Other Eye-strain while using iPhone X and up

[NateRich]

I returned mine and went back to the 8+ after using mostly this thread to pinpoint my problem. I bought the phone last friday afternoon. From midday friday until monday morning when I returned it, I had a massive migraine and nausea like crazy (great weekend, eh?). Well I went back to the 8+ and could immediately tell the difference. I was gutted knowing I had to take it back but it just wasn't worth the pain. Really sucks because I absolutely loved everything about the phone. Oh well...here's to hoping OLED gets better the way LCD did.

 

[goshindoman]

goshindoman, Do you get your migraine controlled?

My family have migraine history from my mother side. I started to have migraine when I hit 30(I am now 40s). Everybody ‘s trigger might be different. Florescent lights never bother me and I don’t have aura. Unevenly sunlight and sudden air pressure drops give me headache. You can kind of manage sunlight, but how can you avoid air pressure change?

Western research finds out that blood vessel expands when migraine comes, so those pills shrink your blood vessel to get rid of the headache. It worked for me but I found the attack increased from twice a month to every other day after taking the pills. Doctor said I shouldn’t take that much migraine pills and recommend me to try some low dose anti-depressant pill. My wife is pharmacist and she doesn’t want me to take them. So I start to try some natural way to fight migraine.

With my Asian background, over the years, I find meditation is a good way to reduce the severity of headache. Just sit down, don’t hear, speak and watch anything, shutting off those 3 senses for 20 mins to calm down your body & mind. In Asian way of thinking, we don’t care about whether the headache is caused by 5-Hydroxytryptamine or expanding of blood vessel or something else. It just using calming down your mind to calming down your body, then to naturally change your body from whatever abnormal status back to normal status. I tried and it can greatly reduce your migraine headache to a minor headache, then goes away.


Another way that works great for me is doing sea wave movement on your spine from tail bone to neck bone. It looks like dolphin swimming. The key is doing it in a relax and effortless manner. Life is full of temptation, sometimes I spend all day reading “fake news” on screen/phone(which I shouldn’t especially I have migraine), it drains lots of your internal energy and I start to have little bit early symptom of migraine. I do spine wave movement 50 times and the symptom goes away. It might have something to do with loosening up the spine/nerve/nerve connected to my brain.


My migraine is not completely cured yet, but I can have a good control of it and doesn’t bother me much anymore. In my 10+ years of experience, I don’t think there is a magic pill to cure migraine. The best way is working hard trying to find a natural way(no side effect) to prevent and minimize it.

No regardless of what I did or the medication I took I never managed to control my migraines. Only age has reduced them in frequency and severity thank God!
I only started to eat cheese and some milk chocolate in the past few years. As a teen and young man such foods would have given me an awful migraine. I cannot drink any alcohol nor take drinks that contain caffeine.
Even today the smell of wine , scented candles and entering a perfume shop makes me feel uncle dick and causes a migraine.

Oddly enough stress never caused my migraine, I got them when I relaxed at the week ends! Not uncommon.

Strobe lights so could never go to a disco. As I wrote above Migraine greatly affected my quality of life for far too many years. I truly don't think the medical profession take this illness seriously enough. I saw one specialist for many months then one day he had his first ever migraine, he was out and about when the attack came and he had to stop the car, use a public phone box to call his wife to come and collect him and while in the phone box he vomited. He was honest enough to admit to me he had no idea just how debilitating a migraine was until he had just that one.

I agree with you that no device is worth suffering a health issue especially when their is a plethora of alternatives.
the X is a great mobile but if it affects ones health do a Diane Warwick and 'Walk on by'....

Very pleased to learn you are managing to control your migraines, well done.

Ryland

 

[thinkcatgame]

Left eye pain, me too. Well by the eyebrow but same thing. Also I noticed as well that when scrolling the text was blurry and never felt that way on the 7+

Is there anyway to test the phone is the cause? My friend suggested I go the day without using the phone. We both laughed a second later. :/

The reason is that, for OLED, when the text is scrolling, the pixel need to be switched off and on completely and this process takes much longer time than the other elements on the screen, and that's the reason you feel blurry. To be honest, OLED really sucks, but for the benefits, no company will tell their customers the bad aspects. Maybe this is life and we have to accept it.
[doublepost=1510893123][/doublepost]the voltage alternating in different patterns, and this also have different effects.

That's weird, I wonder why the flicker doesn't bother you at that level. If anything, that's good news, since it means there ARE pwm displays that don't cause headaches like the X does for us.

Anyway, how are you PWM-sensitive people doing with the X now that a couple more days have passed? I've been trying to get used to the screen, and I think it's getting better. Still getting eye strain, but I'm hoping my eyes will fully adjust before the return window is up. If not, I guess I'll just grab an 8 and give up until next year's model.

[doublepost=1510894089][/doublepost]

I think one possible future solution on the horizon is micro-LED. I don't know too much about this technology, but it seems to have the benefits of OLED without the drawbacks like short lifespan of the blue emissive element.

I think PWM is needed with OLED to avoid burn in and premature burnout of the blue elements. However as reported at least one of the LG phones doesn't use PWM with OLED.

Perhaps micro-LED will not require PWM and behave more like traditional LCDs.

I have no idea when these panels will become available though. Apparently they have not been produced at scale yet and the rumors I've read suggest the first apple product with micro LED may be the Apple Watch given the smaller display.

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/07/apple-watch-track-micro-led-2018/

Long time ago, I owned a Lumia 800 from Nokia which uses OLED screen. But this phone did not use PWM at all, and it has not any flicker. The recent Microsoft Lumia 950 also uses OLED, with PWM, but with a much higher frequency of 500Hz, the iPhone X is 240Hz.

 

[jazebov]

The same problem is with me. I had to sell iPhone x, I'm very sad, because this is a very good phone.

I will have to look at purchasing iPhone 8

 

[BloomTV]

I'm curious... What carriers are all you iPhone X sufferers on? I'd like to figure out if there's a correlation with either the Intel (AT&T/T-Mobile) or Qualcomm (Verizon/Sprint) version of the phone, or if the reaction happens equally across both.

 

[techno-Zen]

I'm curious... What carriers are all you iPhone X sufferers on? I'd like to figure out if there's a correlation with either the Intel (AT&T/T-Mobile) or Qualcomm (Verizon/Sprint) version of the phone, or if the reaction happens equally across both.

t-mobile here

 

[IowaLynn]

After reading this thread I decided to try something on my Samsung S8+ Changed display from native resolution WQHD to HD+ from 2960 x 1440 to 1480 x 720.

Text is easier on eyes to read. I have enough eyestrain and stress with my eyes. Recently had caterac surgery, need reading glasses, and prism adjustment.

The S8+ let's me adjust display resolution but it sounds like the iPhone X and iOS 11 - nada.
Size and weight are almost perfect for me so now im going to wait until 2018 and look at non-OLED.

 

[dialyb]

Have you used cell phones with oled screen before? If not, your eye strain may be due to oled screens and their refresh rate amongst other things. Alot of people have headaches fro oled screens. Google and youll find alot of posts about it.

 

[radiologyman]

I had an LG OLED Tv for 2 years already and I love it. Does it mean that iPhone X not likely to cause me an eye strain?

 

[Gollygeewillikers]

Hello all,

I thought I'd post here about an issue I've been having and see if anyone else is experiencing the same thing.

When I'm using the phone, my eyes feel strained, like they're trying to focus on the phone. And I've noticed that when I look away from my phone and at something else my eyes feel a little blurry and I have to blink.

Not sure why this is happening. I've tweaked with all the various displays settings (TrueTone/Night Shift/ White balance), nothing seems to make a real difference. Not using a screen protector.

Anyone else?

Just got my iPhone X today and noticed the same thing. Scrolling on the OLED is weird with text in particular, and the screen colors seem to "twinkle" slowly with True Tone turned on (similar behavior to the Samsung Galaxy auto setting). Turning off True Tone helped a little with screen flicker and scrolling. At least that's my impression. You can warm up the screen manually with Night Shift. Just schedule it from 5:00am to 4:59am so it's always on, and make it Less Warm.

But a bigger issue... I think the Face ID technology is doing something worse that's causing physical pain to my eyes. I can feel sharp micro pains (if that makes sense) around the backs of my eyeballs. Like when a migraine is starting. When I turned off all of the Face ID toggles, except for iPhone Unlock, it mostly went away. Is this infrared? What other technology are they using for face mapping and true depth and Attention Aware?

 

[hipsheik]

It didn't take long looking at my coworker's iPhone X to start feeling nauseated.

I'm curious if people having problems with the X, also have issues with Macbooks?

I have not been able to comfortably use a Macbook since apple switched LED displays.

 

[kalphr]

I had an LG OLED Tv for 2 years already and I love it. Does it mean that iPhone X not likely to cause me an eye strain?

The X uses Samsung's AMOLED screen, which uses PWM. LG OLED TVs do not use PWM. To answer your question, we would need to know if you are sensitive to devices that use PWM to dim the screen.

Apple has not used PWM in its devices for a few years now (until now). After https://discussions.apple.com/message/32409382?start=0&tstart=0 happened, they removed it or moved to very high frequency PWM on their devices around the time of 3rd gen MacBook Pro.

 

[badger1212]

I sent my X back and haven’t had any headaches now I’m back with my 6s plus. In the meantime I tried a Note 8 and didn’t have any eye strain issues. Nice phone, but that’s going back too as I’m too attached to iOS. May stick with the 6s plus for a bit longer or upgrade to the 8 plus. I’m gutted at sending back the X as I loved it but had no choice if it’s giving me eye pain, headaches and on first use, a migraine. I do prefer the extra width when typing and reading on the Plus phones too. On the Mac issue, I’ve used a 2016 MBP for a year now with no issues. So far for me it’s been confined to use of the X.

 

[Digitalbath]

I have headaches using this. Disappointing too. Never had an issue with it. Heavy usage on all my iPhones however this one gives me dry eyes and serious headaches

 

[haruhiko]

After reading this thread I decided to try something on my Samsung S8+ Changed display from native resolution WQHD to HD+ from 2960 x 1440 to 1480 x 720.

Text is easier on eyes to read. I have enough eyestrain and stress with my eyes. Recently had caterac surgery, need reading glasses, and prism adjustment.

The S8+ let's me adjust display resolution but it sounds like the iPhone X and iOS 11 - nada.
Size and weight are almost perfect for me so now im going to wait until 2018 and look at non-OLED.

You can increase the text size on the iPhone.

 

[Curtis Busse]

It’s them there LAZERS..

Im serious always reading your face
[doublepost=1511066633][/doublepost]Not true when theres many posting and Apple has released a statement

I think this has less to do with the phone and more to do with your eyes. See a doctor

[doublepost=1511066713][/doublepost]

Not quite yet. I feel like I'm squinting especially when trying to read e-mails etc. I mean it is nice and clear just really small. But after watching about 5 minutes or so of video is when my head starts to hurt.

Because of the OLED & refresh rate

 

[mib1800]

Im serious always reading your face
[doublepost=1511066633][/doublepost]Not true when theres many posting and Apple has released a statement

[doublepost=1511066713][/doublepost]
Because of the OLED & refresh rate

Seems like so many generations of galaxy using Oled have come and gone and didn't hear there were such issue until ipx came out.

 

[kblbn86]

This guy mentions the migrane issue @8:00

 

[Curtis Busse]

Nilay Patel of The Verge posted these pictures of the IR scan from the X
That's got to have some effect surely? Look at it all over the eyes !

What if you turned off the lock screen
VRG_171103_2099_A_0001.jpg

W

 

[tomd25]

I’ve noticed that I can pick up on a slight flicker from my X, especially when it’s dark/the brightness is low. It’s especially noticable when moving my eyes over the phone screen (eg looking round then back at the phone), or if the phone is moving (eg on a bumpy bus or if you wave it around), but I can also detect it by waving a finger in front of the screen - it looks ever so slightly “juddery”, which doesn’t seem to be the case on my 6s/iPad Pro. I notice this on other people’s OLED phones too, and I can also pick up on the ghosting making scrolling text harder to read than previous generations.

I think my eyes are quite sensitive to this high frequency PWM type flicker as I notice it with various poorer quality interior LED lights (especially those “fake filament light bulb” ones) and with the projectors which rapidly alternate R/G/B (at least that is how it looks to me), whereas other people have no idea what I am talking about if I mention these phonemena (luckily my partner sees them too so I’m not too worried I am going mad )

Currently trying to work out whether this is something I just need to get used to on the x or if I’ll have to return it based on it. I don’t get headaches from it (but I generally don’t get headaches much) but it definitely leaves my eyes with a slightly strange feeling and somehow I find the display slightly unpleasant to look at. I’ve only been using it for a couple of days and I’ve been pretty tired from a full on week so I am going to give it a week and decide whether to return after catching up on some rest and using it more.

Will be a real shame if I do decide to return it as it’s a great phone in every other regard. In all honesty I struggle to see the big difference between OLED and IPS quality though, so for me right now, it seems like the switch wasnt worth it.

Seems that it’s one of those things that some people are sensitive to, and others have no idea what we are on about!

 

[iJustiney]

I have never used face id on my iphone x and no headaches. Maybe the lazers could be the problem for you and not the screen?

 

[Fitcherama]

Hello all,

I thought I'd post here about an issue I've been having and see if anyone else is experiencing the same thing.

When I'm using the phone, my eyes feel strained, like they're trying to focus on the phone. And I've noticed that when I look away from my phone and at something else my eyes feel a little blurry and I have to blink.

Not sure why this is happening. I've tweaked with all the various displays settings (TrueTone/Night Shift/ White balance), nothing seems to make a real difference. Not using a screen protector.

Anyone else?

Hate to admit it (because I love the phone) but having exactly the same symptoms. Never had a problem with a phone display before. I’ve been complaining to my wife about having ‘scratchy’ eyes this last week. Wasn’t until I found this thread that I put two and two together. Raising brightness of screen and disabling True Tone helps me a bit but I have to take breaks from the screen. Not ideal.

 

[benjamiah]

I returned mine becuase of screen eye issue
Try hold a 7 then an x up to your nose, your can feel the heat and energy coming off the x - now imagine getting that energy into your eyes from a greater distance but for hours on end
Happy i went back to the 7
My eyes relaxed
The 7 appears sharper to me- x is like plasma tv

 

[tcellguy]

I returned mine becuase of screen eye issue
Try hold a 7 then an x up to your nose, your can feel the heat and energy coming off the x - now imagine getting that energy into your eyes from a greater distance but for hours on end
Happy i went back to the 7
My eyes relaxed
The 7 appears sharper to me- x is like plasma tv

I feel the same. Despite the higher resolution of the X the something about the screen makes it harder to focus on vs. LCD displays.

I just wish they could bump the PWM frequency up to like 1 kHz. I bet none of us would have problems at that rate.

 

[rjruiz2]

Does your iPhone X stutter a bit after watching a few minutes of 4k/8k video on youtube?