by backscratches a day ago
Fantastic news, Motorola is known for prioritizing DC dimming on their screens, which many report significantly reduces eye strain [1]. I was never aware of the issue, I thought my switch to an OLED phone (iPhone xs) just coincided with getting older and normal tired eyes of aging. But when I switched to a pixel phone my eyes began blurring and aching to an extent I started to research a bit and found that the pixel screens had extremely low Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) rate for screen dimming, apparently as a cost saving measure, and eye strain was a common complaint. I do not experience anything like it with desktop/laptop IPS screens.
A 4" flip phone with graphene would be so nice.
[1] https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/best-phones-for-pwm-fl...
(I am reposting from leak past yesterday)
Their OLED screens + software are some of the best for those of us who suffer. Motorola is one of the last major companies to still offer IPS devices too. In terms of screen hardware, Graphene chose well.
I just hope that GrapheneOS will be offered on one of the IPS phones in addition to the expected OLED model(s).
Agreed. An IPS graphene phone would be perfect.
iphones ship an accessibility toggle to disable PWM.
So do pixel 10 series with Graphene (though it is only a small improvement). All other pixels are even worse with zero mitigations.
what's it called? searching Settings for "pulse", "width", and "modulation" all produce no results.
The setting is called "display pulse smoothing" (the description says it WILL disable PWM) and is available in iOS 26, not sure about earlier versions.
Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Reduce White Point
Also Display Pulse Smoothing (PWM) if you're on Tahoe.
> pixel screens had extremely low Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) rate for screen dimming, apparently as a cost saving measure
The PWM issues are inexcusable. Cost saving measure on a £999 phone. Ridiculous!
It’s not just a cost saving measure. PWM has some benefits like better accuracy and linearity in the lower brightness ranges.