iPhone 15 screen or front camera flickering during video calls

When you are on a video call and the other person’s video appears to flicker, the problem is usually neither the camera nor your display. In many cases, the flickering is caused by the lighting in the room where the other person is sitting.

LED lights are particularly capable of causing this effect. Although the AC supply in India operates at 50 Hz, many LED lamps use electronic drivers that cause the light output to fluctuate (modulate) at a higher frequency, commonly around 100 Hz or more. The human eye may not notice this fluctuation, but a camera sensor can capture it, depending on the camera’s shutter speed, frame rate, and exposure settings. This can appear on your video call as flickering, horizontal bands, or periodic changes in brightness.

This is why the problem can sometimes be mistaken for a defective camera or a problem with the phone's display.

An easy way to test it

If the other person’s video is flickering:

1. Ask the person to move to another room and continue the video call.
2. If possible, ask them to switch off the LED light and use a different light source.
3. An even better test is to ask them to step outside into bright natural daylight.
4. If the flickering disappears when they change the lighting, the camera and display are most likely working normally. The artificial lighting was causing the camera to capture the light modulation as flicker.

You can also try moving the phone slightly or changing the camera exposure. In some cases, simply changing the position relative to the LED light can reduce or eliminate the effect.

Therefore, before concluding that the camera, display, or video-call app is defective, always test the call under a different light source—preferably natural daylight. If the video becomes stable outdoors, you have a strong indication that the lighting, rather than the device, is responsible for the flickering.

Anniah26 wrote:

after updating to IOS 27, it’s still the same.

Not every issue an individual encounters on their device can be attributed to an iOS update. iOS 27 or later may have coincided with what you are experiencing, but that does not mean the issue was triggered by iOS. Coincidence in timing is not, by itself, evidence of causation.

If the update itself were the root cause, then every device running that same version of iOS would exhibit the identical problem. In such a scenario, the forums would be flooded with countless posts reporting the same malfunction, creating an unmistakable wave of complaints that no one could possibly overlook.

The absence of such widespread reports strongly indicates that the issue is not a general, system-wide problem with iOS 27 or later, but rather something specific to the individual device, its configuration, installed apps, settings, hardware, or another interacting factor.

In short: iOS 27 or later may be a coincidence in timing, but there is no basis to conclude that iOS itself triggered the problem simply because the issue appeared after the update.