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"If this wasn't IR but visible light it would be like the iPhone's camera flash going on every 5 seconds right in front of my eyes. There is no question that th

"If this wasn't IR but visible light it would be like the iPhone's camera flash going on every 5 seconds right in front of my eyes. There is no question that this would justify the morning soreness and headaches." Yeah, but that's because your eyelids would be twitching and your temporal muscles contracting in response to to flash. When it's IR you can't see it so your body doesn't do anything in response. IR light is, in general, very low-energy. Individual photons don't carry enough energy to disturb chemical bonds. The "flash" you're seeing there is less bright than a candle. The flickering not bright at all it's just that CCDs are very good at picking IR light up. No part of your body can sense or respond to this and even if they did it wouldn't cause soreness. The IR "flash" you filmed with your phone is about as bright as a television remote control. It's literally impossible that this is causing headaches. Your headaches come from looking at an illuminated object in a darkish room that's only a few feet from your eyes. Screens in the dark cause eyestrain. The darker an environment is the more open your pupil is. This reduces the pin-hole focusing effect of the pupil and requires that the lens of the eye be more carefully focused to see. Focusing that tightly is difficult because the lens muscles have to stay in one level of contraction for a long time. Your body instinctively tries to squint so that the eyelids being close together and the eyelashes will cause a pinhole effect that will help you see. The fight between squinting for focus and opening your eyelids to make things less dark makes your head sore and causes tension headaches. This effect becomes more pronounced with age. The first thing you said about PWM? That's a thing people say when they're not doing so well with cause and effect and cognitive bias. This new thing you're inventing about the IR is a much worse version of that. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with the manufacture or components of your phone. Stop trying to read a phone screen (or look at anything on a phone close up) in a dark room. That's it. Don't do that. It's a thing that makes your eyes and head sore. It's really well documented. No new explanation is needed.

sfilargi 8y ago
Your post makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me, and drove me down this rabbit hole, is that I do the same things with the X that I used to do with the 3GS, 4, 6, 7+ and 8+. Never had a single problem. > Stop trying to read a phone screen (or look at anything on a phone close up) in a dark room. That's it. Don't do that. It's a thing that makes your eyes and head sore. It's really well documented. True, true. But it doesn't mean that if you sore eyes it's always because of that. Do you ever have the feeling of wanting to know what causes something. Not to prove something, not for any other reason other than figure out why and how. I am in that rabbit hole. I am very happy with the 8+ and have no eye problems at all. But I have to known what is it in X that causes my eyes to go sore.
- StrictDabbler 8y ago
  The simplest answer is that you're starting to have the very slightest amount of age-related focus degradation, that it's only manifesting when the room is very dark, and that it aligned with the new phones by coincidence. That said, older phones had a higher minimum brightness and more mixed-in blue light. Your pupils will contract more when looking at a brighter, bluer screen and smaller pupils focus more easily. Also, being able to see the black part of the screen can make it easier to focus because you can see how far away it is. Normal ergonomic issues like this are probably the cause. Can you get hold of an older model phone and relax with it for a few weeks to check whether the problems are really with the new devices?
  - sfilargi 8y ago
    Hmm, it may be what you say. Makes sense. What I have done now is covered the notch with a tape and the strain is gone. Maybe it is that I got used to it as you suggest. At some point I will remove the tape and see if the strain comes back or not.

sfilargi 8y ago

Your post makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me, and drove me down this rabbit hole, is that I do the same things with the X that I used to do with the 3GS, 4, 6, 7+ and 8+. Never had a single problem. > Stop trying to read a phone screen (or look at anything on a phone close up) in a dark room. That's it. Don't do that. It's a thing that makes your eyes and head sore. It's really well documented. True, true. But it doesn't mean that if you sore eyes it's always because of that. Do you ever have the feeling of wanting to know what causes something. Not to prove something, not for any other reason other than figure out why and how. I am in that rabbit hole. I am very happy with the 8+ and have no eye problems at all. But I have to known what is it in X that causes my eyes to go sore.

StrictDabbler 8y ago
The simplest answer is that you're starting to have the very slightest amount of age-related focus degradation, that it's only manifesting when the room is very dark, and that it aligned with the new phones by coincidence. That said, older phones had a higher minimum brightness and more mixed-in blue light. Your pupils will contract more when looking at a brighter, bluer screen and smaller pupils focus more easily. Also, being able to see the black part of the screen can make it easier to focus because you can see how far away it is. Normal ergonomic issues like this are probably the cause. Can you get hold of an older model phone and relax with it for a few weeks to check whether the problems are really with the new devices?
- sfilargi 8y ago
  Hmm, it may be what you say. Makes sense. What I have done now is covered the notch with a tape and the strain is gone. Maybe it is that I got used to it as you suggest. At some point I will remove the tape and see if the strain comes back or not.