Wear OS Weekly
My weekly column focuses on the state of Wear OS, from new developments and updates to the latest apps and features we want to highlight.
Over the last few years, smartwatch displays have one-upped each other by becoming larger, brighter, and smoother than before. The OnePlus Watch 3 display is only the latest to do so, but it’s actually ahead of other Android watches in one key display category — in a way that most people would never notice.
During my colleague Nick Sutrich’s OnePlus Watch 3 hands-on, he appreciated how the 1.5-inch AMOLED leaped from 600 to 2,200 nits of brightness and hit a smoother 1–60Hz LTPO refresh rate. But that’s fairly standard for mainstream Apple and Android smartwatches in 2025.
His real praise was that the display is “comfortable for everyone to use” and “better for your eyes,” based on something that you won’t find in the Watch 3 specs.
Grab your phone and photograph any AMOLED smartwatch in direct sunlight, especially with a higher shutter speed. You may notice multiple thick black bars sliding down the display that aren’t visible in real life. This is an effect of Pulse width modulation (PWM) dimming, a technique that switches a display from 100% to 0% brightness in quick flickers to simulate lower brightness as an intentional optical illusion instead of actually lowering the voltage.
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It’s a popular technique across smartphone, tablet, and smartwatch brands, both for preventing AMOLED burn-in and preserving the best color accuracy. But PWM flickering can also make you sick without realizing it, starting with subtle eye strain and progressing to headaches or even nausea in the worst cases.
That’s why some phone brands have started offering DC dimming as an alternative: Lower brightness corresponds with lower voltage without flickering; the colors look less saturated, but late-night phone scrolling won’t cause the same problems. These phones only use PWM when the display can hit a high enough frequency to prevent flashing from being visible.
My colleague Nick Sutrich, who gets nauseous from most modern phones, performed the test in the video above and found that the Watch 3 uses DC dimming, preventing any flickering — unlike the OnePlus Watch 2, which had uncomfortable levels of PWM.
Does your smartwatch use PWM and strain your eyes? Unless you have a recent Apple Watch or you’re a fan of fitness smartwatches, the answer is probably “yes.”
A quick PWM test across brands
For this smartwatch PWM test, I charged my most recent watch models across several brands with AMOLED displays: Apple, COROS, Garmin, Google Pixel, Polar, Samsung Galaxy, and Suunto watches. Nick had already tested the OnePlus Watch 3, and I asked my colleague Andrew Myrick to test his Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 Enduro.
Nick told me that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 was the first well-known smartwatch that the PWM-sensitive community noticed had switched to DC Dimming, and you can see the evidence in the photo below. With my phone’s camera shutter speed set to 1/8000 shutter speed, I could see a solitary, gray line bifurcating the display, with no flickering evident.
Compare that to the Galaxy Watch Ultra, which also has a 3,000-nit AMOLED display. In this photo, you can see multiple thick black bars that fully block portions of the screen. This is a telltale sign of PWM dimming, because the quick shutter speed is capturing portions of the screen at 0% brightness.
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This also applies to the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro. Notice how the Pro’s display has noticeably thicker black bars than the Classic’s; I turned off adaptive brightness for both displays, and the dimmer Pro screen has to flicker at a faster rate to simulate the lower brightness.
When it comes to Wear OS watches in general, PWM dimming is the standard. I can’t say for certain whether the OnePlus Watch 3 is the only one to use DC dimming, as we don’t have a Xiaomi Watch 2 on hand and Xiaomi is known for making good flicker-free phones. But the Pixel Watch 3 definitely uses PWM dimming, as does the TicWatch Pro 5.
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Interestingly, I’ve found that the Garmin Fenix 8 and Instinct 3 both seem to use DC dimming, at least on the default brightness setting. I see a bit of flickering on the lowest brightness setting, but the black bars are still significantly thinner than every other brand, which suggests its displays are kinder on your eyes. The same goes for my Polar Vantage M3.
On the other hand, two other long-lived running watches — the COROS PACE Pro and Suunto Race — use PWM dimming. COROS, in particular, seems to use an aggressive form of it, with thicker and faster black bars than I’ve seen on any smartwatch. The side-by-side shot above should make the difference clear.
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We can only speculate on why fitness watches use more eye-friendly dimming than the bigger smartwatch brands; companies typically stay radio silent when asked about this topic.
The two most likely guesses are battery life and simplicity. Lower voltage instead of flickering would help these watches last longer, in theory, even if the colors aren’t as rich. But it could also be a simple case of Garmin and Polar seeing DC dimming as less complicated and easier to implement.
I haven’t tested every smartwatch out there, and this testing method is a bit unreliable unless you check at multiple brightness levels. But the main point is that high-flicker displays are the norm, and only OnePlus and Apple seem to have made a conscious choice to fix that.
PWM or DC dimming should be up to the user
Plenty of people will go through their lives never being affected by PWM dimming, and since you won’t spend as long staring at a smartwatch screen as a phone screen, its flickering may not be as big of an issue. That doesn’t change the fact that the switch from LCD or MIP displays to AMOLED on watches could increase eye strain and discomfort.
That’s why I think a simple “PWM or DC dimming” toggle on watches would be the best option. Do you prioritize color fidelity and reduced burn-in or battery life and reduced eye strain? Both options are legitimate, so leave it up to the user!
Smartwatch displays have other areas where they can improve. The top models have been stuck at about 320 pixels per inch (ppi) for years, while most phones hit between 400–500ppi. And while they’ve jumped from 30 to 60Hz in recent years, 90Hz or 120Hz seems like the logical next step once we get faster smartwatch SoCs to power them.
In that context, smartwatch display dimming may not be the priority for these companies when PWM-sensitive people are a relatively niche group — and iPhones, Galaxy phones, and Pixel phones all continue to use PWM exclusively, despite complaints from the PWM-sensitive community. I suspect most Android smartwatches will keep using this tech for years to come.
Still, I’d at least love to see DC dimming as an option in the Wear OS 6 developer settings. And for now, since the OnePlus Watch 3 launch has been delayed to April 2025, anyone on the hunt for a flicker-free watch will either have to switch to an Apple Watch or look seriously at Garmin watches.
