TIP: screen auto brightness relative to low/medium/high setting

[dannejanne]

I have discovered something that ain't obvious and probably not many knows this.

You can affect the automatic screen brightness (at least on the Lumia 800). Depending on if you have brightness set to low, medium or high when you turn on auto it will behave differently.

If you have brightness on high and then turn on auto brightness the screen will keep itself much brighter.

If you have brightness on low and then turn on auto brightness the screen will keep itself on very low brightness at most times.

May very well be that you are setting the "roof" for the brightness and not the sensitivity. But you sure can affect it. So even if you are using auto brightness it will matter if the manual setting is on low/medium/high when you turn on auto.

 

[jimski]

Interesting. I have suspected this after some passing observation. Going to have to test it on my L900.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

 

[mparker]

I have discovered something that ain't obvious and probably not many knows this.

You can affect the automatic screen brightness (at least on the Lumia 800). Depending on if you have brightness set to low, medium or high when you turn on auto it will behave differently.

If you have brightness on high and then turn on auto brightness the screen will keep itself much brighter.

If you have brightness on low and then turn on auto brightness the screen will keep itself on very low brightness at most times.

May very well be that you are setting the "roof" for the brightness and not the sensitivity. But you sure can affect it. So even if you are using auto brightness it will matter if the manual setting is on low/medium/high when you turn on auto.

I think this may be a WP7 feature across all devices, or at least all amoled devices. I first noticed this on my Focus-1. It was there in the original release of WP7.

 

[dannejanne]

Took me about two months to figure it out. I thought the screen was a bit dim evn though I was outside. Turned off auto brightness and it was on medium. Set it to highand turned auto back on and the screen became much lighter and much more visible.

Sent from my Lumia 800 using Board Express

 

[btbam91]

I was suspicious of this also.

 

[sentimentGX4]

I noticed this; but am unsure whether this isn't just a one time effect from a lack of calibration.

(For example, it might be brighter/dimmer when you first adjust the settings; but, after 2 hrs of use, autobrightness will be the same brightness regardless of your previous setting.)

 

[mparker]

I noticed this; but am unsure whether this isn't just a one time effect from a lack of calibration.

(For example, it might be brighter/dimmer when you first adjust the settings; but, after 2 hrs of use, autobrightness will be the same brightness regardless of your previous setting.)

I haven't specifically checked for this, but I don't think it works that way. On my Focus-1 I generally ran auto-low, but this was too dim in summer. I had to switch to auto-high in order to see the screen outside, but once I did that I was good to go. I'd switch it back to auto-med or auto-low sometime in the fall.

 

[fdl3]

You can affect the automatic screen brightness...Depending on if you have brightness set to low, medium or high when you turn on auto it will behave differently.

True for my HTC Trophy.

 

[rockstarzzz]

It is across the board for all WP devices Gen1, Gen1.5 and Gen2.

The autobrightness by default comes as "High" manually and then auto on all HTC devices.

However, what isn't the same is the way the sensors are calibrated. So high for my HTC Titan isn't high enough for my Lumia 800 and vice versa. However, when it isn't set on "auto" mode, the high is same for all devices. It is only during "auto" mode that the brightness is different levels of high between devices.

 

[selfcreation]

well this is a nice feature for this THREAD: http://forums.windowscentral.com/os-discussion/190027.htm

 

[Nataku4ca]

lol, i just found out last weekend as well, i was going.... why can't i see under the sun? what happen to my clear black, then went oh... its auto setting itself to low when it was on auto (manually changed it to high) then when i got inside and turned auto back on it was brighter and still changes depending on condition, but brighter, i went... @@

 

[boss.king]

I'm pretty sure most smartphones do this. My 3GS did, my friends GS2 does, and my Titan does. I think it's a basic part of auto-brightness.

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

I remember when I discovered this on my T-Mobile 710 a while ago, but thought it was an issue with the ROM I was using (was trying out different Mango ROMS). I went back to stock and did the same test, and the screen still wasn't visible under bright sunlight, so then I realized it had to be a setting and I remembered how the iPhone behaves to where you can manually set your brightness but still have it set to automatic at the same time. This is hard to get used to because I'm used to Android's auto brightness, but I like this one better because it's less "buggy" because Android's auto brightness would just go wonky sometimes (especially depending on the device)

 

[oldpueblo]

Something as simple as this can help explain the battery fluctuations people are seeing across devices. Some might have it on low/auto and some on high/auto and obviously one will drain the battery a lot more though both say they're on auto.

 

[selfcreation]

Something as simple as this can help explain the battery fluctuations people are seeing across devices. Some might have it on low/auto and some on high/auto and obviously one will drain the battery a lot more though both say they're on auto.

specially on AMOLED screens.