qb74 Unfortunately the OLED screen on the Poco M5s flickers and is easy to see with a camera, I don't know why notebookcheck.org says otherwise, I hope it's not a commercial maneuver.
Usable Smartphones?
Abeabe
That is PWM flicker for sure. Very strange.
I don't have any explanation other than there either being panel variance in the Poco M5s lineup (very likely case tbh) or the reviewer not reviewing the device mentioned (M5s).
Such noticable flicker caputered from a camera even is extremely obvious and there is no way notebookcheck have not been able to spot this immediately in their testings. Their response time testings are very shoddy though so there could be a possibility that their PWM testing is also flawed. I've never delved deep into how they do their PWM dimming flicker tests.
- Edited
Regarding PWM, has anyone tried these smartphones?
- Oppo Find X5
- Realme GT2
- Moto Edge 30 Fusion
Thank you in advance.
Edit: I was also considering the pixel 6, but I've read not very positive comments. Now I'm waiting for some reviews on the Motorola Moto G73 5g.
- Edited
I can confirm that the Xiaomi Pocophone X3 Pro is excellent, both on the stock OS, and on custom roms.
The Xiaomi Mi10T pro appears to be an excellent choice with an IPS screen and high end specs, 5g as well, sadly they've moved to OLED for most, if not all of their newer devices.
My previous Xiaomi Mi Max 3 with 128gb of storage and 6gb ram was also excellent, as was the rest of the mi max series and all of the redmi note models through to at least the 8 series
I'm also wondering how people found the LG V60 or LG Velvet, I'd love the dual screen case for productivity, but am struggling to find how the eye strain is for epople
I've been linked to this website by a forum user from Notebookcheck, claiming this website does more accurate PWM results.
And I must say, I am baffled how in-depth they test their devices!
The new OLED panels seem very exciting!
Spot on 
I generally have a tendency to set my phones to the standard 60hz refresh rate (to save on battery) as opposed to the higher refresh rates.
I do find it surprising that the LCD inversion/artifacts were considerably more noticeable when testing on higher refresh rates.
This could be something to take into consideration if someone is experiencing strain with a particular LCD based handset.
Try setting the refresh rate to the standard 60hz to see if things improve.
Why have notebookcheck got something so obviously visible - so so wrong??
I've just checked some other reviews of the phone - and some have mentioned a flicker free mode in the display settings.
Maybe they've conducted their testing with the flicker free mode activated?
If that is the case, they should have made this clear within their review.
- Edited
Vividblu99 Hi Vividblu99, maybe the youtubers that reviewed the phone had the antiflicker disabled, the key is to know if the anti flicker comes enabled or disabled by default, I think it comes disabled by default because you should see some warning about colors distortion when you enabled it, so notebookcheck had to do the review with it disabled and they mention too that the panel don't flicker as other OLED panels they tested. I found another youtube review that shows the screen of the M5s flickering, it's a little hard to see the scrolling lines of the flicker because the screen reflections, but is visible in the last second, later the video changes and the reviewer talks about the anti-flicker setting that he had enabled, I don't think that M5s have different panels that may flicker and others that don't because I already found 3 youtube reviews and in all of them the screen is flickering, and I think all M5s have this anti-flicker feature, that may be effective or not.
So do you think this works?
I want to try Xiaomi 12T Pro with 1920 Hz (I had no problems with Xiaomi 11T Pro).
- Edited
BloodyHell619
the reason is not PWM, I think it's the aggressive backlighting of the screen and maybe the bad blue LEDs.
I do not know how it works, but after a whole day of use, my right eye began to see worse and a burst capillary appeared, in addition there is a feeling of compression in the temples, no screen settings remove these effects
PWM Ranking - Notebooks, Smartphones, and Tablets with PWM - NotebookCheck.net Tech
Check that page for the phones you're considering, and what their PWM value is. 
0 is best, not worst. 1 would be worst, and the higher the better. For e.g. 150 or 200 is bad, above 250 is okay, 1000-2000 is good, above 2000 is best.
- Edited
I tested an Oppo Find X5 in the shop today at around 3/4 brightness with the Opple Light Master 3 and it was one of the better displays with lower modulation in the intensity graph (similar to the graph of my S20 FE and LG v30).
I also found similar measurement showing lower modulation in the graph for the Oppo Reno 8 Pro and the Motorola Edge 30 (130-150) - I could not find the fusion model there.
I went in to the shop originally to test the Asus Zenfone 9 and Pixel 7 Pro, but found the Pixel 7 Pro has more modulation (160-220) in the graph, the Pixel 7 is worse again.
Unfortunately they did not have an Asus phone to test. Last time I looked at one, it did not seem to hurt my eyes (but only used it for a few minutes).
Update:
I went into another shop and saw the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion, I set the brightness down around 80% or so to test.
PWM of 100 Hz, modulation 10% (220 - 170 square)
iPhones
I tried to adjust the brightness down by 10-20%, then I would measure
14: PWM 480Hz, Modulation 12% (170-200 sawtooth)
14 Plus: PWM 480Hz, Modulation 4.4% (440-480 sin/square) Maybe the brightness was maxed here?
14 Plus: PWM 480Hz, Modulation 99% (17-330 jagged sawtooth bottom/sinusoid top - alternating lows)
14 Pro: PWM 480Hz, Modulation 30.7% (130-270 jagged sawtooth bottom/sinusoid top - alternating lows)
14 Pro Max: PWM 480Hz, Modulation28.3% (110-210 jagged sawtooth bottom/sinusoid top - alternating lows)
SE: Could not detect PWM (showed 50Hz but that is most likely the external lighting), Modulation 9% (120-150). Did not feel good to look at (maybe poor quality screen or polarisation/off-axis changes for each eye)
12: PWM 240Hz, Modulation 8.3% (100-120 sawtooth bottom/sinusoid top)
12: PWM 240Hz, Modulation 9.2% (30-40 sawtooth bottom/sinusoid top)
13 mini: PWM 480Hz, Modulation 9.2% (160-190 sinusoid)
13 mini: PWM 480Hz, Modulation11.3% (60-80 sawtooth)
13: PWM 480Hz, Modulation 11.8% (90-120 sawtooth)
Summary
iPhone 13/13 mini and 14/14 plus seem to have the lowest modulation at the highest frequency.
iPhone 12 has lowest modulation overall but its at half the frequency of the 13/14
iPhone 13 seemed to introduce higher frequency PWM of 480Hz, with a fairly low modulation at higher brightness levels.
iPhone 14 Pro/ProMagnum changed the PWM behavior with higher modulation and a more aggressive waveform that alternates between two lower intensity levels. 14 and 14 Plus did not seem to do this (most likely using the same approach as in the 13/13mini).
iPhone 12 has low modulation but also lower frequency 240Hz PWM. It has the lowest ripple in the graph visually though (apart from the SE).
iPhone SE does not appear to use OLED, but has a screen that is not appealing or comfortable to me.
Reference:
Seeing as the S20 FE 5G has been working for me for the last 2+ years, and the LG v30 for 2-3 before that - I thought I should add their measurements:
S20FE: PWM 120Hz, Modulation 9.5% (90-110 square/sawtooth)
S20FE: PWM 120Hz, Modulation 20% (110-190 square/sawtooth)
LG v30+: PWM 60Hz, Modulation 3.4% (300-310 square/sawtooth)
LG v30+: PWM 60Hz, Modulation 12.5% (60-80 square/sawtooth)
What seems to work for my eyes is how the switching to low intensity happens very fast and only for a small proportion (5-10%) of each switching period, while the higher intensity is maintained evenly for the majority.
The other thing that may help is the above 2 phones match the PWM to the refresh rate which may prevent aliasing flicker as well. Anyhow Just my thoughts on that.
Vividblu99 Sorry I never replied until now. I've been massively eyestrained - that's the reason. I'm typing using an eink screen now and so I still can't view your video properly. Thanks for posting it though. If I ever am able to view it, I'll get back to you.
Vividblu99 ad news.
I recently purchased a new digital microscope from Amazon (Andonstar) and I've been testing all my LCD based smartphones over the past 2 days.
Every device I've tested is displaying either Temporal Dithering or some type of moving inversion/artifacts - no device has been 100% stable.
As bad a news, that is, it is also good in a sense, because at least we now know that the same phone is not built with that much of a different screen. No wonder the Realme 7 was giving me such horrible eyestrain. I was sure that thing was dithering or something like that. I think Realme is really off the table now. I even emailed them that the phone was dithering and asked if there was a way to turn it off, but got no reply at all.
Rui I want to try Xiaomi 12T Pro with 1920 Hz (I had no problems with Xiaomi 11T Pro).
Weird. Notebookcheck says the 12T Pro flickers at 120Hz, although it also says that "the amplitude curve is very uniform across the entire brightness spectrum and constant at 120 Hz - similar to a DC dimming mode ex-factory"
I've been trying to see if I could adapt to my Galaxy Note 5 again. I was able to play games with it for like 4 days trying to take my eyes off the screen as much as I could, but after the fourth day I was literally seeing moving horizontal lines before me when I took my eyes off the screen for like an hour. I had never experienced that. That was definitely PWM.
I found an old video where my Note 5 was filmed in it, and It was flickering pretty bad even before the repair, it's driving me nuts that this phone is now giving me this much strain. What could have possibly changed? The strain is definitely, at least for sure, partly, PWM related.
I am really getting tempted to take one last shot for a phone and get the POCO X4 GT.
@Vividblu99 have you stumbled across anything even cheaper with no dithering and no pwm or a very high frequency pwm yet? Or has anyone else?
Also, another weird question. How old are you guys? Have your symptoms ever decreased or increased with age?
- Edited
Well, they seemed to modulate the intensity the least, so probably the "best of a bad bunch" for me personally - I have not used any of them for long enough to see if they would work for me long term but for me if I had to use - the Find X5 and Edge 30 seem the "least bad".
None of them exhibit the waveform of the S20 FE or LG v30+ where they are almost DC like for the majority of the switching cycle with very fast low modulation down/up transition for around 5% ot the cycle (brightness above 40%)
Out of all the phones I checked, the Edge 30 and Find X5 both had intensity waveforms closest to what has been working for me. The Edge 30 fusion was a more regular waveform and more different to what I am used to.
Best of luck.
I can agree on Pocophone X3 Pro, using more then one year w/o problems. Only downside of the phone is really cheap camera.
Hello Everybody, my personnel opinion/conclusion today is that there is no plausible explanation for the eyestrain/headache for the new models smartphones. I am almost thinking it could be the "blue light"(the popular term used by the manufacturers themselves)….
But did anybody do some trials with screencovers? My girlfriend has an older Samsung A40 with a screen protection, and it easier for me to use than my own A40 (which has no screenprotection). For sure the screenprotector has influence on the "screen light/output", as I learned that sunlight in water breaks into a certain angle (probably also glass…). I do not have any problems with screens in (electrical) cars for example, and I think the glass on these screens is most of the time much more thicker than in smartphones.
I dont hear anybody complaining about other types of screens than our smartphones and televisions, right?
Let me know, if you have any thoughts about this.
Greetz,
Michael
