Hi,
i have a problem with my three days old HD. Besides the fact it seems to be much slower than it should be, the problem is the screen goes dim after a while. I'm not talking about it going black after a while, like it's supposed to, but in normal working mode it just kinda becomes darker, kinda like notebook screen goes a little dim when you unplug it from power. When i turn it on, it looks ok, but after a while, mostly after it first time goes black due to inactivity, the screen looks dimmed, no matter what i do, and after a few minutes it returns to normal, without any apparent reason, kinda random. At first i thought it might be something in HDTweak, so i did the factory reset, but it's happening again. Any ideas?
Try disabling the light sensor. It is supposed to adjust the screen brightness automatically, depending on the external light conditions. You can disable it in 'Energy', under Start -> Settings.
Well, it sort of works. When i disable the light sensor, i get the screen for adjusting the light on battery and AC. When i adjust the slider for battery, the screen lights up and it's ok. But, the moment the device locks itself (via HDTweak setting, the only thing i adjusted in HDTweak, it dims, and when i unlock it, it's still dimmed. Then when i again go into light sensor setting and press on the slider, it lights up. I don't understand what's going on. Faulty device maybe?
Also try changing the settings in the advanced tab.
Adding a minute or reducing a minute here seems to kickstart the device - and the annoying screen dimming goes away.
r
Andrew
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.
Hi all,
On a number of occasions, I've used Market apps to control the screen brightness, either manually (like a brightness widget) or scheduled (using Timeriffic - a great tool for automatic profile changes throughout the day).
Apparently, these apps are not aware of the correct minimum brightness supported by the Leo, making it too easy to go too low, which essentially disables the display completely.
Touch still works, so if I'm lucky enough to remember the location of the widget/slider/controls, I may be able to turn brightness back up to a "sane" level.
For example, Timeriffic turns the screen off with a brightness level of 10% - 15% is the lowest working setting.
If I'm unable to fix it this way, I'm basically forced to reset. The problem is that Android *remembers* this setting after a reboot, and reapplies it just when the device is vibrated slightly at the "Android" logo animation. Thus, with a black screen, it is impossible for me to unlock the SIM, hard to unlock the screen lock, and virtually impossible to correct the brightness setting. I need to remove my data.img ("hard resetting" Android) and restore what I can from backups.
The problem also seems to occur with the standard screen dimming which occurs at about half time before the "screen off" setting. I can see the display start to dim, then it suddeny turns off. In this case, however, Android of course reverts to normal brightness at the touch of the screen or press of a button.
On a related note, I have experienced (like right now) that brightness range used by Android is much dimmer then normal. That is, using the regular brightness slider in Settings, I can only vary between almost invisible (min) and quite dim (max). Curiously, in this situation, the display can get *much* dimmer than normal, without becoming disabled.
Any ideas on these issues would be most welcome!
Workarounds found later in this thread:
- Shine a bright light on the screen - the graphics are still there if you look really hard. It's not a joke!
- Use Screencast in Droid Explorer to "remote control" your Android
- adb shell "echo 255 >/sys/class/leds/lcd-backlight/brightness"
ugumba said:
Hi all,
On a number of occasions, I've used Market apps to control the screen brightness, either manually (like a brightness widget) or scheduled (using Timeriffic - a great tool for automatic profile changes throughout the day).
Apparently, these apps are not aware of the correct minimum brightness supported by the Leo, making it too easy to go too low, which essentially disables the display completely.
Touch still works, so if I'm lucky enough to remember the location of the widget/slider/controls, I may be able to turn brightness back up to a "sane" level.
For example, Timeriffic turns the screen off with a brightness level of 10% - 15% is the lowest working setting.
If I'm unable to fix it this way, I'm basically forced to reset. The problem is that Android *remembers* this setting after a reboot, and reapplies it just when the device is vibrated slightly at the "Android" logo animation. Thus, with a black screen, it is impossible for me to unlock the SIM, hard to unlock the screen lock, and virtually impossible to correct the brightness setting. I need to remove my data.img ("hard resetting" Android) and restore what I can from backups.
The problem also seems to occur with the standard screen dimming which occurs at about half time before the "screen off" setting. I can see the display start to dim, then it suddeny turns off. In this case, however, Android of course reverts to normal brightness at the touch of the screen or press of a button.
On a related note, I have experienced (like right now) that brightness range used by Android is much dimmer then normal. That is, using the regular brightness slider in Settings, I can only vary between almost invisible (min) and quite dim (max). Curiously, in this situation, the display can get *much* dimmer than normal, without becoming disabled.
Any ideas on these issues would be most welcome!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know these app(s) but if they are writing their settings and configured values into a ini or settings file, than you might be able to connect via adb and change the setting by this way.
With tools like Droidexplorer or ADB magic, browsing through the files should be very comfortable and you might find the correct file.
this happens on regular android devices ...i have a couple of them
thatruth132 said:
this happens on regular android devices ...i have a couple of them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What happens? That brightness is set too low, essentially disabling the screen, so you're forced to hard reset or perform some root magic? How do you cope with it? Or does it happen that the permitted brightness range is just dimmer than usual?
Btw, until there is no light-sensor support in kernel, you can't use such apps for the brightness
Stills a good advice
I have had the same issue with the brightness range being too low. The max brightness is really dim and the colors don't seem right. That may just be the dimming effect though. If I restart the phone it seems to take care of this. I have not had the screen go below the minimum level and turn off though.
is there a fix for this. i just experienced this problem
I experienced the same with Multicon widgets.. had to delete Android and start over
somebully said:
I experienced the same with Multicon widgets.. had to delete Android and start over
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh wow, not good at all, crap...
so that means if i do that i'll lose everything huh?
Theres no way to restore the factory brightness or factory settings for the android?
aznsHD2 said:
Oh wow, not good at all, crap...
so that means if i do that i'll lose everything huh?
Theres no way to restore the factory brightness or factory settings for the android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As long as you have a working WinMo it should be possible to edit the values of brightness, but I have no idea where this information is stored.
Deleting Android folder and unzipping again is esentially restoring to factory settings.
yea this happens to me all the time, its a *****. it cuts off at exactly 12% for me. what i do is have aldiko(a book reader) on the home screen. if i click on it and open a book i can just swipe on the left side of the screen to adjust brightness. since i know that its on the home screeen on the right side middle, i can usually find my way back to it.
somebully said:
As long as you have a working WinMo it should be possible to edit the values of brightness, but I have no idea where this information is stored.
Deleting Android folder and unzipping again is esentially restoring to factory settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
which means that i'll lose everything such as data correct? new contacts etc. msgs...
any thing on this... isnt their a file in the android folder that i could maybe replace to restore to factory settings.
and could someone post a screen shot of their phone so i know where the numbers for the pin code lockscreen. tryin to get past that, then i can adjust my brightness
LOL I experienced it one time. And I must delete data.img to restore the phone. After this, I don't use any brightness tools (except ones already in the Android build).
If anyone have solution, please point us
Well i was able to get my screen back to normal. lol.
I didnt delete the data.img, i simply copied it and then removed it, started a fresh install, and then just marked on my screen where the numbers were, turned it off, put the old data.img back. Followed my marks, and was able to unlock it and then found the power control widget. And bam! screen back to bright...
This might work for you!
Erm... In similar circumstances I found this worked...
I was trying out different Android builds and I found a screen brightness widget. It had various available levels of brightness, one being 0%. As soon as I selected it I felt pretty stupid as true to it's word it gave me 0% brightness placing me in a similar position to the OP.
My Solution. I used my (very bright) led torch to light the screen. By playing around with the angle and beam width I found I could just make out the on screen graphics enough to re-adjust the brightness level.
Simples!
Just as " Justblair " said .. you can place your device under a very bright light thus you'll be able to see the screen and what it's showing .. idk what build you guys are using but in cyanogen you can adjust the lowest dim level so that any app or widget tries to set the brightness to 0% it's automatically set to your preset, 15% for instance.
I've only faced this problem once
Is it absolutely necessary to flood the main thread with all these useless noob posts?
It really has nothing to do with Android development on HD2 and should be posted in the General section IMO.
kawazaki said:
Just as " Justblair " said .. you can place your device under a very bright light thus you'll be able to see the screen and what it's showing .. idk what build you guys are using but in cyanogen you can adjust the lowest dim level so that any app or widget tries to set the brightness to 0% it's automatically set to your preset, 15% for instance.
I've only faced this problem once
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cyanogen allows you a max dim level of 26 - which is too little on the HD2.
In Tasker, 30 is the lowest setting that still provides light. Maybe Cyanogen can be patched for the HD2 in coming builds?
Thanks for the tip on shining a bright light on the screen.
Another tip is to use Droid Explorer's "Screencast" feature, to view and control your Android's screen on your PC desktop. Of course, the brightness setting has no effect here.
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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).