Android Central Labs
Android Central Labs is a weekly column devoted to deep dives, experiments, and a focused look into the tech you use. It covers phones, tablets, and everything in between.
The average person living in the United States doesn’t buy smartphones like people in most of the rest of the world. While you can buy an unlocked phone from great retailers like Amazon or Best Buy, the vast, vast majority of U.S. customers get their phones directly from carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T, or Verizon.
Thankfully, OnePlus has publicly declared that it’s not calling it quits. Still, I worry about the potential, as OnePlus has been one of my safe havens as someone sensitive to flickering LEDs and PWM dimming. OnePlus is the only company in the country making flagship phones that adhere to IEEE standards for LED flicker, and it’s starting to feel a little like doomsday for folks like me.
Those of us left behind
A few months ago, I was introduced to Harry Metzler, a musician based in New Jersey who has struggled with PWM sensitivity since contracting COVID in July 2022. After having to cancel a European tour for his band Ill-Advised following its seventh album release, Metzler realised his new iPhone was impossible to focus on, and certain LED lights actually caused his left eye to involuntarily shut.
That’s about the time he found out about PWM dimming, a dimming method used by some LED lights, OLED displays, and other LED-based gadgets. Instead of dimming like a traditional light source, where voltage is simply reduced to produce a dimmer light output, LEDs that use PWM dimming rapidly turn on and off several hundred times per second to fool your brain into seeing a brighter or dimmer image.
The result is often described as “seizure-like” or “concussive” symptoms in people who suffer from sensitivity. Metzler finds that his iPhone 13 is currently the most comfortable model, partly owing to that phone’s reduced brightness level when compared to newer iPhones.
Watch On
Apple’s iPhone 17 family launched a new PWM-sensitive accessibility setting that helps some PWM-sensitive users, but it’s not a be-all-end-all solution. Some phones, like the Google Pixel 10 Pro, have taken up a similar idea, but the fact of the matter is that these brands have been slow to make even small changes, while brands like OnePlus responded to problems with robust solutions years ago.
The OnePlus 15’s display, for example, is currently the most eye-friendly flagship OLED display you can buy in North America. The more budget-friendly OnePlus 15R’s display is even better than that for flicker-sensitive people, and doesn’t compromise quality to ensure all users can enjoy it.
But it’s not just PWM dimming that’s at fault, either. Temporal dithering (TD) is another problem that’s reared its head as 10 and 12-bit displays have become more commonplace, and it’s causing just as many issues as PWM dimming for the same reason.
TD is a tactic used by manufacturers to artificially “deepen” colors on a display by flickering a pixel’s colors back and forth, creating a color that doesn’t exist by tricking your brain. This is often at 15-30FPS, the same flicker rate that causes epileptic seizures.
“Since my second COVID infection in 2024, I’ve been unable to use any Apple laptop,” Metzler told me. The link between flicker sensitivity and COVID infection is something often correlated in the PWM-sensitive community, and I realized that my own sensitivity to PWM dimming also coincided with my first COVID infection. It’s what led to led me to first write about how my phone was making me sick in May 2023.
Metzler told me he realized his “eye twitching problem” was caused by dithering, which was introduced in a Mac OS update. He identified the problem by using a program called SwitchResX on his Mac, which forces the OS to stop using dithering. It helped solve Metzler’s problem when using older Apple hardware, but newer laptops with M4 silicon no longer allow this setting.
OnePlus may not make laptops, but it does make several tablets and phones that don’t employ dithering or low-Hz PWM dimming. It’s a fact that means some users must use a non-Apple, Google, or Samsung-branded device, or be faced with debilitating health issues on a daily basis.
Metzler told me, “I’ve talked to the Apple Store management, and they’ve put me in touh with corporate, but it’s just this round and round and round and round thing. And, I’m at the point where, you know, we just kind of feel like there’s no choice but to bring awareness to this issue.”
The biggest problem with both PWM dimming and temporal dithering is that you usually can’t physically see these things in action — which is the entire reason they’re implemented in such a way — and that means most people simply don’t know they exist. People get headaches and other pain from their devices and don’t understand why.
The glacial pace of evolution from the largest companies is a bad fit for users with specific needs, and that’s where a company like OnePlus comes in.
If OnePlus were to exit the market — again, particularly the U.S. market — it would mean the only real alternatives for flicker-sensitive people are Motorola, Nothing, or one of the many E Ink phones that have entered the market over the past year. But none of those phones are flagship-level, and they all come with their own problems, as well.
Motorola doesn’t offer some of its best flagships in the U.S., and Nothing has yet to launch a proper flagship phone. Each of the company’s mid-range and entry-level phones is often great for PWM-sensitive people, but many of Motorola’s LCD-based phones are a bad fit because they employ dithering. Likewise, while E Ink phones might be totally flicker-free thanks to E Ink technology, almost all use lower-end specs, at best.
My hope is that people like Metzler, who are stuck using Apple devices for job-related reasons, will soon see relief as companies like Apple and Samsung adopt tech from companies like OnePlus. We need these kinds of companies to stick around to serve potentially niche requirements, especially in this day and age, where daily life is quickly becoming impossible without a smartphone.
Want a beautiful display that won’t hurt your eyes? The OnePlus 15 has it all, from excellent peak brightness to an incredible 0.5 nit lowlight setting, and a bevy of eye care features that ensures even sensitive users can enjoy it pain-free.
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