Kray Sorry, my post was poorly worded. You are correct. I just want to caution people from focusing on one particular culprit to much since so far no one has found a universal cause for our issue. Personally flicker/PWM and dithering don't impact me at all.

    ensete for me, PWM is a confirmed root cause. Has been for 15 years. I don't get any eye strain with the same display at 100% brightness when that display does not have PWM at 100%. I get eye strain immediately if the brightness is 99% and there is PWM.

    Now just recently, there seems to be some additional form of flicker (e.g. temporal dithering) in some devices, which is causing exactly the same kind of eye strain as PWM, just not as bad.

      For me, it's definitely some kind of flicker. Maybe also blue light. Some displays just seem "harsher". PWM is not an issue for me, I am perfectly comfortable with some displays with HUGE amounts of PWM. I don't know that FRC/Temporal Dither is the problem, but most displays that hurt to look at do exhibit that.

      8 days later

      Kray Anyway, the new Huawei Mate 10 is out already. It has a different chipset (Kirin processor, instead of Snapdragon), different GPU (Mali, instead of Adreno) and different OS (using the new Adroid Oreo 8.0). Mate 10 is using IPS LCD, their past models does not have PWM. This might be an interesting model to try.

      Today I managed to try the Huawei Mate 10 at the store. Played around with it for 15-20 minutes. At first seems okay, but then started to feel some tingling feeling in the eyes. Inconclusive. Need to use it for longer period before can really know if it causes me eye strain or not.

        I just bought the iphone 8 plus and I have to say , so far no strain. I used it for a couple of hours.

        • Kray replied to this.
          6 days later

          Plsnostrain I just bought the iphone 8 plus and I have to say , so far no strain. I used it for a couple of hours.

          How's the iphone 8 after using it for a week, any eye strain?

              Kray I am also interested. Tried friends iphone 8 and it seems better, but cant tell for sure. Would need to buy it and detox from my current stable headache from testing the 7.

                Hi again. I havent experienced any eyestrain. It seems fine! But we have different cases of eyestrain (although some have same) ,so I cant guarantee it will work for all.

                  8 days later

                  Guys n gals am sad to say that the latest 2 software updates to iPhone 7 n ipad have ruined it for me. All was well and they have done something that now gives me insta-headaches on iPhone 7 and delayed headaches on iPad 2017. It's something to do with the GPU driver am quite certain. On the same hunch I picked up an el-cheapo Lenovo K8 Plus (Mali GPU) and it is fine thus far on moderate use with a blue light filter app on to dull the whites. Adreno and Power GPUs seem to be upsetting my system for no known reason.. This seems to be a part of the problem.

                  ensete all the best, been there done that, it was a fail after 1 week of use. Similar experience with Mi A1, Mi Max, and Mi 5. For some reason Redmi Note 3 (3G) was much better. Hope u have better luck.

                    Hi! I use Sony e5 from march, and I don't have any eye strain. 3 times something change and I feel strain, but after hard reset it is fully comfortable.
                    Previous I used iPhone 4 - no strain, 4s - horrible strain, 6 - permanent strain after one hour, Samsung S5600 - permanent small strain, Moto e4 2017 - permanent small strain.

                    Does anyone use Sony XZ1? this phone have PWM, but in store after 5 minutes use, it's fully comfortable.
                    New iPhones and iPads doesn't have PNW, but I still have hard strain.

                      Sfrix Its not clear if they do not have it. Apple only claims they dont. They use many different display suppliers. Unless you test for it yourself with proper oscilloscope, you do not know and I would not trust them on their claims.

                          martin Did Apple really make any claims regarding PWM? Doesn't seem in keeping with how they operate. Claiming a device as PWM free would mean previous devices PWM driven devices as faulty and Apple never admits its hardware as faulty unless forced by safety recall.

                              degen you are right, they actually never did. People claim they do not use it anymore, but never apple. I still wonder whether my iphone 4s is a lucky unit that doesnt use pwm. Need to get proper gear to finally test it.

                              • JTL replied to this.

                                  ensete I'm using Redmi 3s with "Reading Mode" enabled without any problems. As i know Xiaomi provides two types of screen for this model (BOE и EBBG), my device has BOE one.

                                    7 days later

                                    I tried Android 8.0 (OxygenOS) on my OnePlus 3, but it's extremely unusable, like 7.1. Burning eyes and feeling exhausted just by looking at the screen for an extended period of time. I installed the firmware files (proprietary blobs by OnePlus), modem firmware excluded, from the usable Android 7.0 OxygenOS release over the 8.0 installation: The OS still works, but no relief. I installed LineageOS 7.1x (current) with the 7.0 firmware files: no relief. So it looks like the device firmware might not be responsible for this problem.

                                    martin @TechSensitive I interviewed the head of Apple display engineering back in 2015 and he says the majority of Apple products with LED backlit displays made after late 2009 use PWM around 120Khz below 50% brightness, otherwise there is no PWM.

                                    Sadly he is very busy and the person who connected me with him has retired from AAPL.

                                    Notebookcheck has upgraded their oscilloscope and are able to detect it now.

                                        JTL Very cool that you got this spot on years ago. That inside connection was super legit.

                                          dev