I really like the auto brightness feature, but it's consistently too bright for my taste.
Is there a mod or tweak out there that will allow me to lower/adjust my automatic brightness levels to save some battery life?
(Currently running Blackhole 3.0 / DL09, will go to Blackhole 4.0 once it's out tomorrow)
anybody have any ideas
Unless you know how to modify the kernel source (which I believe is written in C, correct me if I'm wrong devs) or modify some file that is the delegate for the ambient light sensor, you're SOL buddy.
Its probably hardwired into the kernel, would be my guess.
Hmmm, I thought automatic meant automatic. My bad. J/K
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
Yes, automatically too bright in most situations. Yet not bright enough in sunlight.
I almost need to cover the light sensor some to fool it.
This is where Samsung fumbles. Their software is poor. Whomever is writing the code, set the light sensor to brightness conversion wrong. At least on DL30 they fixed one mess up. On the original rom, when you plugged in external power, the brightness would go to a fixxed level. If you were outside in a car and plug in power, it would dim the display. Indoors at night, plug in power, and it would BRIGHTEN the display. What's up with that.
worwig said:
Yes, automatically too bright in most situations. Yet not bright enough in sunlight.
I almost need to cover the light sensor some to fool it.
This is where Samsung fumbles. Their software is poor. Whomever is writing the code, set the light sensor to brightness conversion wrong. At least on DL30 they fixed one mess up. On the original rom, when you plugged in external power, the brightness would go to a fixxed level. If you were outside in a car and plug in power, it would dim the display. Indoors at night, plug in power, and it would BRIGHTEN the display. What's up with that.
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Whats wrong with manually changing it? It doesnt even take 5 seconds to change the level.
Kaze105 said:
Whats wrong with manually changing it? It doesnt even take 5 seconds to change the level.
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Exactly. Why would you expect your phone to automatically make your life easier or function at an optimum level?
Kaze105 said:
Whats wrong with manually changing it? It doesnt even take 5 seconds to change the level.
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What's the purpose of having a light sensor if it never works?
Often when I pop my phone open to do a specific task, '5 seconds' is about as long as it would have taken to do that whole task. And it's just annoying to unlock the screen, begin to attempt doing something, and then notice 'oh hey, the screen is basically unseeable!' and have to interrupt whatever you're doing. Or, even worse, when you're going from place to place and go through areas that are lighter and darker, forcing you to keep interrupting your work.
worwig said:
Yes, automatically too bright in most situations. Yet not bright enough in sunlight.
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KitsuneKnight said:
What's the purpose of having a light sensor if it never works?
Often when I pop my phone open to do a specific task, '5 seconds' is about as long as it would have taken to do that whole task.
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You guys nailed it. The screen is far brighter than I need while indoors at the office, but step outside and it just doesn't keep up with the bright Colorado sun (I can adjust it manually to a level that can be seen in sunlight just fine).
I could spend 5 secs adjusting the backlight each time the light environment changes, but why not spend 30 min optimizing the auto brightness levels and then never have to worry about it...
I know with my Moto Droid, someone had made a code that altered a particular file to change the lowest brightness level, but I have yet to see that for the Fascinate. It's a shame since the Fascinate's screen is so much nicer, but not set up optimally.
I know some dev's had also integrated the ability to change the auto brightness levels within custom ROMs for the Moto Droid. That'd be a great feature on the Fascinate!
KitsuneKnight said:
What's the purpose of having a light sensor if it never works?
Often when I pop my phone open to do a specific task, '5 seconds' is about as long as it would have taken to do that whole task. And it's just annoying to unlock the screen, begin to attempt doing something, and then notice 'oh hey, the screen is basically unseeable!' and have to interrupt whatever you're doing. Or, even worse, when you're going from place to place and go through areas that are lighter and darker, forcing you to keep interrupting your work.
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That is to peoples own preference. I use auto most of the time and its fine. Doesn't work would indicate it doesn't change the brightness at all.
You can't expect it to auto sense it to every persons liking. Also does power control change it so you can see the screen, cause that doesn't take '5 seconds'
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
spenceuiuc said:
I really like the auto brightness feature, but it's consistently too bright for my taste.
Is there a mod or tweak out there that will allow me to lower/adjust my automatic brightness levels to save some battery life?
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Try Screen Filter - its in the app store. With screen filter applied I keep my phone set to auto and screen filter reduces that more - in my case 50% more.
Well in the DL30 rom you don't have to go to the settings menu to change the brightness, just press and hold on the notification bar and then slide left and right to change the brightness.
Zong00 said:
Try Screen Filter - its in the app store. With screen filter applied I keep my phone set to auto and screen filter reduces that more - in my case 50% more.
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Ill check that out. Thanks!
Related
Hey guys,
do you think it's possible to wirte a program which automatically can change the backlight according to the actual daylight condition.
Maybe it is possible to start the program when you wake up your device. then the program turns on the built in (front) camera for about a second or maybe more. The camera "checks" out the light intensity. If its very bright the backlight condition is set to the max.
his is only a idea. I'm thinking of it because for example today it's a very sunny and i can almost read nothing on the display of my touch cruise!!
What do you think about it?
greetings
any idea?
Or does any software like this exist?
Maybe the guy who wrote this program below could be of assistance:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=379270
Well, it doesn't have to be so hard...
All we need is a small service that reads from a file the approximate sunrise-sunset time and alters the brightness accordingly. If anyone has the time, he can additionally take advantage of the current time zone and calculate those limits automatically all year long!
Destinator 7 does the exact same think by turning night colors on and off. It is actually better than a build in brightness sensor because it never fails!
Nevermind...did not read the question thououghly
Yeah good ideas,
but a time sceduled scenery has also disadvanteges. When its clowdy outside it causes unnecessary battery consumption.
MVBklight 1.4.2 is not working on my polaris!!
w04g005 said:
Yeah good ideas,
but a time sceduled scenery has also disadvanteges. When its clowdy outside it causes unnecessary battery consumption.
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I come from a rather sunny country (greece) so I really missed this!
Anyway, those PDAs have actually very low brightness screens. In a bright day you cant actually see anything. On the other hand, I have yet to see a rainy/cloudy day that requires a reduction to the maximum brightness level. Overall I think that a time scheduled solution should be the best solution for no sensor-equipped devices.
papajohn said:
I come from a rather sunny country (greece) so I really missed this!
Anyway, those PDAs have actually very low brightness screens. In a bright day you cant actually see anything. On the other hand, I have yet to see a rainy/cloudy day that requires a reduction to the maximum brightness level. Overall I think that a time scheduled solution should be the best solution for no sensor-equipped devices.
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I second that! Even though I'm not from Greece but it's never too bright during the day. Right now my solution is to map the camera button to backlight so I can change it quickly.
Changing the brightness according to the time of day would not be as helpful as changing it according to the ambient light level. If you walk inside a dimly lit building during the day, you don't need the backlight to be as bright as if you were outside. Also, even outside, a cloudy day can be considerably dimmer than a sunny day.
jfeldredge said:
Changing the brightness according to the time of day would not be as helpful as changing it according to the ambient light level. If you walk inside a dimly lit building during the day, you don't need the backlight to be as bright as if you were outside. Also, even outside, a cloudy day can be considerably dimmer than a sunny day.
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I totally agree, but given the fact that there is no ambient light sensor in our devices I dont think that we can do any better. Two scales, one for day and one for night and we are OK for most cases. Yes, as you point out this strategy fails but it is better than:
1. No brightness change at all
2. Manual changes.
papajohn said:
I totally agree, but given the fact that there is no ambient light sensor in our devices I dont think that we can do any better.
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Thats the crux. Some devices especially the newer ones have a camera on the front. I'm no photo-expert but i think every camera is a "ambient light sensor".
The camera also reacts on different light conditions. You can see this by turning on the fps function. But i agree that it would be a lot of work.
Maybe we have to wait till more people and programmers own htcs with such bad displays like the polaris.
Titan Photo Sensor
I found myself thinking about this auto-backlight topic on my way home tonight after a long trip using my 8600 as a GPS. The screen went from being a clearly-visible screen during the day portion of the trip to a flashlight in my eyes at night. While I knew I could adjust the backlighting manually, I didn't want to mess with it while driving. Also, living in Arizona, I can barely make out the screen when in daylight unless the screen is on maximum brightness, but max brightness is horrible on battery life, so I would rather not set it to that by default.
Anyway, the Titan has a photo sensor on the keyboard which is used to determine dim lighting conditions and automatically illuminate the keyboard. I'm not sure if the exact lighting value being detected by the photo sensor can be read, but if it can be, then it should be relatively easy to write an application that would automatically adjust the backlight setting whenever the keyboard is slid open.
The application could both use location-based sunrise/sunset algorithms to set the default backlight value based on time of day, and also allow the setting to be overridden momentarily (perhaps only until the screen is turned off again) by opening the keyboard and sampling the ambient lighting conditions.
When I have my nexus one set to automatically adjust brightness, it doesn't seem to do anything.
I can move it between dark and bright environments and the screen brightness doesn't seem to change at all. Am I missing something or is this feature not working on my phone?
It works fine with mine. I just clicked auto in the brightness setting. Make sure you didn't accidentally change it to a different setting with the settings widget that is by default on the first home page to the right.
works fine on mine yet not a feature i use....i just set it statically.
I find the auto-brightness to be too dim for my liking. It would be great if you could adjust the overall brightness while still maintaining the automatic scaling.
Turns out it does work, it just need to be *really* bright to make it change.
It doesn't change really at all in my office between switching the lights on and off (even though that's a really big change in light levels to me). However, if i go outside, it does get brighter.
As you say though, it does seem to be set a bit low (hence it not brightening up when my office lights are turned on I guess).
If I enable auto-brightness on mine, it seems to constantly vary the brightness in my office. It's annoying as crap and I turned it off. Am I the only one?
It's probably taking a look at the available APIs to see if it's easy to write a quick app to do auto brightness with settings to be able to tweak it.
The auto-brightness feature changes constantly for me as well.
I 'm also having issues of the varying brightness when using auto-brightness -- even though the lighting in my environment has not changed and I avoid contact with the light sensor. It's VERY annoying.
I've since switched to using a static setting for the brightness.
auto brightness was one of the first things i turned off. it was way too dim for me
Not bright enough for me. Doesnt seem to change much.
I do see the variability occasionally. Most of the time it's stable, but it will take spells of shifting up and down repeatedly. Glad to know I'm not alone.
Auto bright annoyed me as well when I first got the phone. Then I realized where the sensor is (top left) and what it was responding to. Depending on where I'm sitting, what light sources are behind me, in front of me but reflecting off of me. It's usually just responding to a light source that's just withing view of its sensor. Also, my hand has shielded the sensor more than just a few times, confusing the sensor.
Now I leave auto bright on all the time, and it more often than not does a good job.
IMHO this is one of the few broken features on the phone. In continuous lighting it jumps from bright to dim to everything in between like a jack rabbit on speed. I still use it to save battery life but it pisses me off regularly.
am also having this problem. it constantly goes much brighter, and then, suddenly goes back to dim.. very annoying... however, the light sensor for calling works well... so, is it a software issue.. hope it gets google's attention and gets fixed in next update...
Bicster_ said:
If I enable auto-brightness on mine, it seems to constantly vary the brightness in my office. It's annoying as crap and I turned it off. Am I the only one?
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+1 so I also manually go between three on the widget
Note that the light sensor is under the glass on the front of the phone. Some cover-all cases cover this, and if you use one of these I assume your phone will remain on the dimmest setting.
In general, while indoors it will remain on the dimmest setting (for me anyway), but rise to the necessary full brightness when in sunlight.
w00yee said:
am also having this problem. it constantly goes much brighter, and then, suddenly goes back to dim.. very annoying... however, the light sensor for calling works well... so, is it a software issue.. hope it gets google's attention and gets fixed in next update...
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There are two sensors, one is a light sensor and the other is a proximity sensor to detect when you've taken the phone from your ear. I think you're referring to the second.
w00yee said:
am also having this problem. it constantly goes much brighter, and then, suddenly goes back to dim.. very annoying... however, the light sensor for calling works well... so, is it a software issue.. hope it gets google's attention and gets fixed in next update...
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+1 constant occiliation on dimmness levles under consistant light. It goes from way too dim, to just right then back dark again. I too hope that google will correct this with the next update. Hopefully the patch gets pushed soon, i'd like that extra memory
As far as the automatic backlight setting goes, it is my understanding that the phone should check how bright (or dark) it is, and adjust the display brightness accordingly (brighter when out in the sun, darker when sitting indoors / dark rooms).
However, it seems to me it just sets the backlight at ~40% and that's it. I went out into the sun with my HD2, and the brightness didn't change and I had trouble seeing what was on the screen.
Is there some kind of way I could test, if the light sensor is working? Or is this setting simply badly designed and I should set the brightness myself?
I'm currently running latest Energy ROM (23569 Cookie May 09) but it was the same with the stock ROM, so I don't think it's related.
PS. A little side question, if I may; if I perform task 29 before flashing... do I still need to do a hard reset after flashing a new ROM?
...in the very least... are there any apps that make use of the light sensor?
Well I know the acctualy percentage in the settings never changes when its on auto (atleast not for me)
But I can clearly tell a difference between being in a dark room and the backlight being on low
to being in the sun and it on max.
Ive also never had trouble reading the screen, the screen is always plenty bright enough.
Prehaps you've got a bad one?
Shaamaan said:
...in the very least... are there any apps that make use of the light sensor?
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I know an app that can measure the amount of light in lumers.
lonelykatana said:
I know an app that can measure the amount of light in lumers.
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Care to share the name of that app?
Also, it's difficult for me to say if the screen is busted or not. On max brightness (as opposed to the automatic setting) it's a lot more comfortable to look at in the sun, albeit indoors it's OK on any setting really.
EDIT: I don't suppose the automatic setting can be tweaked for better performance via some registry changes?
Shaamaan said:
Care to share the name of that app?
Also, it's difficult for me to say if the screen is busted or not. On max brightness (as opposed to the automatic setting) it's a lot more comfortable to look at in the sun, albeit indoors it's OK on any setting really.
EDIT: I don't suppose the automatic setting can be tweaked for better performance via some registry changes?
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I think it's called Lumos.
Try searching for it.
You certainly can test it. Just cover the light sensor (upper left corner above the screen) with something. I don't recommend thumb, as you might press 'start' button. You will also need any application with white background.
The brightness should clearly drop.
Auto only sets the brightness from 20% to 60% (or so it seems). But the effect is clearly visible.
Dr.Sid said:
You certainly can test it. Just cover the light sensor (upper left corner above the screen) with something. I don't recommend thumb, as you might press 'start' button. You will also need any application with white background.
The brightness should clearly drop.
Auto only sets the brightness from 20% to 60% (or so it seems). But the effect is clearly visible.
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No change at all.
I'll restore the stock ROM to see if it's a firmware issue, and I'll check that Lumos application.
EDIT: Lumos clearly detects light changes and works well. Seems it's either something to do with Energy ROM after all or possibly I'm just blind and I can't see any changes. I'm still going to check the stock ROM, just to be safe.
BTW, once more, can someone tell me quickly if hard resets are needed after task 29?
EDIT 2: OK, it DOES work after all, I'm just blind; the change however, on the automatic settings, is minimal. I actually had to put the phone under a light-bulb, as covering the sensor didn't really work. I wonder if it should be calibrated like the g-sensor...
night time
i think the day time brightness is fine but the night time setting is far to bright. i would love for this to be customizable as well
rdbthrgnaRDg
Dr.Sid said:
Auto only sets the brightness from 20% to 60% (or so it seems).
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Can this range be increased?
For indoor use the auto-adjust works fine for day/evening/night, but outside I always need to turn off the auto-adjust, so it can go to 100%. When back indoor again, then switch to auto again and so on ... and so on ... and ...
Just installed .NET CF + Lumos and will see how it works out.
.NET CF for laptop and automatic install to HD2 via ActiveSync:
microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E3821449-3C6B-42F1-9FD9-0041345B3385&displaylang=en
Latest Lumos v10 RC2:
forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=450318
Even on the dimmest settings, the Vibrant is too bright for me in bed, where the light disturbs my wife.
It seems that, with root, you can lower the brightness further - at least on other phones. Is there any way to do this with the Vibrant?
Thanks!
The "Dimmer" app will toggle it from your current brightness down to 10 but if you find something that will go lower let me know.
It has an automatic brightness control based on input from the sensor. You may need to disable this in the settings too, but I would think it would be automatically dimming itself already in a dark room.
Dallasalien said:
It has an automatic brightness control based on input from the sensor. You may need to disable this in the settings too, but I would think it would be automatically dimming itself already in a dark room.
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Right, but that doesn't get dim enough in some situations and the minimum brightness you can select manually is 30. "Dimmer" will take it all the way to 10 but I would like to see something that would take it to 1 or 2.
I agree. It's too bright in low light situations.
If you find a solution please post it.
Try the Screen Filter App from the market. You can get UNBELIEVABLY low brightness. Which means much better battery.
+1 on screen filter. New version now dims taskbar too.
Is it just me or does everyone's Epic's have terrible brightness sensor hardware/software? My sensor seems to have about 2-3 settings of brightness, and goes from completely dim to super bright in random situations and nothing in between.
Cyanogen just posted on his twitter that in the past he changed the sensor's abilities through coding modifications. Could we do something of the sort for the Epic's sensor?
Agreed. The sensor is horrible. Also, the transition between brightness settings when set to automatic is near instant instead of slowly transitioning, which makes it more obvious that its changing brightness.
I would agree that it is terrible. Mine also send to sometimes turn auto brightness back on if I've turned it off.
It would be great if someone found a way to mod the code for it!
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
I thought the screen was just too bright at its lowest setting. Fortunately someone came up with a fix for it that can be found in the developer section. As far as the automatic sensor I would suggest turning off "Power Saving Mode" in the Settings>Sound & Display as well. I've read somewhere that this causes the brightness level to vary on its own.
cfiblc said:
I thought the screen was just too bright at its lowest setting. Fortunately someone came up with a fix for it that can be found in the developer section.
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Hehe, that was me. Stay tuned for more. I have coded up and will post, tonight, a new version that will let you modify the brightness curve (from the command line, for now)
As for automatic mode, I have figured out how to modify some aspects of it at the kernel level, such as the ambient light thresholds at which it switches to a different brightness level. By modifying the brightness curve, we can achieve at least some more control. But to make it really good may be significantly harder.
Personally, since manual brightness is always available by swiping horizontally on the status bar, I have little desire to use auto mode anyway.
- linuxuberant
The sensor is actually pretty sensitive. It's just that Samsung chose to have a really small range of brightness steps for automatic brightness.
Firon said:
The sensor is actually pretty sensitive. It's just that Samsung chose to have a really small range of brightness steps for automatic brightness.
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More like they installed an awesome dimmer switch and lights, but the fixture only does three modes; high, medium, and still pretty damn bright.