Database Users

Auto screen brightness doesn't work?

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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Click to collapse
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...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+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

Capacitive buttons / trackball light control?

So the one thing that is annoying me a lot about my Nexus One is the backlight on the 4 capacitive buttons and the trackball flashing at night when it sites on my nightstand. I guess I could also add the charge light to this case as well. But that is less bothersome at the moment.
Does anyone have anymore information on whether the light for the trackball, capacitive buttons, and charge light can be disabled?
The only bits of information I can find searching is that the phone needs to be rooted to do this. That is great. What would be the next step? Is there a /proc listing for the trackball, capacitive buttons light, charge light that might take input to disable them?
Would love to hear if anyone has more information on this subject as i can't seem to find much info.

I have the same problem because I either have mine on the bed with me or on the night stand and that damn track ball light is bright when its pitch black, and I can't even tell you how many times I've bumped those damn capacitive buttons while typing or just in an app.
I hope the guys building custom roms will add toggles, or some developer will make toggles for rooted phones that would be very awesome and appreciated, I don't think just by me either.

I've never seen mine flash while charging, maybe if you have an alert, but you can clear those before you plop your phone down for the night.

the only light i have on when charging is the little orange light....
I'm guessing, that you need to answer a message or email or something.

You can use LEDs Hack, from the Market, to disable them; you can even configure it to automatically disable them when you plug in your phone, and re-enable them when you un-plug. It's free, from the developer who created Bedside, the (IMHO) best night clock app. (If you like LEDs Hack, you might try Bedside for a mere $1.50 -- a pittance, really.)

My impression is that if you have the built in clock application running before you turn your phone off, trackball and buttons light won't turn on even if you have an alert. I might be wrong though...

danguyf said:
You can use LEDs Hack, from the Market, to disable them; you can even configure it to automatically disable them when you plug in your phone, and re-enable them when you un-plug. It's free, from the developer who created Bedside, the (IMHO) best night clock app. (If you like LEDs Hack, you might try Bedside for a mere $1.50 -- a pittance, really.)
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Click to collapse
LEDs Hack looks EXACTLY what I am looking for. Thank you for this tip (doesn't show up in my searches. But found on androlib.com).
IMHO, this functionality SHOULD be native in the phone.
I wonder if this program also covers the trackball light flashing?
Yes, I know the flashing is because I have a message waiting. But the point is, I don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night because of a flashing light just for a silly email or text message!

Auto Backlight level

I have noticed that the Automatic control for the backlight on the HD2 works very well. I have never feel like the phone is too dim and only in the darkest rooms do I find it to be a little too bright.
The Auto backlight does not seem to have the ability to get down the the lowest backlight level of the HD2 screen. If I turn off the auto function the screen can get to that "barely on" setting, but on auto the lowest is seems to go is to around 30%, which can be bright in the car at night or reading in bed.
Is there a way to make it so that the automatic backlight control can go all the way to the lowest setting when appropriate?

Have you looked into using 'lumos'? You can find it in the HD2 apps forum section.
I used it before and it should work for you to get the lowest backlight. I stopped using it since I figure 30% is good enough for me in most situations. During my commute, the light sensor gets hit too much and the backlights changes too often so I just turned it off. (I think it may also save me some power as well.)
If I'm reading in the dark I manually set it to 10% and in the morning I set it back to 30%. It's not too often that I will read in the dark so it's not a major issue for me.

I guess along the same lines, is there some app or widget that can be called from the home-screen icons that can control brightness on the fly?
Sense's brightness control is hidden behind far too many presses to make it comfortable to switch quickly. It's a bit annoying when I'm checking my e-mail at work walking under a set of lights, the screen will dim, then brighten, then dim, then... every two steps. Jumping to the menu to change the settings is too cumbersome, something along the lines of two clicks would be much better.

use Lumos
I had the same problem, Lumos works very well in the HD2.

Backlight for touch-keys

Does anyone know how backlight is suppose to work for Home, Menu, Back and Search keys? Is it suppose to stay on as long as the screen backlight stays on or is it certain amount of time? What triggers them to come on- key press, screen touch, trackpad touch or all of the above? Mine don't seem to follow any rhyme or reason, at least I couldn't trace a pattern. I know that I was messing around with the phone last night in the dark and they would come on and go off as they pleased. Does light sensor have anything to do with it? Please sound off your findings and ideas.
Thanks!

Mine don't seem to follow any rhyme or reason either - it's a bit maddening. And the same goes for the backlight of the physical keyboard (sometimes it comes on, sometimes it doesn't - no telling why), and also the automatic adjustment of brightness (i use the phone for a minute and suddenly it gets super-bright).
Hopefully these are all just bugs that will be fixed with an OTA update, but it is weird and I'm glad to know it's not just my unit since I don't want to replace it (I got a solid hinge - good stuff!).

I think I figured it out. Backlight for touch keys is controlled by light sensor and also has a timer (few seconds), so if it's bright enough outside - they will not even come on. If it's dark - they come on and stay on for certain time then go off untill you press one of them again.
Now, the other thing that I'm noticing is that my haptic feedback is not working when pressing one of those buttons or long-pressing the screen. Anyone else has that problem?

I have used my phone primarily in the dark. All my lights are always on (when the screen is) and the auto-brightness is too bright. If I turn brightness to minimum, the always on lights are way too bright compared to the screen. I really wish the designers had tried to use this phone in the dark (laying in bed) and realized the auto-brightness and lights are too bright in pitch-dark!
Also I am getting real sick of rotation. On my G1 I could disable it completely unless the keyboard was out. I like to lay in bed or on a couch and use my phone sideways, but not rotated. This seems impossible to do on the G2. Disabling rotation doesn't do anything for 3rd party apps or even GMail for that matter. For some reason this was not the case on the G1.
It will be hard to go back to the G1's one-second+ lag after every press and the incredibly slow loading webpages now that I have experienced the G2, but there are too many really annoying problems, so I think it is getting sent back.

if you have your backlight set to automatic... it will cut on only if the room is dark... check your backlight settings

It's an issue with the way android uses the light sensor. It's very poorly coded.

Screen flicker workaround

Hi everyone
I want to share a workaround to all of us who owns a defective S5
Symptom: You unlock your phone and it doesn't show anything. Actually, the phone is working. Capacitive buttons light up and you may heard some activity in the phone
Your phone has a defective screen. There are a lot S5 which have this problem, according to several forums. After several tries, unlock and lock over and over, the screen light up and you are able to use your phone. The problem is when you receive a call and you want to know who is calling you, the screen doesn't illuminate and you won’t be able to know who is.
Here's a workaround which makes your powerful S5 usable and take out from your drawer.
Solution:
The more effective way to fix it is: change defective screen! But sometimes it could cost as much as a new phone, or simply you can't afford it, and it's better to change your phone instead, and you put your S5 in a drawer.
The technical explanation of this problem is: Screen doesn't receive enough electrical current at low brightness levels (maybe the flex is defective, get old, etc)
Most probably the wake up problem exist together with screen flicker at low brightness levels
The wake up problem rises up more in dark environment, when light sensor make low bright screen
The lock screen light up screen, with a dim effect: when you lock the phone, it slowly turn screen off, and when you unlock, it make and effect of dim screen.
When you are is in dark environment, the effect is very slow, preventing the screen illuminate because the technical problem explained before.
When you are in very light environment, you lock screen and sensor light make the screen very brilliant and chances are you defective phone wakes up correctly.
We can use an app which give us complete control over brightness subsystem. I use an app called Velis AutoBrightness:
Once installed from Play Store, it shows a Setting Wizard. Follow the instructions. Below are some notes
• 1/7: Welcome Screen
• 2/7: How bright... Most probably is your phone always have flicker in low brightness. Choose "AMOLED" or "AMOLED bright". By the way choosing any one of those cure always minimum brightness failure!
• 3/7: Choose High sensitivity
• 4/7: On, if you want additional brightness when charging. Irrelevant for this thead. Choose your favorite setting
• 5/7: Same of 4/7
• 6/7: Choose enable: That enable the app
• 7/7: Some additional notes: Press Done
Now important settings: go to Menu > Settings > General: Settings Mode > Advanced
Service Activation settings:
• Disable system handler > ON: When you use Power saving mode, you surely noted screen flicker, which is very annoying, and make unusable power saving mode. By set this ON: Android doesn't set screen too dim; instead Velis have a minimum of brightness set by Wizard 2/7. (Surely you find out that you avoid screen flicker, by setting autobrightness off and slider in 8-10%)
Sensors settings:
• Screen-on sensor value override: Set this value to 30000. Read below this post if you want technical explanation of this setting
After you establish these settings, you'll be able to unlock your phone all the time!
This is the trick: When you unlock your phone, you'll note that the screen is very bright (because Screen-on to 30000) and quickly adjust to the environment light. The failure is that electrical current to screen is defective, and when exterior light is dark, the screen make a dim effect and doesn't light up.
Note to Marshmallow users:
• This app make use of Screen overlay permisions: And marshmallow is very restrict with this kind of app. This is specially true when you are installing an app. All you have to do is deactivate the app in notification screen: press "OFF" button, adjust system brightness upper enough to not flicker the screen, install your app, and activate Velis Autobrightness again
• Because of Doze mode, wake up from this mode may avoid your screen light up, the first time you use your phone. Let 10-15 seconds your phone wake up, lock again, and unlock again, and velis will make its work!
I hope this post make your smartphone usable. I barely apply this trick to two phones, but I think this is a good workaround!

I used this app & the flickering is still available

What worked for me is downgrading the firmware on my g900f all the way back to Android 4.0. My phone came with version 5.0 and I noticed the problem only after I kept installing samsung's system updates. Will report if the problem starts up again but I'm running rooted and running nougat just fine so I don't see a reason to keep upgrading the firmware.
Edit: nevermind, this didn't work

Reyse said:
The technical explanation of this problem is: Screen doesn't receive enough electrical current at low brightness levels (maybe the flex is defective, get old, etc)
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Does anyone know for sure if it's the flex cable or some capacitors? I notice only the lower half of my screen flickers.. I bet there's a simple electrical fix for it instead of replacing the whoooole display

fbs said:
Does anyone know for sure if it's the flex cable or some capacitors? I notice only the lower half of my screen flickers.. I bet there's a simple electrical fix for it instead of replacing the whoooole display
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Hello,
Have you change jour battery? If it s old it could cause some issues...
But try to buy a genuine one, I think that your battery must be old now.
Bye

cedouic said:
Hello,
Have you change jour battery? If it s old it could cause some issues...
But try to buy a genuine one, I think that your battery must be old now.
Bye
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it doesn't make any sense. the lower half of the screen flickers in green even on charger

fbs said:
it doesn't make any sense. the lower half of the screen flickers in green even on charger
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I noticed that screen only flickers at low brightness when using Boeffla kernel for LOS14 and others based on it.
No issue for the same device with LOS or Stock based kernels.

zlazaar said:
I noticed that screen only flickers at low brightness when using Boeffla kernel for LOS14 and others based on it.
No issue for the same device with LOS or Stock based kernels.
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Click to collapse
you're wrong
I was using los16 with stock kernel for months with flicker everyday

fbs said:
you're wrong
I was using los16 with stock kernel for months with flicker everyday
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Click to collapse
+1 to that , i even went back to stock and the screen flicker appeared and such issues are well known already with samsung amoled panels back in 2014-even some panels from 2018 . So def not kernel related.

I was using los 15.1 and this problem got worse. The phone was barely usable as mentioned by the op. In my case, the screen would start flickering below 60%. Then I switched back to stock marshmallow. I noticed that 100% brightness in los 15.1 is actually only about 70% in the stock rom.
I have been using the phone at 80% brightness for some weeks now and the problem has significantly reduced. But not completely gone, it's much much better. Also, you might want to avoid using dark wallpapers.