HTC magician screen brightness - JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General

I have the o2 XDA mini and just realised that after i adjust the screen to maximum brightness. When u press the camera button, the screen suddenly increased its brightness for 1 second before it enters the camera function. When u go to tools->adjust, you can even see that the screen turns very bright and clear which is much clearer than the screen itself on maximum brightness. Anyone knows whether that this only is a defect in my device or happens in every HTC magician. Try it and please tell me whether u seen the screen differences. After having the device for 4 months then i realised this effect hehe. :?:

tuyulaneh said:
I have the o2 XDA mini and just realised that after i adjust the screen to maximum brightness. When u press the camera button, the screen suddenly increased its brightness for 1 second before it enters the camera function. When u go to tools->adjust, you can even see that the screen turns very bright and clear which is much clearer than the screen itself on maximum brightness. Anyone knows whether that this only is a defect in my device or happens in every HTC magician. Try it and please tell me whether u seen the screen differences. After having the device for 4 months then i realised this effect hehe. :?:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your device is not defected it happens to other devices too depends on the rom that you're using..

depends on the rom????
i tried a qtek rom and a imate jam rom and they have the same
behaviour, in camera mode the brightness is increased.
i try also to hack the registry keys, but nothing happens.
who can explain?

Maybe its simply the camera application instructing the screen brightness to 'gain up' to make using the viewfinder for pictures in dark conditions more clear.
Alot of digital camera reviews say an camera digital display that gains-up at night/poor light is a plus as it allows you to see the subject of your photo more clearly (wanna buy a digicam and keep reading about this in all the reviews)
Could this offer an explanation?
Oh and P.s. My Qtek S100 with WWE 1.12 rom also does this.
Gero

Do you think that its possible to do something with the registry and increase them to same brightness as camera mode?? It would have amazing screen them!! I am really bad at registry tweaking hehe . Need advice from the pros pleaseee :lol:

Screen Brightness increases when camera is on
Did anyone figure out how to tweak the registry so that the screen brightens can be left at the higher level that it switches to when the camera is turned on? I would really like to keep my Jam's screen at that brightness level at all times. There must be something in the camera exe file that changes the brightness level beyond what is allowed in the settings.

Hey guys, I've made an ugly hack to achieve this - brighter screen as you get with the camera, but in normal use of the PDA. However, it prevents the use of the camera until soft reset.
What do you think, could you live with this compromise?
V

vijay555 said:
Hey guys, I've made an ugly hack to achieve this - brighter screen as you get with the camera, but in normal use of the PDA. However, it prevents the use of the camera until soft reset.
What do you think, could you live with this compromise?
V
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YEP! please!

ratcom said:
vijay555 said:
Hey guys, I've made an ugly hack to achieve this - brighter screen as you get with the camera, but in normal use of the PDA. However, it prevents the use of the camera until soft reset.
What do you think, could you live with this compromise?
V
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YEP! please!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll second that !

daffie said:
ratcom said:
vijay555 said:
Hey guys, I've made an ugly hack to achieve this - brighter screen as you get with the camera, but in normal use of the PDA. However, it prevents the use of the camera until soft reset.
What do you think, could you live with this compromise?
V
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YEP! please!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll second that !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me too! :lol:

Guys,
After having a brainwave this morning about how to do this, I've knocked together a little app to enable it. However, the technique has some issues I want to sort through to make it a bit more foolproof for you guys. It's not a great way to do it, but it does work for now until someone can think of a better way.
I'm a bit curious why HTC didn't enable it by default. It's not MUCH brighter, but it makes a difference, and going back to the old brightness is quite disappointing!
Just keeping you all informed
V

Great invention again..
More brightness can't be that bad i guess...
....but doesn't it drain your battery quicker ?

I suspect this won't only affect battery drain but display lamp life time. May be this setting is slightly above specs which is ok for a few seconds, but it might most probably decrease your displays life time if you leave it enabled for hours.
That's my assumption why HTC did not make it available to the average user.

I agree. As it happens, I might not release this at all.
For now it only works once per soft reset. After powering off, it goes back to normal brightness. Then you can only get the superbrightness again after a soft reset. Too impractical to be of any use, but an interesting idea for me to play with.
V

When i put my hands on the Qtek S100 (MDA Compact to be exact, in my case), i was so amazed by the screen and its high resolution/size (i never had a PPC/PPCPhone before) but a co-worker of me bought the SP5 (aka HTC. Tornado) and that screen is 4 times brighter compared to the S100's screen.

Chatty - about the screen life. I guess it must be relatively safe if it's enabled by default in the camera mode. Potentially you can leave you phone in camera mode all day, and there's no automatic time out or power off or anything.
I imagine the issue is more battery life than screen life. And for most of us, I guess we'll all be upgraded in < 1 year?
v

@vijay555: So any progress in making it usable? What API is used for that? RIL?

@Chatty, as I said in my earlier post, I'm not going to release this because it's not properly usable. Yet :wink:
The effect works, and you have superbrightness across the system, but only until you power off the system. When you switch on again, I can't get it to re-enable the superbrightness or the camera until you soft reset. HTC have used some curious programming. So it works once per boot for now, and that's nearly useless.
I'm only using a very dodgy hack to do this (which achieves the goal), but the best way would be to reverse engineer the camera/LCD drivers, and frankly I haven't looked into this at all, no time.
I doubt RIL would help, I think this requires direct interfacing to the screen driver/hardware.
My way is simple, and works, but not something I would put my name to as a release product...just an interesting trick for now.
V

vijay555, if you don't intend to release this "software" can you share the trick?

kta - let me see if I can pack it together into an app that won't cause hardresets. Soft resets I can live with, hard resets are a pain in the bum.
The trick? Sure: start the camera, click on the tools button near bottom right (you will now be in normal brightness), choose tools menu, then adjust. You should now be in superbright mode. the trick is keeping it there :wink:
V

Related

Keyboard backlight time

I know some people wanted to increase the keyboard backlight time. In case this hasnt been posted already, mad monkey has a cab for it:
http://www.dweiniger.com/tips/k-jam.shtml
No i have not seen this posted. tried on my qtek did not work - does it work on your device. i have seen a hack for the universal not wizard
cheers
nope this don't work on the T-Mobile MDA (US model)
Is it supposed to be a DWORD value? Anyone has gotten this to work?
ch4kk said:
Is it supposed to be a DWORD value? Anyone has gotten this to work?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No joy here
didnt work either on 2.8
nope - doesn't work
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=38314
You would think someone at HTC would know how to do it. Do any of those guys/girls post on this forum?
not that I've ever seen - not on any of the official retailer sites either. good luck
p.s. the question might not be 'how to do it' but 'can it be done'
yeah, I'm beginning to believe that the whole thing is completely implemented with hardware: a keypress starts a LED "On" timer. This is also why the kbd doesn't illuminate when it gets extended. Even though WM senses this and flips to landscape, it has no control over the backlight: It takes a keypress to start the timer circuit that illuminates the backlight you see.
bummer.
Sleuth255 said:
This is also why the kbd doesn't illuminate when it gets extended. Even though WM senses this and flips to landscape, it has no control over the backlight: It takes a keypress to start the timer circuit that illuminates the backlight you see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Working under the assumption that it is indeed in-hardware, there would've been nothing to prevent the engineers from making the magnetic switch enable the backlight, too
Working under the assumption that it's purely software, there should be nothing to prevent WM5 from doing this... other than that nobody has coded it to do so
Working under the assumption that it's hardcoded in the driver, somebody would have to hack the driver to extend the backlight; adding functionality to turn the backlight on would be a bit more difficult.
ZeBoxx said:
Working under the assumption that it is indeed in-hardware, there would've been nothing to prevent the engineers from making the magnetic switch enable the backlight, too
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll give you "glass half full" on that one :wink:.
However.... the magnetic switch would be more difficult to implement than a simple key press which also resets a timer circuit. You'd have to tie that additional input into a circuit that could be hard-wired with the keyboard itself.
there's my "glass half empty" viewpoint.... I've just got a bad feeling on this one..... sorry.
I guess I'm going to have to take a closer look at some of the disassembled wizard pictures to make up my mind on this.
I sure hope a way is found to fix this as well as control those other blinking leds.....
well the point was, basically, there already -is- a magnetic switch. It's used to signal the OS that the keyboard has extended, and allow it to react on that; the chosen reaction being that the screen orientation is changed.
There would be nothing whatsoever stopping the engineers who actually put the thing together (not talking about somebody taking it apart and tinkering in there and whatnot) to have hooked that up to the backlight control /if/ that is in hardware %)
And if it's in software, then nothing would have technically stopped the software developers from making the keyboard slide-out trigger the backlight that way; assuming they already do as much on keypresses.
exactly. But the kbd does't light up when you extend it you see.... This behavior shoud be obvious
ok weird doesnt even put this into perspective ... i edited that value and softreset my phone. backlight timeout is still 5 seconds and now my bottom ( previously skinned) bar has gone back to default colours ... tried removing the value and resetting again had no effect either ... lovely hack this is now i can try and figure out why the hell this just happened ... running newest official qtek rom only for info
I think this is one of the largest downsides to this device. When I pull the keyboard out the lights should come on AND it should be longer then 5 seconds. It would also be nice if it had a light sensor (like on the SMT5600) to know if the light SHOULD come on or not.
If someone (or HTC) would fix this it would be awesome.
oh, they'll fix it - for their next device models The Universal already works that way, and you can tweak the backlight time. I'm sure by now they've gotten all the feedback they need to decide that that is better than the fixed behavior of the Wizard (not sure who at HTC ever figured that would be a good idea to begin with).

Shaky screen in sunlight and bright light

The screen on my Atom shakes in bright light. It's almost like there's two of the same lines and one of them is moving up and down maybe 1 mm or so. Has anybody else got that problem? It only happens in bright light, and it doesn't have anything to do with the veiewing angle, so it's not a trick of the light. The screen actually shakes! Oh, and it has done that on all the four (I think four) ROM's I have tried: The original it came with, the leaked ROM, the "Not for sale" ROM and the latest official ROM.
Er.. I have experience similiar problem too.. not with PDA screen, but with certain pattern (e.g. diagonal lines). As far as I know, it is my own eyes that is causing the problem. Before you go around finding answer for your PDA, try asking another person (the more the better), to look at your screen under the same condition, see if the person can see the same thing or not
If it is the screen problem, probably because it is a transflective screen? You are seeing the image of the reflective mirror at the back together with the actual LCD screen?
It would be a good idea, but my wife has seen it too, and this is my fourth or fifth PDA. They have all had the same or similar themes, and neither of the other units has had this problem. It's specially visible on the home screen, with the small writing for appointments and stuff. But this gave me an idea: I will try to change to one of the standard O2 themes and see if that changes anything!
Mastiff said:
It would be a good idea, but my wife has seen it too, and this is my fourth or fifth PDA. They have all had the same or similar themes, and neither of the other units has had this problem. It's specially visible on the home screen, with the small writing for appointments and stuff. But this gave me an idea: I will try to change to one of the standard O2 themes and see if that changes anything!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A have the same problem. Not often, but looks like you discribe, but it doesn't depend of light. Usially its several seconds long, and after that it becomes stable. I think its hardware problem. As I know some people have prodlem with pitch noise of the screen.
screen flicker and sound
Have the same occurence with the flickering screen(thought something was wrong with my eyes, as well as the high pitched sound coming from the screen everytime i turn the unit on. i don't really mind the screen but anyone got any solution to the sound? :shock:
Shaky Screen
Well I have this problem too with my Atom. I think it has to do with the transreflective screen--mainly a hardware problem with the direct sunlight messing with the screen. As far as I know it doesn't hurt it or damage the screen. It just makes it annoying to use the Today screen or the Wireless manager in direct sunlight. (I got this info by doing a search for the screen, try 'TFT' or 'screen problems.')
As far as I know there is nothing you can do about it.
Also with the high pitched noise--mine has finally gone away, or my hearing has just gotten worse and I've lost the ability to hear a sound at that high of a pitch.
I hope this helps!
I see... I hope mine goes away too :wink: I can leave with the flickering screen but the noise is just plain annoying :?
Just my expenrience.
I have read and tried the overclocking thing on my Charmer. And I've noticed that, if I were to underclock the unit approx 110MHz, the screen will flicker under the bright day light. I'm not sure if you can overclock your Atom (e.g. is it OMAP processor? Do a search before attempting anything, it may kill your unit). Maybe you can solve the problem overclocking it?

Colors

I recently switched from a Wing (Herald) to the Hermes (8525)... I noticed the colors are pretty crappy compared to the wing, yet the Hermes is much better in just about every other aspect.
Is there a way to adjust the colors, contrast, etc. to try and make it look a bit better?
I think the same...
Is the any way to adjust the contrast/brightness and other things so the colors could be more vivid?
Comparing the screen with the one in Artemis it looks really bad
^^Agreed^^
the colors seem pretty dull and not vivid like the touch that I had previous to this device..taking a look at the specs, it seems like both touch and the tytn use the same TFT touch sensitive screen supporting over 65K colours. But why does the tytn screen seem "gloomy" does this have to do with the fact that it is Windows 5??.. any help is appreciated
I have WM6 on board and it is also very dull I even hacked the registry to show the "Contrast" option in Settings but nothing happens when I change it Any ideas?
So I guess its not the W5, well the only other thing I can think of, is the protective film that came with the phone?? any one using their device without the "stock" protector that was provided with the phone?
I have no protector on my screen
I think that the protection-glass makes the screen look so bad...
hmmm
I noticed something interesting, once I do a soft reset and the device is loading up, when my providers (rogers) logo appears the screen actually gets brighter and then it drops back to the less bright screen that we are complaining about does this only happen to my hermes.. this I guess that there is light at the end of tunnel.. Now its a matter of tweaking this to remain "max bright".. any suggestions??
HTC-sync said:
I noticed something interesting, once I do a soft reset and the device is loading up, when my providers (rogers) logo appears the screen actually gets brighter and then it drops back to the less bright screen that we are complaining about does this only happen to my hermes.. this I guess that there is light at the end of tunnel.. Now its a matter of tweaking this to remain "max bright".. any suggestions??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do a search for "Superbright" cab...it's small & will do the trick!
thank you galaxys!! here is the direct link to the .cab file, I am currently at work so I cant try it out .. if some one beats me to it, please post and let me now what you think!
http://www.vijay555.com/?Releases:VJLumosII
nice!
just installed the .cab and .. its alot brighter.. thanks again vijay555
True... I have tested it several days ago.... It is brighter but the contrast is still low And everytime you want to open the camera, you have to disable it...

[REF]Managed HTC Light Sensor SDK released (with source)

I published the HTC Accelerometer SDK a while ago, and have been spending some time off and on trying to find out how to get access to the Nav API. No luck there yet, but I did figure out how to access the light sensor.
The updated API and source is available at:
http://www.koushikdutta.com/2008/07/htc-light-sensor-sdk.html
Koush
can you give us compiled exe?
where are the lightsensor? is it the front/back cam?
how often will auto light adjust update?
alltime? once per power on switch? once per minute?
when the autolight is not set, and it will be done by frontcam, we can safe cams energy, by switching off automatic backlighht adjust. cameras are needing a lot of power.
can anybody confirm that?
WooooWWW this keeps getting better!
Thanks HTC
Please.. Somebody will make a "really" adjustable light settings util with this SDK.. I want to set min backlit level to lower for totaly dark enviroments... because default one is too much than required..
Sorry for my poor English..
Sure, I'll make a utility to do that. Give me a bit though, I'm coding up the Nav sensor SDK right now.
feature request
disable light sensor when call is in progress.
enable light sensor back after call was terminated.
sensor option
Thank you,
I have noticed on the new Bang & Ollefson and another new highend phone [not iphone] they are set so that when the display is away from the air is is visable...against ear off......thus...
when you are looking at the display it is visable
when phone is covered by ear...display is off
take phone away from ear....display comes back on
back to ear display goes off....etc...
This is a fantastic feature and has a wow factor as a sales tool.
2395 said:
Thank you,
I have noticed on the new Bang & Ollefson and another new highend phone [not iphone] they are set so that when the display is away from the air is is visable...against ear off......thus...
when you are looking at the display it is visable
when phone is covered by ear...display is off
take phone away from ear....display comes back on
back to ear display goes off....etc...
This is a fantastic feature and has a wow factor as a sales tool.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is exactly happen what i saw a few days ago..
iGo2008 running, a phone call received and i'm noticed display on & off with light sensor working !!!! I'm looked at the display it is visible (...from 10-15cm distance from my ear..) , when phone is covered my ear...display is off... I'm tried over and over again... still worked at the end of conversation... But when i'm closed iGO2008 and tried again... Not happen again...
Any ideas ???
2395 said:
Thank you,
I have noticed on the new Bang & Ollefson and another new highend phone [not iphone] they are set so that when the display is away from the air is is visable...against ear off......thus...
when you are looking at the display it is visable
when phone is covered by ear...display is off
take phone away from ear....display comes back on
back to ear display goes off....etc...
This is a fantastic feature and has a wow factor as a sales tool.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice work Koush - and I completely agree with the above quote. I'm surprised HTC didn't have this already included, having to press a button to wake the display is kind of stupid since it gets turned off by the light sensor
2395 said:
Thank you,
I have noticed on the new Bang & Ollefson and another new highend phone [not iphone] they are set so that when the display is away from the air is is visable...against ear off......thus...
when you are looking at the display it is visable
when phone is covered by ear...display is off
take phone away from ear....display comes back on
back to ear display goes off....etc...
This is a fantastic feature and has a wow factor as a sales tool.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hands down thatll be one of the coolest tweaks!
DOMin8or said:
where are the lightsensor? is it the front/back cam?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Light sensor is just left of the front face phone speaker (inside the speaker recess).
2395 said:
when you are looking at the display it is visable
when phone is covered by ear...display is off
take phone away from ear....display comes back on
back to ear display goes off....etc...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This happens with the iPhone too.
It's exactly what we need to make the Diamond much better. I don't want the backlight on during a call as its a waste of battery - but I hate having to push the power button during a call if I need to enter a number or change to speakerphone etc.
How could HTC have missed out such a simple feature? Hopefully this is something that can easily be coded in? Fingers crossed
tnacar said:
Please.. Somebody will make a "really" adjustable light settings util with this SDK.. I want to set min backlit level to lower for totaly dark enviroments... because default one is too much than required..
Sorry for my poor English..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any news here? I'd appreciate a tool or tweak to define minimal backlight level for myself because of the same reason.
somebody got ahead regarding the customization of automatic backlight changing with this api?
regards
this would be great if someone with programming skills looked into it!!! ie not me!
You don't have to press power button while on call to enable the backlight. Pressing the middle button (circle) will enable backlight and wont do anything with the call
wcg-tom said:
Any news here? I'd appreciate a tool or tweak to define minimal backlight level for myself because of the same reason.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i may have confused you!
this is the app i would like! reading ebooks in the dark is far too glaringly bright!
sad maybe but i do this alot
bugeyes said:
i may have confused you!
this is the app i would like! reading ebooks in the dark is far too glaringly bright!
sad maybe but i do this alot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
confused?
no. i've exact the same problem
not reading ebooks, but just using my diamond in the dark sometimes...
now iam confusing you my previous post was aimed at the post by Haobe!

light sensor app like Iphone (incall screen off)

I was wondering if there's a app that allows the screen to turn off when you put the phone to you head? Then when you bring it out and in front of you, it turns back on. My Iphone did that and I loved that feature.
upping cause i'm intersted too
im believe this feature on the iphone is provided by a proximity sensor, you can probable do this with the light sensor but it would only work in the day time bc at night the screen would always be off...
not unless you use the gsensor too? i think if you work with the light sensor and the gsensor..you can get it to work. maybe have it only work when theres a active call.
This is an extremely good idea!
now if I was only a programmer
i'd love to see this feature on my diamond/blackstone too, i always have problems with the cursor jumping somewhere else when taking a note while in call...
theres already a thread about that:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=451456
sweet. thanks
I really love that fuction on iPhone as well. I found some program that can adjust the Light Sensor to dim the back light as you want. I never try it but surely not work in the dark. If any news on this issue, pls advise!!
I think the g-sensor is the answer, off course in combination with light sensor. If someone could make an app that would turn off the backlight during an active call AND when phone is in vertical position; this could resolve difficulties with light sensor.
aonavy said:
I was wondering if there's a app that allows the screen to turn off when you put the phone to you head? Then when you bring it out and in front of you, it turns back on. My Iphone did that and I loved that feature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are a couple out there that attempt to solve the same problem the iPhone does.
One I know of is Touchlock Pro - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=444215
It is free but it still has a little way to go before it is a polished solution
The other is PocketShield -- http://www.pocketshield.net/
It's not free but I found it so effective for the in-call problem as well as general locking/unlocking that it was worth paying for
I've also, as a developer by trade, played with the light sensor, g-sensor, and stylus sensor APIs and tried to create a basic proof of concept that solved just the in-call problem very well and found that without the approach taken by Pocketshield it just was not reliable enough for me.
fireweed said:
There are a couple out there that attempt to solve the same problem the iPhone does.
One I know of is Touchlock Pro - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=444215
It is free but it still has a little way to go before it is a polished solution
The other is PocketShield -- http://www.pocketshield.net/
It's not free but I found it so effective for the in-call problem as well as general locking/unlocking that it was worth paying for
I've also, as a developer by trade, played with the light sensor, g-sensor, and stylus sensor APIs and tried to create a basic proof of concept that solved just the in-call problem very well and found that without the approach taken by Pocketshield it just was not reliable enough for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All these programms are great software but are nowhere near the iphone solution... like i already said, the problem is e.g. that if you are on the phone and the person on the other end tells you a phonenumber you need to write down - the cursor always jumps to somewhere else as soon as you put your phone back to your ear (and then take it away again ofcourse to continue to notice the number).
ive messed with those apps before with no luch for what i was looking for. Simple app...JUST for incall and end call. light goesout..then comes back in. those other apps are pretty detaild
pitchbend said:
All these programms are great software but are nowhere near the iphone solution...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very true, but unfortunately this hardware does not have the same sensor as the iPhone so you can only fake it so much.
I'd love to see this developed as well. But just wondering as some have mentioned using the gsensor; what if your laying down using the phone?
any developers out there. this would be awsome. make it simple. only works when the phone is in call. the gsensor sensing the phone from 0-45 degrees and only 0-5% light. seems sorta simple when u look at it like that.
hey everyone. My HTC Touch Pro came with this functionality out of the box. And i really don't like it at all. I think the difference to the iphone is that the screen does not turn back on until the power button is pressed.
millab said:
hey everyone. My HTC Touch Pro came with this functionality out of the box. And i really don't like it at all. I think the difference to the iphone is that the screen does not turn back on until the power button is pressed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My diamond does this already?
mine didnt. very weird.
For what it's worth, S2U2 v.1.42 has an option called "blank screen on call" which essentially disables the touch screen and makes it turn off when a call is connected (both sent and received). To get the screen to turn back on, simply press any hardware button. (Note though that pressing the END button while on a call will end the call as well as turning on the screen.)
I've found this feature to be VERY useful and figured it's as close as we're going to get for the time being .

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