Hi all, long time site user, first time posting.
Received my iPhone 12 mini on launch day. Been using a 6s since 2016, so the mini was exactly what I was looking for to upgrade. Love the phone, especially the size, weight, etc, so was delighted initially.
Going to sleep Saturday night, I couldn't understand why my eyes hurt so much. Further digging into this on Sunday/Monday lead me to this discussion, and I've been following closely since. As I've come from a 6s, I've never owned an OLED screen before. I'm pretty certain my issue is from PWM (which I had never heard of before this).
I like to have my brightness pretty low, so going by what I've read, the flickering was at its strongest point initially. I never experienced headaches or dizziness as some on here have, but just a really uncomfortable, dull pain in my eyes. I adjusted my settings as suggested in this topic, and it has definitely improved, but my eyes are still not right and I'm not sure if its because they still hurt from getting aggravated so much initially (a totally new sensation, I've never had eye trouble, thankfully), or because the PWM is still aggravating my eyes every time I use the phone, even with the best settings to curb it somewhat.
I'm resigned to having to return the phone, which I'm gutted about. But I'm not messing around with my eye health. Interested to see what anyone else does who was gonna give it a week or so. Bottom line for me is, the flickering is always there, so can't be good long term to try to 'adapt' to it. I took a slow-mo video on my 6s of a white browser screen on the mini, and the flickering is pretty crazy. Seeing as its a widely known issue with OLED, its disappointing that the new line up has no LCD options.