct...and then there is dithering and other new things i didn't know before...and still dont understand very well haha. So i want to be sure if it really is 100% free from any form of flickering.

                                  Now ...about the colors / photophobia problem: i am still not sure what i can tolerate more...low contrast or high contrast displays

                                  • I never liked how amoled panels looks

                                  • An family member had an vanilla moto g6 and i liked how it looked (it wasn't perfect though) interestingly i didn't get eyestrain and looks like it uses pwm at 2.300

                                  • now with my one fusion i like to use the "saturated" profile more but its still not perfect, at least i can use it for some hours without much problem..so in the end i am not entirely sure what is the "perfect combination" for my eyes/brain.

                                  Thanks in advance 👍

                                    Mrak0020 Thanks for your reply, in a way it's good to know there is more people on the same boat (and hopefully we will reach some permanent solution to all this 😁 )

                                    There are 2 curious things that catched my attention while reading your post.

                                    1-To this day, i never had any problems with PC monitors or TVs (with some software exceptions i will mention in case 2). I have 2 relatively new Smart TVs (one Samsung, the other one LG), and a LG monitor. For me, it's strange that neither one has given me any symptoms, considering that at least one of them is newer than the smartphones i mentioned; can someone explain if the display functioning is too different from that of cellphones? I see a lot of people complaining about having this same problem we have with smartphones, with this other screens. If someone is struggling to find an usable monitor/TV maybe i can recommended this models for you.

                                    2-I remembered two moments when I had similar issues (maybe they are totally unrelated to this but who knows?) when playing some computer games. There were 2 in particular that gave me headaches and eyestrain after some minutes playing them: World of Warcraft and Outer Worlds. I'm not sure about WoW, but the thing is in the game Outer Worlds there is a visual effect called "Chromatic Aberration" that for some people messes very bad with their eyesight. When I searched about this problem i had with the game and deactivated that option, i felt instant relief. I believe that WoW used the same effect, or at least what both games have in common is that colors look a lot more vivid/intense than in most other games.

                                        DiegoRojo Thank you for these details!
                                        Let me think...

                                        1. I have never had any problems as well but I personally never tested a new tech (TV) other than smartphones for too long, and symptoms need some time to start (from an hour up to two days) if my eyes are completely fine and there was zero bad screens in my hands for months.
                                          I suppose that smartphones are different than other screens, because no one needs to watch TV under a direct sunlight, so a TV definitely has worse readability than a phone. There are many complaints on TV and monitors on this forum. But on a huuuge Russian-speaking forum about phones and gadgets (not about eye pain), smartphone problem looks way more specific: many people have no complaints about other tech, only about smartphones.
                                          On another huge forum about hardware including monitors there are almost no complaints about smartphone-like symptoms, in a super long thread about monitors for sensitive eyes I found only couple of similar complaints.
                                          BTW, due to the fact that the majority of complaints are about smartphones, there's a big chance that a lot of pwm complaints are not about pwm. No one actually tests pwm influence on their own eyes. Amoled screens became widespread only 3-4 years ago. People just google, find out about pwm and change the phone. When I was looking for clues all through the internet, I saw many pwm complaints that were similar to my symptoms, but milder.

                                        2. That is interesting. That might indicate that you react not to one factor, but maybe to couple of factors (eyestrains from software are way more common on ledstrain than the smartphone problem). But it could also be a clue to the smartphone problem, and I am going to check that with all my curiosity! Thank you!
                                          Update: I googled the basics, how it looks, and outer world examples. My first impression is that this can be quite an unpleasant thing. Blurry colorful image edges might drive crazy any person with no vision problems. I do not think it is connected directly to smartphone problem: I checked pure red, green and blue images and all of them bring me pain. But it might play some multiplying role. There are some images on my screen that I see almost like in 3D. Some sort of chromatic aberration might theoretically lead to this illusion.
                                          What I find quite interesting though is that you mentioned vivid colors. Google says chromatic aberration is widespread in modern games. What if some combination of chromatic aberration and vivid colors lead to eyestrain? If the colors are vivid than the edges with aberration should be also more vivid, with brighter red/blue/green.
                                          I will keep this chromatic aberration thing in mind during the research.

                                          dev