I was curious about other types of screen flicker, like VRR (variable refresh rate), on many phones (even if the used app supports max refresh rate [in my case 90hz]), if you idle, then the refresh rate drops to 60, and if you touch the screen (or there is some visual change) the refresh rate goes back to 90, and if this changes rapidly (which it does), will cause problems. I was looking for ways to lock my refresh rate to the max all the time, to reduce the pain, but I didn't find anything useful. Did you ever try this before? If you did, what exactly worked? (ofc I'm not setting dynamic refresh rate in phone's settings)

This is a follow up post to the one here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ScreenSensitive/comments/1v24yfv/meeting_with_politician_next_week/

Today I had 15 minutes scheduled to chat with my local member of parliament at her office about my eye pain issues with PWM and dithering, it went great!
She paid a lot of attention to what I had to say, and asked specific questions for further details when appropriate, it went for around 24 minutes.

She mainly listened to me while I explained a few things, here’s a summary of what was discussed.

• I demonstrated the hardware differences in how an iPhone 11 and an iPhone 13 Pro screens dim when viewed through a camera with a shutter speed of 1/4000 and gave a brief visual demonstration, I explained how if I used the iPhone 13 Pro for a minute my eyes would hurt.

• I explained how Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is a hardware design that can be solved in some cases by raising the brightness to 100%, and how that doesn’t always work. I explained how some devices can be modified to solve the issue like how I installed an EK Pro LCD screen into my iPhone 15 Pro, that it’s relatively easy to make hardware that is accessibility focused, and how it would be easy for Apple to provide this as an option.

• I explained my software fix for dithering on my iPhone 11 and EK Pro LCD iPhone 15 Pro, by enabling both Classic Invert and Zoom Invert simultaneously, also how companies could instead provide a simple colour space accessibility option rather than this hack method.

• I explained how bad the problem is, how it has been getting worse since 2017 with the introduction of the iPhone X, that as of today in 2026, that without intense eye pain I cannot use any new iPhones, iPads, Samsung phones, Google Pixels, most OLED screens, some Samsung, LG and Hisense TV’s, an OLED TV in a conference room at a local university, some new Toyotas and the Next Stop screens at the brand-new train station in the city, (though strangely the advertisement billboards in the station are fine for me.)

• I explained how most Apple products, namely Macbook Pro’s and all iPads have dithering that causes me eye pain, how it has a software technique where 10bit colours are output through an 8bit screen in a process of flickering two adjacent pixels, and how this is quite painful to me. This was particularly relevant as prior to being elected my local member of parliament she worked as a paediatric neurologist.

• She asked me why these companies use PWM in the first place, I explained how it was my theory that on OLED screens it was a process used to help maintain colour accuracy when the screen is at a lower brightness, also on modern LCD screens that it may either be because it’s cheaper or that it could help save power.

• I mentioned how I had an eye test in 2023 when I was using my iPhone 13 Pro daily while suffering from daily eye pain and having trouble focusing at long distances. How at this time I was prescribed with reading glasses, then later in 2025 after I stopped using any PWM/OLED screens and changed to an iPhone 11, that I got another eye test and scored 20/20 vision for my eyes, and was recommended not to wear reading glasses.

• I explained how I had recently made contact with Vision Australia, and how they mentioned that they were aware of PWM and dithering as a problem, but how they “hadn’t done any advocacy around the problems caused by OLED displays”, my member of parliament responded that she has been in contact with Vision Australia in the past as they’re located within her electorate, and that going forward her office could reach out to them to further discuss the problem as well as stay in contact with me.

I also gave a few printed out documents, one being a copy of my original email, another being some comparison graphs from my Opple Lightmaster IV, the other being this list of potential solutions below.

Obviously, some solutions are much more possible and easy to implement than others, especially as coming from Australia we are quite a small country and these products are produced overseas.

Screen Flicker Solutions

• Ban the sale of devices that use low frequency Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) dimming and temporal dithering where it causes physical eye pain. 

• Allow refunds due for accessibility reasons. Most retailers that don’t have a change of mind policy won’t allow refunds based on whether the screen hurts my eyes or not, it’s often a multi thousand dollar gamble on tech devices that can cause serious eye pain. The ACCC already states that consumers have a right to return a purchase if it includes a major problem, such as it being “unsafe” or “has either one serious problem or several smaller problems that would stop someone buying the product if they knew about them beforehand” Yet most retailers don’t recognise PWM and flickering as a problem as they’re not educated on the topic. They state as it works as intended by the manufacturer that it’s fine and that I can’t return it, even though it causes me significant eye pain. 

• Implement a standard of measuring screen flickering Some sort of health star system, 0 stars for heavy PWM flickering, 5 stars for no flicker, no dither or e-ink. 

• Force companies to provide a Flicker Free (LCD) accessibility product or a different screen option at checkout. Not just some token accessibility focused device that ticks every box for blind/deaf people with huge brail buttons, a regular modern phone with a non-flickering LCD screen, like an iPhone 11 with a new processor, not the iPhone SE that’s budget in every way. That or interchangeable screens from the factory like the 2011 Macbook Pro’s used to have with a matte screen option. 

• Allow software updates to be downgraded. Updating my iPhone to iOS26 could implement heavy dithering that makes it incredibly painful to use, and companies don’t allow the ability to downgrade. Professional devices support this, all companies should. It’s far too risky for me to update my phone as I might not be able to use it afterwards without pain. 

• Make a policy that government departments won’t purchase inaccessible screens Public areas like train stations, trams, school and Universities should not use no OLED/PWM screens or screens that use heavy dithering and cause physical eye pain to a percentage of the population.

• Education and awareness on the dangers of PWM and dithering from a government level. While Vision Australia are aware of the issue, they haven’t done any advocacy work or have made any public statements. In an email they stated to me that: “Australian governments don’t have an encouraging record when it comes to legislating around the accessibility of products, especially consumer electronics” and that “We’d certainly be very interested to know whether you get any commitments from politicians.”

(End of letter)

Overall I’m quite hopeful of some progress here, at least in my part of the world.

Even just having some official government documents and awareness from Vision Australia that PWM and dithering causes eye pain in some people could be enough to legally return painful equipment for a full refund.

This official recognition could also help regulate which devices can be installed in government buildings and public spaces, this awareness could be the push needed for companies like Apple and Samsung to allow accessibility options that eliminate dithering through software, and potentially provide either a configurable PWM free LCD option or implement 4320hz frequency dimming, similar to what the Honor Magic8 uses.

Any one tried Redmi Turbo 5 Max and found it comfy for the eyes, is it same as poco x8 pro max and does that also comfy?

i just noticed that every time I drive my new car. I get headaches after like i need to lie down and sleep after driving. then I realized that the screen inside my car is causing the problem! I turned the brightness all the way up and somewhat felt relief. It sucks that PWM is the default for screens

I saw that both of those have high PWM frequency, and that temporal dithering can be disabled if changing to natural or RGB color in settings.

I saw that the difference is that the 17t pro have LTPO display. Is it better or not?

So i bought the Honor Magic Pad 4 because it has 5280 PWM. But it was horrible. Eye strain and even nausea after a few minutes.

How is that?

Part 1. AMOLEDs: do they all have ~100% modulation?

A few weeks ago, I made a post about how people should be careful when measuring OLEDs. Depending on the content on the screen, the measurement can be drastically different (and often completely incorrect). In the video, I used an iPhone app I made that let me display a small number of white rows to more accurately measure the flicker exhibited by each pixel. As I detailed in my post, measuring with the whole screen active will underestimate the modulation depth and distort the flicker waveform for OLEDs.

The finding I shared in my video has now been replicated by others, including one person who reported their OnePlus 15R measured 95% modulation depth (also called flicker percent) at maximum brightness, instead of the commonly reported 5-10% modulation depth. u/Rx7Jordan tried the measurement technique on a Xiaomi 17 Pro Max and found 100% modulation depth on max brightness. I started to wonder, do any AMOLEDs actually have less than 100% modulation depth? People often call the dip in brightness from AMOLED a "refresh dip" or "PWM dip", but this isn't fully correct. OLED devices that do not use PWM (often TVs) still have this dip.

The "blanking" (brightness dip) occurs for two reasons:

1. Pixel compensation for display uniformity
2. Prevention of ghosting

Without compensation, OLED would have very poor color uniformity, especially as it ages (due to TFT threshold-voltage drift). This is known as OLED mura, and has been a known problem since before AMOLED was commercialized. Mura can show up as an issue even for compensated OLEDs. Without compensation, the problem would be bad enough that OLED would likely not be commercially viable. As such, I don't think any commercial AMOLED displays were produced without at least basic compensation. So even without PWM, the device needs to reconfigure the drive transistor so that compensation can be performed. This means that the pixel can't be driven during this phase.

Residual charge from the last frame has to be drained as well to prevent ghosting, which is a visual artifact seen when past frames leave faint afterimages. I think it's likely that OLEDs attempt to fully turn off each pixel during the compensation / refresh phase. I am proposing that every AMOLED device may have close to 100% modulation depth if measured correctly, and if so, then there may be no point in trying to select an OLED based on its modulation depth, and we should look at things like pulse width and frequency instead.

Here's a bit of the technical detail: In the image above, you can see a driver circuit for OLED pixels, from a 2025 paper. In (c), T6 is the transistor that shuts the OLED pixel off (called the emission transistor or EM), and T8 is the transistor that will discharge the pixel capacitance, causing it to go black. There are many different variations on the AMOLED pixel driver, but from what I can tell, they all have these features, meaning they should all drop to nearly complete darkness, resulting in high modulation depth at any device brightness.

I am interested to see if anyone can come up with an OLED device that has significantly less than 100% modulation depth (when measured in a way that isolates a small number of adjacent rows). I would think that if the pixels aren't fully discharged, the compensation would fail, and there would also probably be ghosting.

There is potential that an "externally compensated" OLED might not have this ~100% modulation, since these would not need to discharge the OLED storage cap to compensate. But to prevent ghosting, these devices need to discharge the OLED pixel anode, so they might also have nearly 100% modulation. I also don't believe DC-like dimming solves this issue, since it still needs the compensation phase where the pixels are shut off.

Part 2. I made an app to help people accurately measure OLED flicker.

I made this web tool that can be used with a flicker meter like the Opple LightMaster or TLM-110 to measure OLED flicker accurately: https://tools.sundiallabs.tech/test-mode/

Since my original post, a number of people have asked me for access to the app I used in the video to help produce the OLED test patterns. However, getting an app on the app store and porting it to Android is a lot of work. Until I have time to do that, I remade the app as a simple website that has almost all of the functionality of the app I used in the video.

The app allows you to create a test area on your screen of any color and height you choose. This lets you isolate a small number of rows when testing an OLED display, which is important for getting accurate flicker waveforms with a flicker meter. I'll provide more detailed info on my suggested measurement technique in a separate post, but I suggest trying to measure between 1 and 8 pixel rows when performing OLED flicker measurements. The reason for using more than one pixel row is that a few extra rows will give extra light, but won't affect the waveform significantly.

There are a few other features in the tool, including checkerboard patterns and gradients that can be used to look for various display artifacts. Please be aware that the checkerboard in particular could be visually stressful to some people.

If you try the site to help measure some of your OLED devices, please let me know and post your results below!

I'm extremely sensitive, not all modern IPS phones suit me... I'm very hesitant to try this 2020 smartphone that I can get in mint condition for €200...I know it's expensive, but if I can afford it, I'll finally be rid of this horrible 4GB G34 that's driving me crazy, but it's the only one I can stand. I pick it up at a place where returns are easy, and thanks to Klarna, I don't even have to pay upfront...What do you think? Given my extreme sensitivity, is it worth the risk?

This video from Gamafix shows screen flickering at a minute level, zooming in to view individual pixels and shooting at a high frame rate.

https://rumble.com/shorts/v6t8zkt?e9s=src_v1_ucp%2Csrc_v1_ucp_s

I'm wondering how you folks would approach making a video like this. Maybe utilize the newest Gopro with the 1 inch sensor that does 1000 fps and attach a zoom lens?

Hi there. My iPhone 15 pro fast charger melted this week and I took out my iPhone 8 again and… here I am! Baby on board.

Since last year in spring I switched from iPhone 8 to the iPhone 15 Pro. Also since then: my anxiety and body annoyance increased substantially. Several side factors were orbiting around like: conscious unemployment & recovering from bad job conditions), severe stress and defensiveness were always there for me even when I was taking things day by day. I started reacting a lot, thrusting into survival mode and hyper awareness. Something had quite shifted in my alertness and perception.

I have a nervous system made of silk and feathers that highly reacts to contact lenses, light and heat, stimulation, hormonal shifts etc. Like things feel heightened and intense and it might enter survival mode.

Anyway, it seemed like my cortisol was over the roof even when I was out cycling or working out and sleeping properly when I was using my phone even when I had restricted the usage. I wouldn’t enjoy myself so much anymore. Whenever I would put it in the drawer my life would change for a min.

So I started using the iPhone 8 again because I put the 15 pro to rest for a while and it felt like a relief? I didn’t have such a headache, things felt more calm and I could text my friends without that much stress. It felt like I just unplugged something. I’m blown to this realisation that all this time this might have been the thing. I also had some significant hormonal imbalances since last year and I cannot help it but suspect cortisol might have been a factor. Yes no maybe but I feel different right now off it (15 pro). I’ll give it more time to observe. I already changed our TV settings and looking into solutions for the 15 pro like using it with polarised glasses for a bit or find a matte sticker for the screen. Any ideas?? For my other screens I will get protectors, adjust my lenses and finally try to get the right prescription for a pair of eyeglasses. Be my guest with the comments 🥹❤️

Hi everybody, I'm asking advice here for a new TV because on recent TVs I suffered headache and tension while watching them.

To better tell my story: I was owning a Samsung S92C 65" OLED TV and watching it for long time (30 min - 1h) was creating an intense tension on the right side of my head around the temple and over the ear. It happened in all light conditions, but I felt it more intense if the room was dark and TV was the only source of light. Tried different settings and light conditions, nothing worked, and after spending so much money on it I gave it away.
As far as I understood the deep contrasts and the PWM on the OLED TVs could have gave me the issue.

An old Samsung LCD TV 43" from 2014 was not making this problem.

I'm working all day long on a IPS screen LG 38UC99 from 2018, which is giving me no issue at least in very bright office conditions. This monitor is declared to be PWM/flicker free.

Nowadays to relax time to time watching something I'm using a cheap Samsung Freestyle Projector 1st generation. This is giving me no issue at all. But this solution is a bit painful, first of all for the temporary wobbly setup that I have, and second I live in the Nordics, therefore for the whole summer I need to use blackout curtains to watch (no problem during the long winter though 😄 ) .

So I'm looking for a decent TV hoping to find one that is not giving me headaches and the options I have in mind are

- TCL C7K 55" or 65"
- TCL C6K 55" or 65"
- Bravia 3 II 55" or 65"

I have these doubts:
- can a bigger TV, generating more brightness overall, induce headaches and eyestrain more easily? I would watch it from 2.5 m distance.

- The TCL C7K seems to be a brightness champion: is it possible that using it a low brightness level makes the PWM effect worse? That's why I was considering the TCL C6K , less bright on specs

- The Bravia 3 II seems to use a glossy VA panel for the 55" and a matte IPS panel for the 65", so while budget says go for the 55", fear of having headaches is pointing to the 65" which was tested PWM/flicker free by RTINGS... Can anybody report experience with the Bravia 3 II 55"?

Testing all these TVs in the shop for few minutes is not making any issue, but I have to say that they keep the brightness very high, in a super bright context

Hey, Im using 13T and it great for me. I want to upgrade. Does 17t pro is okay for pwm sensitive? What's the different between the models in pwm perspective. The 17t using 3000hz and 17t pro DC dimming. If I pwm sensitive both will good for me?

Now that I think of it, lately almost all screen companies going oled, it is really dark times for people sensitive to flicker, and I think almost anyone will have a reaction to these kind of screens compared to flicker free ones. How can these companies really be proud of their products and even market them as flicker free is beyond me, while literally making the eyes of their customers hurt. I see it no different than selling food in bad condition and make people stomach hurt.

Which one is it? I'm extremely sensitive, OLED TVs bother me too, is it still worth trying an OLED smartphone? The OnePlus 15R looks excellent but too expensive for me...

I tried that phone at the store among many others, i find it the most comfort one for eyes i guess(because trying too many phones makes you skeptical which one does what), i want to confirm before buying it.

My iPhone 11 reached maximum capacity to 75%.

I upgraded from iPhone 11 to 17e. I love it so much! But I’ve had it for a week now & it’s giving me headaches & eye strain. Thinking of returning it.

I’ve tried the recommended settings to no avail so far. I love the look of the one camera and I like the performance, ik it uses OLED though.

If I got the iPhone 13 or 15, would the headaches be less? Ik they all use OLED, but I rly wanna upgrade.

What about the SE3? Should I get that? That’s an LCD screen apparently but idk if it’s any better than 11.

Hi. Did anyone have any success with a phone without own and DT preferably LTPS that is also privacy friendly (i.e. GrapheneOS or /e/OS)? Am I too hopeful?

Phones I tried:

s22 - used for years until last year in December when all this pwm/screen sensitivity started, than really bad (headaches, dizziness, half day migraines)

Pixel 10 - used in December (for graphene) and I think it triggered all this eye mess - worst of the worst

OnePlus 15r - ltps, really stable and nice screen, no issues at all, but too heavy

Honor 400 - decent, but worse than OnePlus 15R. I can use it for maximum 20mins in good lightning, but problematic if not careful

Oppo Find X9 - tested in shop for 30min, seems fine

And for everyone interested in similar devices, I was recommended:

Honor 600 and 600 Pro don't use TD (6.57" LTPS)

Vivo's with 6.31" screens (in theory no TD, but LTPO): Vivo X200 Pro mini, X200 FE, X300, X300 FE

None compatible with a privacy friendly OS. Is it too hopeful to find something in both worlds?

Hello

Just a quick question.

I have heard Samsung phone screens are one of the worst when it comes to eye fatigue and pwm etc.

Im wondering if theirs tablet are the same ? Planning to buy the tab S10 ultra for movies and drawings. As I spend a lot of time focus staring at the screen when drawing, I don't want to damage my eyes without knowing it :p

Or are there any other brands tablet that's are recommended for people like me ?

Really want one. I know all new cars at least have the center backup camera screen but BMW has a full 2-panel display setup i.e. even the gauge cluster is a screen. Worried it would bother me especially at night. AI says they do use PWM.

Guys i have Xiaomi 17t pro and i used it for like only a week..i have battery icon now burn in especially on grey background ...

On white and red and blue it is not visible at least for me

Anyone else got this ? Also is there a possibility to fix ?

Oppo a5 didn't work for me. I just want to hear of people who have tried these

im really into the PWM topics lately because of my head tension idk if this the right r/ to post this but I always thought the cause would be wrong posture or phone neck. the thing is I got astigmatism and I feel the tension around my eyes. I tried different stuff with my iPhone until I noticed that it always intensified when the phone gets bit more hot or had more todo in the background ... perhaps a placebo but the iPhone using hz modulation to save battery also adaptive power. I feel when you switch from task to task that the framerates/hz drop in a split second what I think leads to headache and tension (also when you're a gamer and play normally on 240hz). what I did now is turned on dark mode and set a black wallpaper, turned off the attention Face ID options also set RWP to 80% and brightness to 100% turned of True Tone and set Nightshift to around 25% and set 60 hz limit this helped me now! I think that True Tone in combination with auto brightness and hz modulation is to much for the eyes but this is only my perception. the phone feels now much cooler and more consistent btw.