[Roguelazer]

> *Up to 15–50% slower decision-making in offices with high flicker (and high CO₂)

just throws me right off the argument in an article when the fine print notes that a cited study is confounding the thing the author cares about ("sensitivty to flicker") with a much simpler and better-understood explanation (CO₂ poisoning)

[neltnerb]

I tried my best but once it starts citing different sources as providing hard numbers and then not linking to the sources... and of course they're selling something. Might need a citation on that claim that iPhones don't use PWM.

[vitaflo]

I had to return an iPhone because the oleds they use flicker so bad. The only iPhones that don’t ficker are the SEs because they use ond school LCD screens. But of course they got rid of the SE. So now I’m stuck on this old SE3 until I can find a different phone that doesn’t flicker because as of now ALL iPhones flicker.

[nntwozz]

iPhone 16 Pro Screen flickering / PWM detected 239 Hz Amplitude: 15 %

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-iPhone-16-Pro-smartphone...

The frequency of 239 Hz is relatively low, so sensitive users will likely notice flickering and experience eyestrain at the stated brightness setting and below.

There are reports that some users are still sensitive to PWM at 500 Hz and above, so be aware.

I always check notebookcheck.net for PWM stats.

For reference, the regular iPhone 16:

Screen flickering / PWM detected 60 Hz Amplitude: 25.75 % Secondary Frequency: 487 Hz

[demosthanos]

> The frequency of 239 Hz is relatively low, so sensitive users will likely notice flickering and experience eyestrain at the stated brightness setting and below.

Do you have a source for this claim that 239 Hz is low enough to be noticeable by some measurable fraction of people? People report being sensitive to all kinds of things that end up repeatedly failing to reproduce empirically when it's put to the test (e.g. WiFi and MSG), so that there's a PWM sensitivity subreddit is not the evidence that TFA thinks it is.

The source that TFA links to backing up the idea that between 5% and 20% of people are sensitive to PWM flickering is a Wikipedia article which links to a Scientific American article which does not contain the cited numbers, and even if it did the study it discusses was researching the significantly slower 100 Hz flickering of fluorescent bulbs.

[_3yjt]

Here is one: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07861

They mentioned in Results section: > For the median viewer, flicker artifacts disappear only over 500 Hz, many times the commonly reported flicker fusion rate.

[demosthanos]

Yes, that's an interesting source that at least shows that our eyes can perceive things at those high frequencies, but I'm not sold that it generalizes.

The study actually demonstrates that perception of flicker for regular PWM does in fact trail off at about 65 Hz and is only perceptible when they create the high-frequency edge by alternating left/right instead of alternating the whole image at once.

It looks like the situation they're trying to recreate is techniques like frame rate control/temporal dithering [0], and since this article is now 10 years old, it's unclear if the "modern" displays that they're talking about are now obsolete or if they actually did become the displays that we're dealing with today. From what I can find OLED displays do not tend to use temporal dithering and neither do nicer LCDs: it looks like a trick employed by cheap LCDs to avoid cleaner methods of representing color.

It's an interesting study, but I don't think it redeems TFA, which isn't about the risks of temporal dithering but instead claims harms for PWM in the general case, which the study you linked shows is not perceived above 65 Hz without additional display trickery.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate_control

[_3yjt]

What they are trying to do is recreating the situation that is more similar to actual light sources in computer screens and TV (varying flickering rate from different pixels/ areas). They are saying that the current threshold of 65Hz commonly reported are tested on light sources that are uniformed in flickering, which is not the case for actual screens. It is not about dithering.

Basically the claim is that when there are varying flickering frequency, the requirements for non-flicker frequency is much higher.

[user_7832]

> People report being sensitive to all kinds of things that end up repeatedly failing to reproduce empirically when it's put to the test (e.g. WiFi and MSG), so that there's a PWM sensitivity subreddit is not the evidence that TFA thinks it is.

I know you’re looking for large sample size data, but PWM sensitivity absolutely exists, and I wish it didn’t. The way my eyes hurt in less than a minute while looking at an OLED phone (when I can handle an LCD phone for hours just fine) is too “obvious”. This occurs even on screens I didn’t know were OLED till I got a headache, btw.

(I’m also insanely sensitive to noticing flicker and strobe lights - I say a light flickers, everyone disagrees, I pull out the 240fps mode on my phone… and I’ve never been proven wrong till now.)

[gblargg]

I used a 240 Hz PWM-dimmed monitor for a couple of years and I adjusted, but when I switched to a flicker-free one, it was very noticeable and bothersome to use the old one. Even though it's not perceptible when looking at a fixed point, when moving one's eyes around the after-images are easy to see. Even 1000 Hz PWM-dimmed LED strips are easy to notice when looking around the room. The light is basically being panned across one's retina like a panoramic camera/oscilloscope, logging its brightness versus time.

[culopatin]

Even if the iPhone was flicker free, holding the iPhone itself throws all that out the window with all the addictive colors and notifications and badges

[mouse_]

thanks for saving me time