---
title: "Pulse Width Modulation on OLED Screens"
categories:
- blog
abstract: OLED flickers and some of us want to rip their eyes out
date: 2023-02-23T15:13:20+01:00
year: 2023
draft: false
tags:
- OLED
- PWM
- mobile-phones
---
Today I've learned about PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) on OLED screens. It turns out that brightness changes don't apply to individual pixels - they always shine at 100%. So instead, what happens is that unless we set the brightness to 100%, the device rapidly switches off and on again backlight of the screen.

We are talking about hundreds of hertz, and there is [math to understand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation), but some people can see the flickering and are therefore unable to use OLED screens.