I am still using an iPhone 4. Out of five iPhone 4/4s I bought only two are usable. The three other ones triggered eye strain in just a few seconds. However, the iPhone is getting slower, and the screen size is not really what you use nowadays. Do you have a Smartphone with current technology that is perfectly usable throughout the day?

I use a Note 3 SM-N900W8 (purchased Oct 24th 2013, was having issues with PWM then, got a migraine from being in the store too long :() I never bothered to check for PWM as it was less of an issue in phone displays back then but I never had problems with the display. Recently checked with Canon T5i and it shows up as higher frequency than usual >300hz which is a safe zone normally. And I cannot detect PWM using pen test (insert S-Pen joke here) However Samsung phones made in 2014 and after have terrible PWM worse than this. Friend got a headache from trying the S5 in store, think later batches of the Galaxy S4 may be affected, etc.

I am iPhone 4s with iOS 7.1.2, and it's smooth enough because I don't usually use apps on it. (I surf the web on computer) I think iOS 6 is better on iPhone 4. :>

@"JTL"#p236 I hate Samsung mostly because of the screen. The same feeling as yours.

I've got a LG LGL34C for about a year now and haven't had any issues with it. Dunno if it's fast or not but it's usable... so that's good enough for me!

@"Slacor"#p251 Heh. I had a LG-C55 about four years ago running Android 2.2. Think was laggy as crap but it didn't use PWM, took 10 seconds to open the dialer, etc.

Did anyone try the BlackBerry Leap?

I use an iPhone 4s and I hate it :( It gives me instant eye strain + headaches. Its original OS (I don't remember which one it was) seemed a lot better than the new updated ones. I wish I could revert it back to how it was.. but oh well.

Yes, that is true. I had to downgrade my iPhone 4 to iOS 6 because on iOS 7.1.2 I got severe eye strain and headaches. I switched back and forth several times to be sure. I think there is a newer hack tool that allows you to downgrade iPad 2 and iPhone 4s to iOS 6.1.3. I read about it in reddit's jailbreak section. I believe it is called something like Odysseus. But I can not guarantee that it is safe to use and free of malware. I think iOS 5 was the original OS.

Also I might be able to go to a phone store soon with my fast shutter speed DSLR to test for flickering in newer smartphones. Also people on my family also own, alongside the Samsung's I mentioned. - LG Nexus 5 - iPhone 6s (I don't like iPhone's :P) will test those later.

I tried the BlackBerry Leap now. It is not the worst LED device I ever used, but it still starts to hurt a little after 1-2 minutes. At night the minimum brightness is a little too bright for me.

Usable Smartphones?

ensete

KM This further confirms my observations about color profiles, which I mentioned in an earlier post. They introduce eye strain when they're active.

This lines up with my ICC cure on my monitor. It seems color profies have a lot to do with whatever we are experiencing

tomek

KM yes I did it, when I set it to 68 or 70 without any filter it's way to bright for me and after one minute - pain, even on next day I've tried and max brightness for me was around 5. I know when I feel direct strain then it's almost impossible that it will better.
Filter I use with LG as I wrote and there works fine, but on 3T it's better then without but not the same as with LG. It's surly connected with color tint, but can't find this the best one even when I compere to LG, maybe some one will create this the best one and I don't think PWM is making my strain. When I saw video on youtube most of them show that OP3 or 3T have PWM but screen is way better then my iPhone 6 which have 0 PWM. When I mess in settings in iP 6 where you can change colour tint it's getting better to use but not as LG.
I had a lot of hope with this 3T, I've tried many phones and surly it is one of the best ones but not the same as my old G2. Now G2 is getting slow so when I have to I will try once again one plus maybe 4 or 5 we will se what will be next or I will try to stay once again with 3T on min brightness.

autobot

Maxx You could use your phone at 100% brightness if that doesn't give you any issues, and use a brightness filter app to control the brightness(and make sure the app doesn't play with the pwm based brightness). I do that on my xiaomi, works pretty well.

Btw , the app i use is : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.team.sugarcane.fullscreenbrightnessfilter

KM

It seems more AMOLED devices don't use the 240 Hz PWM anymore in upper brightness levels, for example the relatively cheap Lenovo P2: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-P2-Smartphone-Review.199744.0.html
They say no PWM above "20%" brightness.
Perhaps this is going to be the new standard for a while.

ensete

Just to add to the list, I recently got a Huwei Honor 5x, and the screen is horrid on the eyes. Even with the Skinomi screen protector, which helped a bit, it is still unusable. Shipping it back to Amazon tomorrow

KM

Now Android 7.1.1 is officially out for the OnePlus 3, and after 2 days I had to downgrade to Android 7.0 because my eyes didn't stop burning. Whatever it is, it's probably the same problem I had with LineageOS, which is on 7.1.1, too. Bad news in some way, since there won't be new security updates for older versions anymore...

ensete

KM Yes, I had to root my device to block any updates to 7. There must be significant changes to the display technology in Android between 6 and 7. You can find some folks complaining about it, of course Google is quick to handwave away the problem as nonexistent.

Gurm

ensete you're lucky you can use 6. When HTC updated my One m8 from 5 to 6 I had to force downgrade and root the OS so it wouldn't pull OTA updates. They made HUGE changes from 5 to 6, at least at the firmware level on this phone. That isn't necessarily the case with all phones, though.

Google handwaves it away probably because it's device-dependent. The OS probably hasn't changed much about the display output...

ryans

ensete Have you found any more updates about this? I haven't been able to find a device that works for me that runs Android > 6

PuffyCloud

KM I use LG Flex2. It is currently the only P-OLED that doesn't use PWM. I can go for hours without any problems/headaches etc.
In contrast I used Samsung Galaxy A3(2016) in a dark room for about 2 hours and got the mother of all headaches.

Kray

ensete

What version of iPad can you use, and which IOS version?

Gurm

I spent some time with my girlfriend's iPhone 7+ this weekend. It's really nice, eyestrain is slow to develop on it. She has a tempered glass screen protector. It doesn't have instant-eyestrain like the 6 did. I'm going to see if I can play with it for a longer period and maybe put one of those matte screen protectors from skinomi on it. If that works for me, it is a viable upgrade path for my now-3-year-old HTC One m8.

JTL

Gurm Something something courage, headphone jack 😛

Zaza

Gurm Have you tried the HTC M9? It doesnt say anything about LED backlighting on the specs. Thanks.

Plsnostrain

I can use Samsung s6 without any problems all day. And iPhone 4s as well.

Devotee

I find it better when I use iPhone 6 at greater than 30% brightness with reduce white point setting (accessibility- display optimisations) set at 100%. I also use darker colours ON & have adjusted colour filter to provide a very slight yellow tint. This combo allows me to use the phone for a long time. The iPhone 5 I have however is absolutely perfect in as much as there is no strain at all. I also experience no strain on Xiaomi Mi Pad, but all their other devices like Mi5, Mi Max etc cause strain. Samsung is taboo for eye people

degen

Devotee I agree that the reduce white point setting especially with the new slider on it they introduced in recent iOS is very beneficial. Much less harsh even with the backlights turned up an it like you said.

Gurm

The M9 is ... not as good as the M8, but it shipped with Marshmallow so that might be the problem.

Zaza

Gurm I am not sure which to buy? On the one hand the M8 seems to be usable for a few people, but is quite old now. On the other the M9 is newer but is less comfortable on the eyes.

Thanks for the feedback.

tomek

Have somebody tried LG G6, S8 or P10?
We have those only in our Mediamarkt, but they use some strong withe led-s in whole store so after few minutes i feel like on drugs. So it's impossible to test some thing. I think that LG should work for me but I don't have place to test it. I will try to order online and than return. When I see S8 on youtube it got PWM and some problem with red tint and I know now that color tint is also causing strain even if I'm using my old Samsung TV or LG G2 - small color change causing eye strain so I thing S8 will not work for me anyway.

degen

On my iPhone 6s I have always used lowest brightness and when Night Shift became available I enabled that 24/7 and at it's warmest setting. There was an option in accessibility to 'Reduce White Point' but the effect was so insignificant as to make little difference.

The display was still way too bright. Recently I revisited the 'Reduce White Point' option and found that there is a sliding scale and you can really dial down the harshness of the light (believe this was introduced in 10.3). It's a huge improvement and I can use the phone for short periods to shoot a text or short email whereas previously I would not use it except to make calls which I did with voice commands.

It's still not a comfortable display and I can't get comfortable using as it can cause eyegraines which I usually associate with PWM but iPhone 6s does not use PWM..

Either way this new slider on 'Reduce White Point' is a big improvement.

BananaPie

I am iPhone fan since 3G. But I like other smartphones too. After 3G i cant use any high end smartphone because of eyestrain. I have problem with all flagships phones. I can distinguish ips display from the headache, nausea i get. I get a different type of headache from amoled. The only amoled i havent tried is rgb matrix. Pentile 100% headache for me. I dont have problem with ccfl. I thought i may try lg g flex the first one. Is it possible to order custom made display and fit it in smartphone? For example i would love a tn display like 3g's on iphone 6s for example. Has anyone tried anything like this or thought about it?

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