concernedcoder
Iām working on trying to figure this out. Youāre not the first person to have that experience. I did some quick research and the two things that pop out to me is the LG C3 is WOLED compared to the iPhone 16ās AMOLED and the iPhone 16 is over 3x as bright as the C3. C3 has lower PWM, though.
We know the modern iPhones (anything after the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro, or anything manufactured after 2022, including the rewaved 13 base for 2023) are using different hardware and iOS 16 and up likely dithers depending on the phone and version.
I think at a certain point we have to move beyond ādoes this phone or computer have PWMā or ādoes this ditherā and start evaluating flicker at a frequency level as well as identifying the frames inserted and how it affects pixel behavior. There are too many examples of people being able to use devices that shouldnāt work, but do. We have to be missing something.
I think the reason why dithering is so problematic is because temporal dithering and FRC specifically is limited by the displayās refresh rate. Thanks to some patent documents we know Appleās GPU dithers up to 4 temporal frames per cycle so on a MacBook Air it should be dithering at 15Hz, well within seizure range, if my math is correct: 60Hz / 4 frames = 15Hz. Thatās such a dangerously low frequency that itās no wonder a few seconds or minutes trigger migraines or seizures or other neurological issues in sensitive folks. But because itās āhiddenā itās not readily apparent.
From what Iāve seen most phone OLEDās tend to be 10-bit, or if theyāre not theyāre pretty darn close that they shouldnāt have to dither much to display P3 colors. The mechanism is also different than LCD just by the nature of how OLEDās work, so Iād imagine the effects will undoubtedly also differ. The problem with the iPhones is we are dealing with 2 PWM frequencies, 2,000 nits brightness, variable refresh rate ProMotion on the Pro models, and whatever iOS dithering is occurring. Once you start upgrading an iPhone 13 to iOS 26 youāre 4 generations of OS out from what it shipped on (iOS 15) and anything past 2 generations is iffy on older tech.
But to answer your question it sounds like the brightness is a major trigger for you. The LG C3 is something like 650 nits max brightness and youāre sitting far away from it yet the new iPhones are 2,000 nits and youāre holding them inches from your face. And if you lower the brightness of the iPhone 16 to match say 50% of the LG at 300 nits youāre triggering a 60Hz PWM frequency with seriously bad modulation, so youāre gonna get nuked by that flicker.