brightness control does nothing

[kelton]

Oh man, I'm loving this new Surface 3. It is plenty snappy and not nearly as buggy as I expected.

There is thing with the brightness control. When I swipe from the right...bringing up the "Action Center"....the brightness control "square" is there. However, it is subdued....as are other functions that are disabled.....I can't do anything to get it to come back on.

I can tap it, and the percentage-brightness indicator changes, but my screen stays at full brightness.

I have also tried changing it in the "Display" settings, but that does nothing, too.

It's interesting that it shows "disabled" (subdued) in that action center.

Any ideas? (I did get it from Costco...so I have 90 days to return it if this is unfixable)
....oh, and it didn't function fine for the first day or so.

 

[jcgc]

Don't have an answer for you but we bought ours from Costco in Nov and last week it died. Will not boot even with a recovery USB. MS customer service is the worst I have experienced. I chose an Advanced Exchange and it should have arrived by now. It hasn't shipped, CS can't tell me when it will ship and they say that they can't cancel it and let me go through a Microsoft Store. In fact they won't just cancel it outright. With Advanced Exchange instead of Standard they ship to you first but they put a hold on your credit card for the cost till they receive your damaged unit. I can't send it until I receive the replacement. Plus all customer service is offshore no one in the U.S. can help.

 

[kelton]

SOLVED

Went to "device manager", uninstalled "display adapter".....and it prompted me to restart.

Once it restarted, the display was somewhat fuzzy.....got another request that I "restart"....clicked ok....and it restarted with everything working. It appears that it noticed the missing display driver and handled that on it's own.

I know that we're having some growing pains....can't wait for the Surface 4..... but I must say that a properly working Surface 3 is miles and miles ahead of the iPad.

 

[eagle63]

I know that we're having some growing pains....can't wait for the Surface 4..... but I must say that a properly working Surface 3 is miles and miles ahead of the iPad.

As long as you don't care about a modern software ecosystem then sure. I'm an iPad convert too, and while I do like my Surface 3 they are very different devices. There are still a number of things that I can't do on my S3 that I could do on my iPad. Glad you like yours though, and yes I'm looking forward to a possible S4 this Spring. (fingers crossed)

 

[kelton]

The battery life and stability of iPads are the primary upsides for me. (and the slightly lighter weight)

Given that I want real, easy-to-find files/folders etc. and multiple applications open .... all without any particular reliance on wifi.... and a traditional computer OS....I'm thrilled to have the form factor of a tablet and the full computer experience.

When the iPad Air 3 arrives...complete with that pencil....I could see myself giving it a try. The idea of keeping track of a $100 pencil is not one that I relish, though.

 

[eagle63]

I realize this isn't the same question/problem you were having when you created this thread, but I've always been a bit confused by how the brightness control is *supposed* to work. I have mine set to auto-change brightness level, which it DOES seem to do, though not very well.

However, what I don't understand is how this is supposed to work in conjunction with the manual 0%,25%,50%,75%,100% "quick setting" tile on the right-hand panel. (charms area? not sure what that right-panel is called) Anyway, if I want to quickly adjust the brightness I can press that tile and change it accordingly. But does that forever override the "auto" setting? It doesn't seem to because the auto checkbox is still checked in settings. Basically the end result is I wind up using the manual control pretty frequently because the auto adjustment never seems to do it's thing very well (doesn't get bright enough in a bright room, nor dark enough in a dark room). But by doing so, I'm not sure if I'm hindering the auto adjustment from working. Hope that makes sense.

 

[kelton]

I don't know the answer to your question....but I have never ever been satisfied with any "auto" brightness feature on any device of any kind. It's never where I want it and it distracts me if it starts getting confused and flickering up and down as I move.... or if my hand brushed up near the sensor. What a hassle. I adjust brightness as needed...manually.

That action center (charms thingy) is very convenient and it does the job nicely. It jumps in 25% increments...which works for me....but of course there is the more accurate slider mechanism in settings. Also, Sean Ong (a youtube channel) has a video list and description of "must have" accessories and apps for the Surface 3. One of them is an app that makes it incredibly easy to adjust brightness (among other very useful features).

 

[eagle63]

Thanks, yeah maybe the problem I just need to turn off auto and rely on the charms increment tiles. My iPad did a pretty good job of auto adjusting, at least to the extent that it would get much brighter and much dimmer when appropriate. The S3 always seems like it's confined to a really narrow range when in auto-mode, which got me to wondering if there was some relationship between the 25% increments on the action center tile and the auto mode. It wouldn't make sense if there was an association, however it also doesn't really make sense that you are allowed to manually adjust brightness when in auto mode at all. (at least not without it removing you from auto mode anytime you tried to manually adjust) I think that's where my confusion is coming from.