Crappy Automatic Brightness Sensor? - Epic 4G General

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.

Related

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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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

Automatic brightness vs manual

Hi guys
Which preference do you use? Is automatic brightness option best for battery saving?
i remember it was an official battery saving tip for iPhone and wondered if it's the case for N1.
eh, just keep it on the lowest brightness... thats the best bet
the problem with auto-brightness is that it fluctuates a bit too much if you're in a room with localised lights and shadows... even in a seemingly bright area to your eyes, the display will go to lowest brightness... i just found it personally annoying, as it would usually fluctuate when i wasn't expecting, and to a lower brightness than i could stand... i've since stopped using it... i set my brightness manually to about 25%... for me that's a good balance between a usuable brightness for all conditions, while still giving good battery life...
I use auto brightness with locale which toggles it on and off based on my location. But even before I did that I really didn't notice to much of a difference in battery levels at the end of the day.
I just wish there were min and max settings for auto brightness. Cause I am pretty sure I have never needed the brightness turned all the way up.
i prefer auto brightness if it works. my 1st N1 had a glitch where the screen brightness used to flicker. on my 2nd N1 the auto brightness does not adjust on full scale........(if you go into 100% dark room, the brightness setting must automatically drop to 0)
I too found that the auto-brightness flickered too much. I downloaded Brightness Level off the marketplace and never looked back...
Auto-brightness fluctuates too much for my liking. So, I just keep it set to middle brightness.
the light sensor is unstable, so manually 25% all the time..
Auto brightness too dark
In my Nexus autobrightness works ok outdoors, but indoors it sets the light too dark. I wish it`d work fine because it's a waste of time adjusting it manually every time you move into different light conditions.
I've read Nexus users report different behaviours of their light sensors, maybe it is a bad quality component of the phone. Is there an app which can modify the sensibility of the light sensor? Would be great to adjust this sensibility and set brightness always to auto with a little more brightness indoors in my case.
manual, 25% - the best balance of battery and light for me.
i use about 60%. I hated the automatic brightness because it was darker than I would like most of the time.
My position is, I bought a phone that has a high resolution, so why not give it the brightness to make the color "pop" like they should.

My screen is too bright, what will make it dim below "10"?

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.

Auto brightness only brightens, never dims

I noticed that the brightness only brightens but never dims back in automatic brightness display setting. I can reproduce this easy with turning the lamp on my desk on and off. It only goes back to the lower brightness if turning the screen off and on again.
Noticed this too but seems to only occur when I use a widget to toggle between Auto and 100%.
If I leave the setting in Auto from within settings then it seems to work. Brightness widgets seem to break the auto functionality.
Hmm, I don't use a brightness widget. The light of the softbuttons go on if I cover the light sensor, but the screens stays in high brightness.
Strahlenkanone said:
Hmm, I don't use a brightness widget. The light of the softbuttons go on if I cover the light sensor, but the screens stays in high brightness.
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Must be an all around bug then. If you turn the Atrix off and back on then the auto brightness functionality is restored.
Strahlenkanone said:
I noticed that the brightness only brightens but never dims back in automatic brightness display setting. I can reproduce this easy with turning the lamp on my desk on and off. It only goes back to the lower brightness if turning the screen off and on again.
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This must be an Android thing. My Atrix does the same thing, as did the Nexus One I had before. I've had several (high end) Nokia's that dimmed/brightened perfectly. After 5 seconds, they would brighten (or dim) accordingly. I was hoping Motorola was better at making phones than HTC (the KING of bad battery life). We ALL lose here. Our precious battery life is being drained by the poor execution of a simple function.
This is a stock android thing (problem). Custom ROMs can allow it to dim and change brightness smoothly rather than in discrete steps (Cyanogen).
That's what I thought. I found this free app called "esdimmer". It supposed to be for Galaxy phones, but it's somewhat working on my Atrix. Does this function work any better in Gingerbread?
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
Well it's good to hear that it's a stock android problem and not the actual phone. I did find a way to get around this problem but it's very limited. You can get the screen to dim by first putting the phone into standby and then press the standby button once again (which gets you into the lock screen). You'll notice that the screen then dims (if coming from a well lit area/room to a darker one).

Auto brightness not working correctly

When I'm in a light room the screen goes brighter but if I walk into a darker room, the screen doesn't dim unless I lock and then unlock the screen.
Anyone else having similar issues?
Yep got the same here. Thought I had a faulty ambient light sensor but obviously not.
Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
Just tried it by covering the light sensor to make sure, no problem here (G935F). My only concern related to brightness is that the s7 just has auto brightness, but no adaptive brightness.
Uncheck the auto box and recheck. Then don't touch the slider. It's usually because in marshmallow the slider moves with the auto bright and most people touch it which makes it hold position.
jackdforme said:
Uncheck the auto box and recheck. Then don't touch the slider. It's usually because in marshmallow the slider moves with the auto bright and most people touch it which makes it hold position.
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There seems to be a bug somewhere still. I just tried to move the slider while auto brightness is ticked and to cover the light sensor afterwards again and it still worked and to my surprise it even took into account that I lowered the brightness and took also a lower brightness at the covered state and took my initial setting after uncovering, pretty nice, so there is indeed still adaptive brightness. After ticking und unticking auto it went back taking the default steps for brightness as before.
Having the same issue here
Definately not touched the slider.
Also, I have tested the light sensor and it appears to work fine so definately a software issue. Though I imagine we will see some software updates to fix bugs shortly after the official release date.
So you can adjust the slider with the box checked and get various levels of auto? Does it learn?
jackdforme said:
So you can adjust the slider with the box checked and get various levels of auto? Does it learn?
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Yes.
I can't tell for sure, when I change further steps the previous seems to stick, at least to some extend so there is a logic behind it, but I can't tell for sure if it really is based on each step and sets it accordingly or if it's just changes the range it operates in. Anyways I'm a happy camper.
Also, I could reproduce the device not changing the brightness, when I put it to full at darkness it won't move anymore in auto. But as soon as I lower it again it will also change accordingly again, maybe at those with the stuck brightness the min brightness is only raised, but not lowered anymore, but just an assumption and doesn't help anyone atm unfortunately.
Use lux in play store
Sent from my SM-N920W8 using Tapatalk
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.velis.auto.brightness
This is the first Galaxy phone I had, that Auto brightness actually works the way I like it.
It seems to be working fine now. It just takes a few seconds for the screen to dim (maybe I was being impatient).
After testing it further it's actually really good auto brightness.
It works, just takes some time to adjust to the lighting. Maybe the default settings are set to a certain time. Maybe with root we can adjust this..
AngioNicholai said:
It works, just takes some time to adjust to the lighting. Maybe the default settings are set to a certain time. Maybe with root we can adjust this..
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It seems to only do it quickly when the device is lay down (as 954wrecker said). Maybe Samsung did that so it doesn't annoy you when using your phone.
this is definitely a bug imo... the auto brightness doesn't change for me either...
CuBz90 said:
When I'm in a light room the screen goes brighter but if I walk into a darker room, the screen doesn't dim unless I lock and then unlock the screen.
Anyone else having similar issues?
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I also have an auto briteness issue, when I disable AutoBrite and set it manually about half my apps override the setting and enable AutoBriteness in the app's screen usually dimming the screen? SpadesFree one example and I do not see an override in the app.
Confimed that I'm having same issue, auto brightness not adjusting and slider not movingoing. Have to move it manually
Same issue. It needs to be fixed manually by editing services.jar (root needed)
Nothing else will work. None of google play apps will help with that issue. Does not matter what you do, it will always dimming if you don't fix it in framework.jar
Try it out: http://forum.xda-developers.com/s7-edge/development/auto-brightness-bug-try-fix-t3339858

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