Sunspark Thanks for the information. In reality I'm fine with IOS 14, the only app I need that can't be downloaded is the American Express one but I log in from Safari and do everything anyway.
I need a new phone and the iPhone 13 pro, 14 pro and 15 not pro all give me migraines.

I might try getting a refurbished 11 pro which should have a similar screen to the iPhone X or I might try the pixel 8.

I'm really tired of our problem, let's hope microleds bring good news but I'm convinced that our problem is 100% software not hardware.

    a month later

    Soooooo annoying.

    Been on iPhone 12 minis for 2 years as they don’t PWM at full brightness and I run the reduce white point hack. Found a good deal on a 256GB and just sold my 64GB(on iOS 16.5) before settling it up. 256GB is on 17.1. Set it up and immediately felt it, now I am so annoyed.

    How/why does this dithering happen on a 10 bit OLED screen. D**mit, I do not need this false color depth I would rather have a pleasant screen. Why are no cell phones eye care certified when a lot of look at them far more often then monitors and for a larger range of the day.

    I honestly think I might be done with Apple at this.

    Edit: this dithering might be worse than PWM to me. Hard to focus on text even if I have the bold on. Is it potentially a OLED panel issue or 100% the upgrade to ios17? Like some of the macs, certain manufacturers panels don’t PWM/dither as much.

    As mentioned a lot, people seem to have eyestrain particularly since iOS 16.5, and some even had eyestrain since iOS 15 though milder. I strongly believe that this is temporal dithering being used in a heavier way, because otherwise most modern iPhones already have PWM so PWM should not be the reason here.

    For iOS 17, the first versions seem usable until the 17.1.2 where something weird appears again.

    The problem is newer iPhones will be shipped in latest iOS by default, so the later you buy an iPhone, the more likely that it will cause you eyestrain and there’s nothing you can do about that.

      I also question their purpose in applying the temporal dithering on a 10-bit OLED screen. To display billions of colors that we can not even perceive? The best we can “perceive” is that the colors look a bit more saturated, but in return, the iPhone becomes useless. Isn’t the 10-bit screen good enough?

      And this temporal dithering thing is not mentioned in iOS update description nor in product specifications. People only find out when they actually use it.

      7 days later

      Yep it seems to be more on the software than the hardware. We’ve been looking at all kinds of screens with all kinds of flickers for many, many years, but only recently there’s this kind of eyestrain.

      In the area of computers where they can actually swap various devices in a system to test, it’s already proven that a display monitor can be totally irrelevant of an eyestrain situation. It can look totally fine on a system (OS, gpu, gpu driver, display settings…) but horrible on another.

      People are basically finding a way to disable dithering on almost every OS and gpu.

        TemporalDithering not on iOS

        BTW, i have a PC which works perfectly with one LG monitor and causes me symptoms with another monitor of the same model. So, at least in that case, it's a hardware thing.

        • JTL replied to this.

            rorro98678 BTW, i have a PC which works perfectly with one LG monitor and causes me symptoms with another monitor of the same model. So, at least in that case, it's a hardware thing.

            Yes. The way I see it is both the monitor being used and certain properties of the devices output can be an issue. Sometimes both at the same time to those unfortunate enough to have to figure this out.

              a month later

              deepflame the thing is I already rolled back to 17.1.1 and I just want to stay here. If I update to 17.4, I’ll not be able to go back anymore.

                  15 days later

                  twomee yep, it’s very likely that once dithering is introduced in an iOS “small update” version, it will continue to stay there until there is a “big update” aka iOS 18.0 coming up. Sorry that the ipad is not usable for you now.

                    I had similar problems with versions of iOS 15 and iOS 16 causing the same issues. I summarized it here in this post.

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

                    Please e-mail Apple Support and Apple Accessibility about this. https://support.apple.com/en-euro/111749

                    I sent them everything I posted here. Didn't really get an "actionable" response from them but did get a few responses saying they would get this information to the appropriate teams at Apple. Not sure what will come of it but the more people they hear from the better.

                    The fact that a simple software update can make previously "good" devices unusable gives me a little hope that maybe it would be a easy fix for Apple to offer a setting to turn off whatever has been introduced in the software.

                    I contacted Apple many times about this, and they don’t seem to have a concrete reply on this topic. They say that they’ll be looking into it, but that’s all you get.

                    iOS 14 and earlier versions are the ones that people can definitely use. Starting from iOS 15, they introduced something which I believe that is temporary dithering. The symptoms are very strong with some certain colors, which further reinforces my thought (colors that the panel cannot display properly without dithering).

                    We need customer protection organization in this matter. We cannot just send email individually to Apple and expect them to resolve it. They never will.

                    3 months later

                    The iOS 18 beta version is out. Has anyone tried it to see if there’s any eyestrain?

                    From my experience, if it’s anything like the previous iOS versions, then the first iterations (eg 18.0, 18.1) should be easier on the eyes than later ones. But this is never guaranteed; eyestrain can just appear since the very first iteration.

                    It’s a very risky thing to update iOS nowadays.

                      my iOS 14.x device is starting to drop support for many apps I used. I am going to have to upgrade eventually and it really bums me out. I can't find any information of apple utilizing a truly 10 bit display any time soon for their iPhones. The only display technology I have seen in the pipeline is a way to focus the light from the pixels to make the display appear brighter which will also save battery life. None of that likely helps any of us. Hopefully one of these days, they will finally use a true 10 bit display. Chips are getting more powerful.

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