Other Eye-strain while using iPhone X and up

[ctjack]

Hi ctjack,
With that treatment were you able to solve the problem? I mean, you couldn't use iPhones with OLED screens before, and now they don't give you issues anymore?
What was your main symptom? Eye strain or migraine?
Thank you

Hi, treatment works a little bit different.

So people have eye ball shape and if it is perfect, then the vision is perfect due to light refractions inside of it.

If the eye ball is out of shape then the focus point shifts giving vision acuity issues.

Now with computers/phones, those eyeballs are squeezed/relaxed by muscles around the eye to correct the focus. In normal habitat, person doesn't have screens (invention of the past 30 years) so naturally eye muscles would be squeezing and unsqueezing the eyeball multiple times a day.

With the introduction of screens, one can sit still for hours reading the text and eyeball is left squished by muscles. One time or hundred time that is fine, but over the year or years, that muscle gets stuck in that squeezed form focused on your most used distance (think of camera with stuck focus ring). Those drops help to relax those muscles so one can work as intended.

I think it is called "fake myopia" when muscles are strained but uncured in the childhood leads to permanent one with the use of glasses.

I don't have PWM issues per se, but iphone/macbook makes my eyes strained and thus i can't read the small text from a distance. With the drops, eyes feel relieved and i start seeing small text again. But I don't use my phone more than 30 mins a day for this reason and I didn't know any better before buying 2 macbooks.

My next laptop will be matte ips screen from Windows.

 

[PwmMen]

I've been using the iPhone 16 Plus for over 3 weeks now,
and still haven't had any problems. Simply fantastic, I can hardly believe it.
What a difference to the iPhone SE 2022, I finally arrived in the future.

 

[500kilohertz]

Are there different display types for the 16 Plus? Notebookcheck wrote somything about a very low modulation and also several users here can use the device without a problem.
For me it's still not usable. The screenshots and the picture of the screen are in low light. But even with higher brightness the modulation is pretty bad.

 

[Uncohtwo]

Are there different display types for the 16 Plus? Notebookcheck wrote somything about a very low modulation and also several users here can use the device without a problem.
For me it's still not usable. The screenshots and the picture of the screen are in low light. But even with higher brightness the modulation is pretty bad.


View attachment 2463639View attachment 2463641View attachment 2463640

I’m in the same boat. I returned the 16 pro because it wasn’t perfect (and didn’t feel like a MAJOR improvement that justified the expense), and I’ve been using the 16 plus over the past 10 days. Unfortunately, it’s still causing me problems. I put a blue light screen protector on, which knocked the discomfort down from a 3 to a 2, but I still feel eye strain if I use it for extended periods (5-10 minutes?) of time.

Not sure where I’ll go from here. Perhaps back to the tolerable 14…

 

[MICHAELSD]

iPhone 16 Pro in hand.

 

[Uncohtwo]

iPhone 16 Pro in hand.

How’s it going?

 

[2mw2]

iPhone 16 Pro in hand.

Are you turning off auto brightness, cranking the brightness up and setting the reduced white point ? I found that these were not enough and I had to put a privacy screen on for the iphone 16. it's not great but will need to spend more time on it, but at the same time, i am trying to reduce my screen time.

 

[The.Glorious.Son]

Last night I set up my sister-in-law’s new iPhone 16. It actually took a good while due to some hiccups and needing to swap e-sims. It didn’t bother me at all during that hour or so. Still, I’m holding out to see what the 17 offers. But that was promising.

 

[pwm away]

iPhone 16 Plus picked up

 

[MICHAELSD]

I’m not going to wax poetic about iPhone 16 Pro because I’m not sure I have the passion for it anymore: it’s a gradual progression as expected. Slightly more tolerable generation-after-generation. Still not a super comfortable display to even stare at in my opinion, and it is capable of inducing migraines and headaches.

Quite a bit better than iPhone X, still not usable/practical for daily use, and the fact that it continues to cause PWM sensitivity doesn’t bother me as much as it used to: I can return this without the sentimental feelings and longing for a PWM-free iPhone.

In fact, I have iPhone 16 Pro in the next room yet I’m still typing this on my iPhone SE third-generation which is perfectly suitable for now.

 

[MICHAELSD]

How’s it going?

There was some optimism in the beginning, as usual, but it’s really not all that dramatically improved. See above for more detailed thoughts.

 

[MICHAELSD]

Are you turning off auto brightness, cranking the brightness up and setting the reduced white point ? I found that these were not enough and I had to put a privacy screen on for the iphone 16. it's not great but will need to spend more time on it, but at the same time, i am trying to reduce my screen time.

I’ve tried that, and while it does make the display look better, it doesn’t seem to improve the PWM situation. Auto-brightness is the preferred setting, as there’s been less and less reason to use Reduce White Point for this purpose as it doesn’t seem to really reduce modulations.

I still believe the display looks better, clearer, purer the lower the modulations are. Reading text on iPhone 16 Pro is especially still uncomfortable.

 

[2mw2]

Thanks for the feedback. FYI I sat down to watch a bit of YouTube on my SE yesterday night in a hotel room and I noticed immediately my eyes were losing focus. I checked the settings and found that True Tone was on. Not sure how it got turned on but i turned it off and things were much better. Not sure if it was a combination of the hotel led lights as well but it was weird.

 

[super chimp]

Hi, treatment works a little bit different.

So people have eye ball shape and if it is perfect, then the vision is perfect due to light refractions inside of it.

If the eye ball is out of shape then the focus point shifts giving vision acuity issues.

Now with computers/phones, those eyeballs are squeezed/relaxed by muscles around the eye to correct the focus. In normal habitat, person doesn't have screens (invention of the past 30 years) so naturally eye muscles would be squeezing and unsqueezing the eyeball multiple times a day.

With the introduction of screens, one can sit still for hours reading the text and eyeball is left squished by muscles. One time or hundred time that is fine, but over the year or years, that muscle gets stuck in that squeezed form focused on your most used distance (think of camera with stuck focus ring). Those drops help to relax those muscles so one can work as intended.

I think it is called "fake myopia" when muscles are strained but uncured in the childhood leads to permanent one with the use of glasses.

I don't have PWM issues per se, but iphone/macbook makes my eyes strained and thus i can't read the small text from a distance. With the drops, eyes feel relieved and i start seeing small text again. But I don't use my phone more than 30 mins a day for this reason and I didn't know any better before buying 2 macbooks.

My next laptop will be matte ips screen from Windows.

That’s not dissimilar to the eye issues I have that mine is not so much PWM related but other issues with my eyes. I’ve found that looking my 13 Pro to 60MHz has enabled me to use it mostly ok this past three years or more.

I wonder if people do better with the 16 rather than Pro models because it’s not an LTPO screen?

I think if I was to get a 16 model I would get a 16 rather than Pro as I just cannot use variable rate screens so might as well save myself money.

 

[ctjack]

That’s not dissimilar to the eye issues I have that mine is not so much PWM related but other issues with my eyes. I’ve found that looking my 13 Pro to 60MHz has enabled me to use it mostly ok this past three years or more.

I wonder if people do better with the 16 rather than Pro models because it’s not an LTPO screen?

I think if I was to get a 16 model I would get a 16 rather than Pro as I just cannot use variable rate screens so might as well save myself money.

I can’t quite pulpate the issue, but i think i am doing better at less fancy screens. Like m1 air giving me eye strain because of too sharp retina display. I think apple foregoes the eye health in lieu of better color reproduction, better hz, better contrast but cut on health safety.

Like run of the mill windows laptop screens work better for me. I guess it is a money issue: apple can’t give a healthy screen with colors reproduction and increased hz while not cutting corners. Windows counterparts are not expected to give us better hz and colors, thus can produce healthier displays.

I mean in real world nothing is tack sharp as 5k or retina displays of apple. Something in real life is only sharp if i am looking closely at it or shift my focus point, meaning if i don’t focus on object they are not contrast sharp due to lighting conditions and depth of field. Apple displays have too much contrast - i can get the same only on a very sunny day on top of the mountain without haze. You recall some internet pictures that are so oversharpened that almost hurt eyes?

 

[super chimp]

I can’t quite pulpate the issue, but i think i am doing better at less fancy screens. Like m1 air giving me eye strain because of too sharp retina display. I think apple foregoes the eye health in lieu of better color reproduction, better hz, better contrast but cut on health safety.

Like run of the mill windows laptop screens work better for me. I guess it is a money issue: apple can’t give a healthy screen with colors reproduction and increased hz while not cutting corners. Windows counterparts are not expected to give us better hz and colors, thus can produce healthier displays.

I mean in real world nothing is tack sharp as 5k or retina displays of apple. Something in real life is only sharp if i am looking closely at it or shift my focus point, meaning if i don’t focus on object they are not contrast sharp due to lighting conditions and depth of field. Apple displays have too much contrast - i can get the same only on a very sunny day on top of the mountain without haze. You recall some internet pictures that are so oversharpened that almost hurt eyes?

I am amazed that at least the iPad Mini on its last refresh kept its LCD screen. It feels like other manufacturers namely the Chinese ones seem to have more interest in eye health when it comes to the screens on their devices.

 

[MICHAELSD]

I ‘accidentally’ disabled the Auto-Brightness and left the brightness at 50%, and I’m finding iPhone 16 Pro more tolerable. Certainly better than the previous generation Pro iPhone.

I’m still not sure how practical these workarounds are and it’s not perfect. I’d like an OLED iPhone that I can comfortably focus on like an LCD display. The text is still a little swimmy and my eyes don’t necessarily prefer staring at the display. I also noticed mild migraines the other night after using it normally.

 

[pwm away]

iPhone 16 Plus returned.

In summary, it was the best Apple OLED screen I've used so far, but it still wasn't good enough to keep using the phone.

Good enough: The screen gave me discomfort fairly quickly. Some eye pressure, some general feeling of discomfort, and reading the text didn't feel as good as on the SE 2022. It didn't give me significantly worse symptoms over the time used; however, I also didn't force myself to use it for longer periods at a time, because of the discomfort that it produces fairly quickly.
For a phone that costs a converted USD $1k, that's not good enough.

On a different note, I don't think the screen quality is that great. I don't like the yellow tone it seems to constantly have; I don't like the feeling of bright light in your face that it makes you feel. I'm just surprised people actually think these OLED screens are great 🤷‍♂️

 

[MICHAELSD]

iPhone 16 Plus returned.

In summary, it was the best Apple OLED screen I've used so far, but it still wasn't good enough to keep using the phone.

Good enough: The screen gave me discomfort fairly quickly. Some eye pressure, some general feeling of discomfort, and reading the text didn't feel as good as on the SE 2020. It didn't give me significantly worse symptoms over the time used; however, I also didn't force myself to use it for longer periods at a time, because of the discomfort that it produces fairly quickly.
For a phone that costs a converted USD $1k, that's not good enough.

On a different note, I don't think the screen quality is that great. I don't like the yellow tone it seems to constantly have; I don't like the feeling of bright light in your face that it makes you feel. I'm just surprised people actually think these OLED screens are great 🤷‍♂️

I’m starting to experience a similar consensus with iPhone 16 Pro, which I still have but didn’t use as much as I should have during the return window.

It’s better than any past OLED iPhone, similar to iPhone 15 Plus in this regard, while still causing discomfort. In retrospect not having constant throbbing behind my eyes is a massive improvement, but it’s not free of migraines after use or even headaches during use either. The flickering still prevents itself in odd ways that make the display not nearly as pleasant as it could be, and I’m not wowed by OLED as I used to be either. Overall, I’m growing increasingly irritated by the limitations of the display technology.

 

[MICHAELSD]

There’s probably a good reason I don’t spend more time with these newer iPhones: they do get worse over time, and begin to mirror all of my previous experiences.

 

[MICHAELSD]

I go back and forth on thinking this iPhone 16 Pro is getting to be just barely usable. It’s not as debilitating or intense as past OLED headaches.

According to Notebookcheck, all iPhone 16 models with the exception of iPhone 16 Pro Max are consistent enough “even for sensitive users.” Their data is getting slightly unreliable, but iPhone 16 Plus should have the lowest amplitude. In fact, I tried iPhone 16 Pro because of how flat the PWM measurements were in addition to it having the best measured color accuracy.

iPhone 17. Let’s get flicker-free/ultra-low modulations.

In other news, I got a DJI Pocket 3 and I can immediately tell that the OLED display on that is more comfortable. OLED doesn’t have to be this flickering nightmare.

Apple Watch solved this when it was released—I’m not sure how many times I have to say that.

 

[MICHAELSD]

I’ll have to see after use, but I am adjusting to iPhone 16 Pro thus far better than any previous OLED iPhone. That’s not to say there’s no headache response but even the always-on display, which bothered me on iPhone 14 Pro Max and iPhone 15 Pro, I’m finding to be more tolerable.

 

[2mw2]

The Iphone 16 non pro model I had gave me problems. I had to send mine back.

Using system diagnostics https://it-training.apple.com/tutorials/support/sup075/ you can extract the logs onto a Mac and look for the IODeviceTree.txt file in the ioreg folder. Find the string "raw-panel-serial-number" and you should get a long serial number. Apparently "G9......" indicates Samsung. There's a reddit discussion on this under r/iPhone16Pro

 

[MICHAELSD]

The Iphone 16 non pro model I had gave me problems. I had to send mine back.

Using system diagnostics https://it-training.apple.com/tutorials/support/sup075/ you can extract the logs onto a Mac and look for the IODeviceTree.txt file in the ioreg folder. Find the string "raw-panel-serial-number" and you should get a long serial number. Apparently "G9......" indicates Samsung. There's a reddit discussion on this under r/iPhone16Pro

I do think LG panels are typically better quality and better tolerated. That being said, I’m not sure I’ll look for the panel number since this device isn’t a step change in the flickering technology at all. It’s better than the previous generation iPhone 15 Pro, but better doesn’t make it acceptable.

 

[super chimp]

Maybe of interest from the GSMArena review of the OnePlus 13 which is available globally including North America, regarding its display.

The OnePlus 13 features a thoroughly capable 6.82-inch LTPO OLED display. It's got a 1,440x3,168px resolution (510ppi pixel density) and a 1-120Hz refresh rate range, and uses a 2,160Hz PWM frequency for dimming. All sorts of HDR standards are supported, too.