When it comes to updates for your mobile phone’s operating system, most of us look forward to them. Unlike those annoying updates that are rolled out with apps seemingly every single day, a revamped Android or iOS version usually means some noticeable improvements – cool new features, new colors, revamped menus, better camera options etc etc… But is it also possible that they can make you sick? As in, physically ill?

Apparently so, for that’s what a number of iPhone users have been complaining about, ever since they updated their devices to iOS 7 over the weekend. A number of reports have appeared in recent days, claiming that the update appears to have triggered a bit of nausea, motion sickness and other complications for some of you fanbois out there. The update hasn’t just affected those who already have existing medical conditions – like vertigo – either, but for all kinds of random iPhone-wielding individuals.

Here’s a selection of complaints from iPhone users that we found on the Apple Support forums:

“The zoom animations everywhere on the new iOS 7 are literally making me nauseous and giving me a headache. It’s exactly how I used to get car sick if I tried to read in the car.”

“I thought I was going crazy today after I updated my phone and I noticed I was feeling queasy every time I used it. Now I see I am not alone! I just used my phone for about 20 minutes and now I feel like I’m going to vomit. There has to be a way to turn this off.”

“I have same problem. Zoom is just one unpleasant issue with OS7. Visually it is too bright and hard on the eyes. I like the functionality but the whole look is just jarring.”

“I think another reason that it is making me uncomfortable is because there is so much white space on some built in apps like safari, calendar, mail. There is also a lack of consistency between the brightness of apps – eg the Spotlight keyboard is a pleasant gray shade, but switch to safari and up zooms a bright white keyboard. I’m finding that it is just not a pleasurable visual experience.”

No one at SiliconANGLE appears to have been affected by iOS sickness yet, but to be fair to those who’re feeling nauseaous, version 7 of the software does have something of a zest for parallax effects – such as the new icons that shift around depending on the angle the phone is held from your face, which creates an illusion of icons “floating” over the background. If you happen to be sick of this head-spinning feature already, it can be turned off quite easily by going to Settings > General > Accessibility and then adjusting the “Reduce Motion” setting.

Unfortunately, that only deals with the Parallax motion feature – it’s a little less easy to disable the rest of the visual effects that Apple has dumped on its users, such as the sliding and zooming during app transitions. The problem is only compounded by the fact that Apple apparently doesn’t care that some users might be suffering from a little motion sickness:

“If Apple wants to truly cater to users with disabilities, it must look more closely at which features cause difficulties, make more effort to listen to users who find them hard to use, and enable them to be more comfortable,” said Kirk McElhearn of MacWorld in an interview with The Guardian.

Until such a time as Apple does so, there seems to be little recourse left to under-the-weather fanbois. A quick search for “downgrade to iOS 6” will probably throw up dozens of different how-to’s and tutorials, but it’s unlikely the average fanboi can get them to work. As ExtremeTech notes, its no longer actually possible to downgrade from iOS 7 back to iOS 6, because Apple is no longer signing security certificates for iOS 6 on devices that have previously been upgraded to iOS 7. The only work around seems to be with older, jailbroken iPhone 4’s, but even that isn’t easy.

Which means that you’re stuck with the following options – give up your iPhone and adopt an older one that’s still running iOS 6, or horror of horrors, swap it for an Android phone instead… Just what the doctor ordered :)