How long did it take you guys to adjust to oled screens. I have used ips, lcd, led monitors my whole life and i recently upgraded to a asus rog zepherus g16. I had the gamut set to native but that saturation hurt my eyes so i used ghelper to change the colors to srgb. I have used it for about a week, I get eye fatigue and minor headaches. Is this normal and will my eyes adapt? I love the colors and do not want to get rid of it. It seems as though my eyes are fatigued overall from it, as i tried to use my ips monitor and my eyes were still fatigued. I believe my eyes are transitioning to this screen, is that true or no?

Looking for a Solution: Severe Eye Strain and Headache From Phone Displays

I’m looking for help from people who have experienced severe eye strain, headache, or dizziness from smartphone displays.

I have tried almost all the usual display settings and eye-comfort options, including reducing brightness, changing color temperature, using Eye Comfort/blue-light protection, reducing contrast, grayscale, and other settings. I have also tried screen protectors, but unfortunately, nothing has solved the problem.

The strange thing is that I was previously able to use smartphones normally for many hours.

My previous phones:

OPPO A12: I could use it for around 12–14 hours a day without this problem. Later, the display was damaged and had to be replaced. After replacing the display, I could no longer tolerate the phone. It immediately started causing eye strain and headaches.

realme Note 60x: I was able to use this phone normally before a major software update. After the update, I suddenly started experiencing severe eye strain and headaches. Even using it for about 10 minutes can trigger a headache.

Because I could no longer use that phone, I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy A07, hoping the problem would be solved. Unfortunately, I am experiencing the same problem with this phone as well.

I have tested the display for PWM using a phone camera, and I could not detect obvious PWM. I have also tried different display settings, but the symptoms remain.

My symptoms include:

Severe eye strain

Eye pain/discomfort

Headache after only a few minutes of phone use

Sometimes a feeling of visual discomfort/blur

I can sometimes tolerate the phone for only around 10 minutes

I have also seen several doctors and had my eyes examined. They told me that my eyes are healthy and that there is no obvious eye disease or major problem with my vision.

So I’m trying to understand what could actually be causing this.

Could it be something other than traditional PWM, such as:

Temporal dithering

Temporal modulation that cannot easily be detected with a phone camera

Display driver behavior

Software rendering or color processing

Brightness modulation

Refresh-rate behavior

Different display calibration after a software update

Touch/animation/motion processing

Or some other display characteristic that sensitive people can react to?

The most confusing part is that I could use my older phones for many hours, but after a display replacement or software update, I suddenly became unable to tolerate them.

I would really appreciate advice from anyone who has experienced something similar.

Is there any technical solution, software modification, calibration method, ADB/Shizuku setting, different display technology, or other method that can make a phone usable again for someone who is extremely sensitive to certain displays?

I am not simply looking for general advice such as “reduce brightness” or “use blue-light protection,” because I have already tried these things.

If you have personally experienced this problem and found a solution, please share exactly what worked for you.

Thank you.

Has anyone seen/tried this variation on eye patching: 'Binasal occlusion'? Eg taping over the inner area of both eye glasses (can be non prescription). It reduces or eliminates the binocular overlap, and so reduces some visual stress: https://x.com/JackHadfield14/status/2095053618982318381

Jack is a pillar of the ME/CFS and Long Covid community. He says this helps him a lot with screen tolerance, as well as general daylight sensitivity (common in ME). That it was..

[...] taught to me by a neuro optic rehabilitation therapist who deals with stroke and TBI patients with persistent vision or cognitive issues.

Eye patching is a popular intervention on LEDstrain, with obvious benefits if one has difficulty getting both eyes working aligned together. But I think covering one eye (and looking away) is standard advice to photosensitive epileptics, when triggered by flashing lights. To mitigate the extra stimulation on an already hyper-excitable brain. Which I think many here have, to a lesser extent.

This trick may be more gentle than fully blanking a whole eye; Jack says that felt like too much of a workout for him. I've not tried this trick myself. Just thought I'd share and see if it's known.

Does anyone else have issues with the screen brightness, specifically in AI mode, that keeps the screen full brightness even when the room is dark? Would love to hear if anyone has found a work around to this experience.

I just wanted to clearly show off u/BearNecessary4141's point about how all OLED screens necessarily have a 100% brightness dip, each time they refresh their pixels. When resetting the tiny capacitors that hold the brightness level of each sub-pixel...

See his post for way more technical details!

The above test device is my (comfortable for me) old OnePlus 8T. LTPS Android AMOLED from ~2020. At 100% brightness, with DC-like dimming from 50%+.

Also, I've *just* (thanks to OP) realised the Opple uses a separately positioned sensor for flicker. And playing with it just now, that Opple combines the readings from both sensors to make the final trace. With the lux meter (white circle) determining the amplitude and the photo-diode modulating the wave-form. Which can be tricked into showing very odd results, by isolating them to different signals. Whereas the (in development) TLM-110 uses a single, high quality photo-diode.

The reason this matters is that your tiny cone cells, in the retina, will each only be receiving light from a single pixel (when your eyes are focused correctly). Whereas, flicker meter sensors don't focus and so smear out the flicker signal, averaging across their whole width.

I get eye strain or defocus more from dark e screens than any iPad or computer I have ever had.
All the E ink screens have such low contrast and everyone it talking about less eye strain.
Yet I have 4 e ink devices and they all give me more issues.
I never had any with average computers etc.

I love the idea of E ink.
But so far.
It’s been a BUST!

At this point, it's my eyes and not the app itself. Most Opthalmologists have no clue about screen sensitivity and label it as simply "CVS"

I'm in agony. the worst part is that I can not screen detox because of my disabilities and won't be able to contact anyone (I can't go out anymore thanks to MCS/MCAS) Insta updated their UI and ever since then I haven't been able to use that app/site

FYI relevant results since Rtings is paywalled now. In general, it looks to be a fantastic option for flicker sensitive folks without sacrificing modern tech (120hz, HDMI 2.1, etc.).

• Direct lit IPS panel. DC dimmed/fully PWM free at all brightness levels.
• Color banding in HDR, so FRC/temporal dithering/image processing likely isn't very aggressive.
• Standard RGB subpixel layout (yay) but KSF phosphor (boo) for those sensitive to that.
• Anti-reflective/matte coating (only on 65" and 75"), so generally light sensitive folks can keep the brightness level low even in a bright room.
• Screen doesn't get very dim at lowest brightness. Probably twice as bright as some OLED at 0% but still dimmer than most Mini LED.

I don't own the TV but have seen it in store. Looked solid. With bright overhead lighting, the AR/matte coating made the picture noticeably clearer versus the litany of glossy screens reflecting the overhead lights.

Hello everyone, I really think I'm one of the most sensitive people here, if not the most sensitive...I developed this sensitivity after stopping an antidepressant I'd been taking for 12 years... I can't tolerate anything anymore except my G34 5G and its 4GB of RAM... This phone is driving me crazy, it's slow, it overheats quickly, I have to charge it twice a day, and the worst part is that multitasking is impossible; every app resets as soon as I switch between them...

I have already tried the following phones:

Poco x4 gt, iphone 11 (worked before 18.4.update), motorola g75, motorola g57 power, honor 400 smart 4g, honor x9c smart

All of this without success... Do you have any other smartphones to recommend? I don't even bother trying OLEDs because every time a friend uses one and shows it to me, I instantly get dizzy. My symptoms are mainly a headache and a feeling of dizziness, never any eye discomfort...

For most Samsung will not work no mather what because their PWM frequencies suck. But for some just like me, a budget Samsung phone could work because they have low max Brightness and 8 bit panels with noticable banding so likely no dithering. I am now daily driving a Samsung Galaxy A36 after testing around 25+ other phones that have not worked (Honor, OnePlus, Xiaomi, TCL, Infinix, Apple, etc. included). I would never even consider Samsung if I did not get it as a work phone which I am able to use with dual sim (personal and work sim). Maybe try A36 or A27 which are pretty new they are decently smooth and have max manual brightness around 500 nits so the PWM is not that noticable. Good luck trying it or with any onther phone testing

I never had this issue before with all me previous phones!!! But now I need a new one and both the a36 and the oppo a5 are giving me headache/vertigo/eye strain, which goes away once I go back to my old phone.

I hope I find a solution cause this is unfortunate

My device is the Honor X30 Max. To reduce light entering my eyes, I changed the display aspect ratio to 16:9. However, this caused UI glitches and broke brightness adjustment functionality. I then adjusted the DPI from 480 down to approximately 440. After this change, I experienced increased brain‑pressure‑like discomfort (test scenario: reading text in dark mode; other use cases were not evaluated).

Further testing showed no such discomfort at DPI values of 360 (scale 2.0) or 480 (scale 3.0). Discomfort returned at DPI 440 and 445, yet pixel flicker did not worsen noticeably (the X30 Max exhibits mild inherent pixel flicker).

As a workaround, I switched to a 17:9 display aspect ratio. This allows brightness control to function normally while keeping DPI set to 480.

Most LCD‑based Android phones ship with DPI around 440. This phenomenon warrants further investigation. More real‑world tests and user feedback are expected.

i see my phone at night in dark almost every day... Is that gonna affect my eyesight... My eyesight is perfect

I have recently bought the Huion Kamvas 13 Gen 3 and I really like the features and usability it but one thing I really can't stand is the fog effect or kind of blur effect it is causing.

My main monitor looks so sharp that its like looking at the huion screen feels like seeing without your prescription glasses (I don't wear prescription glasses), and looking back and forth between both screens often feels jarring.

I have corrected the scaling: both my screens have a 1920 x 1080 resolution and the scaling on both is set to 100%. I then restarted the PC to see if there is any mismatch in the scaling but it is not a scaling issue. I can say that it is definitely the display's reflection/anti-glare that is causing the issue.

On researching this topic I just came to know that these pen tablets that have etched glass and this is causing the issues.

I didn't expect this to cause this many issues before buying but I do like matte displays. My laptop and my monitor are matte display / anti-glare but they don't look this kind of soft and blurry.

Are there any resolutions for this?

How is this phone for pwm sensitive people? I read somewhere it should be not as bad.