Develop Bugs

[Q] Samsung Focus: Hack to Disable Screen Dim on all White Screens (like Email)

Is there currently a hack, custom ROM, or other way to prevent the screen from dimming way down when on screens with lots of white (like the email/Outlook screen). Even when I have brightness set to "HIGH" and Auto to "OFF", all the other screens are really bright. But when I go to the email screen (or any other app that has a white background), the Focus automatically dims it way down. I'm sure this is to save battery or eye-strain on white screens, but I'd like it to be much brighter if possible.
Thanks!

Yeah, It's look hard but I want it on my HD7 too.
because the auto-brightness on WP7 was not smart so much compare to the other.
It's not give the lowest brightness when enter into the dark room (that's hurt my eye) and not bright enough when enter into the sunlight.

Nope. It's programmed into the pentile display driver. Total deal-breaker for me.
Perlnx said:
Yeah, It's look hard but I want it on my HD7 too.
because the auto-brightness on WP7 was not smart so much compare to the other.
It's not give the lowest brightness when enter into the dark room (that's hurt my eye) and not bright enough when enter into the sunlight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The auto-brightness setting in WP7 adjusts a screen's brightness based only on the ambient light sensor. The Focus and Omnia 7 dim their screen if they're displaying a majority of white pixels, even with auto-brightness off and set to high.

Switch to the white theme. It happens so frequetly now that I don't even register it!
OK, so that's not a solution but give it a go, it bugged the hell out of me at the start but now ive forgotten it even does it.
I understand why they've done it, but really it should follow the brightness setting if they're worked about battery life.
Sent from my OMNIA7 using Board Express

How to dim the GN screen even more?

I find the dimmest screen toggle still too bright. I find it embarrassing to use in dark public spaces.
Is there a way to dim the screen even more?

Download the screen filter app from the play store. Literally puts a filter effect on the screen to make it appear darker making it much easier to use in the dark.

Yes its possible to take the screen much lower, but we have to edit the framework. Nobody had done this mod yet for some reason.

CM9 has the ability to change the screen lowest settings built in

B97 said:
Download the screen filter app from the play store. Literally puts a filter effect on the screen to make it appear darker making it much easier to use in the dark.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1. I use Screen Filter also, it's uber handy for reading at night when the light seems too bright. If you've got hardkeys like I had on my Desire, you can even turn them off.

i wrote a tutorial on how you can mod the frameworks apk. it's very easy and you can change the brightness levels to anything you want. here's the thread
screen filter only puts a transparent layer on the screen and messes with the colors. modding the frameworks will lower default brightness to any level you want. you can raise it too if you like.

Thanks for all the ideas. I went with the easiest one, Screen Filter.

AOKP also has an option to reduce screen brightness...

dynamicpda said:
Thanks for all the ideas. I went with the easiest one, Screen Filter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good man!
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA

neotekz said:
i wrote a tutorial on how you can mod the frameworks apk. it's very easy and you can change the brightness levels to anything you want. here's the thread
screen filter only puts a transparent layer on the screen and messes with the colors. modding the frameworks will lower default brightness to any level you want. you can raise it too if you like.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great work, I've been wondering why nobody did this mod yet for the nexus. I made that same mod on my atrix, using the sgs2 thread as well. But I've been too lazy to do it for nexus.
The above mod is the best option. Screen filter doesn't achieve the same results. The above mod reduces power draw as well when on the lower brightness setting of 5 or so. Screen filter just hides the higher brightness but has same power draw.

RogerPodacter said:
Great work, I've been wondering why nobody did this mod yet for the nexus. I made that same mod on my atrix, using the sgs2 thread as well. But I've been too lazy to do it for nexus.
The above mod is the best option. Screen filter doesn't achieve the same results. The above mod reduces power draw as well when on the lower brightness setting of 5 or so. Screen filter just hides the higher brightness but has same power draw.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would be correct for back-lit screens. For the Galaxy Nexus screen, though, Screen Filter does help reducing power draw as a darker screen content = lower brightness.
I used to use SF for quite a while until I got fed up of it causing stutters to most animations. After thorough examination I concluded that the Nexus's GPU is the culprit. For some reason it just doesn't like multiple graphics being updated at once. Modding the overlay XML allows it to run at full speed.
Can anyone confirm the same reduced framerate issue?. It's also the reason why some ROMs include a setting to remove the navigation buttons glow. I tested with CM9 on the SGS2 and experienced none of the stutters in cases where the GN would. Another example: sliding between sections (comments, ralated, etc.) in YouTube is laggy iff the video is playing.

fnf said:
That would be correct for back-lit screens. For the Galaxy Nexus screen, though, Screen Filter does help reducing power draw as a darker screen content = lower brightness.
I used to use SF for quite a while until I got fed up of it causing stutters to most animations. After thorough examination I concluded that the Nexus's GPU is the culprit. For some reason it just doesn't like multiple graphics being updated at once. Modding the overlay XML allows it to run at full speed.
Can anyone confirm the same reduced framerate issue?. It's also the reason why some ROMs include a setting to remove the navigation buttons glow. I tested with CM9 on the SGS2 and experienced none of the stutters in cases where the GN would. Another example: sliding between sections (comments, ralated, etc.) in YouTube is laggy iff the video is playing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, GPU just isn't good enough. I hate the lag with the button glow animations on!
I use an app called root dim, it's really useful. Let's you use a brightness level of 1, which is really quite dim. Free, too.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App

Remoteconcern said:
Agreed, GPU just isn't good enough. I hate the lag with the button glow animations on!
I use an app called root dim, it's really useful. Let's you use a brightness level of 1, which is really quite dim. Free, too.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the tip, on the Galaxy Nexus it's possible to set the brightness to 0 by writing to /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness but the brightness is checked and reset to the minimum (default 10) every time the screen is turned on. I guess Root Dim works to the same effect so it runs as a system service. Still, it'd be an awesome addition for people who haven't bothered to mod.

fnf said:
That would be correct for back-lit screens. For the Galaxy Nexus screen, though, Screen Filter does help reducing power draw as a darker screen content = lower brightness.
I used to use SF for quite a while until I got fed up of it causing stutters to most animations. After thorough examination I concluded that the Nexus's GPU is the culprit. For some reason it just doesn't like multiple graphics being updated at once. Modding the overlay XML allows it to run at full speed.
Can anyone confirm the same reduced framerate issue?. It's also the reason why some ROMs include a setting to remove the navigation buttons glow. I tested with CM9 on the SGS2 and experienced none of the stutters in cases where the GN would. Another example: sliding between sections (comments, ralated, etc.) in YouTube is laggy iff the video is playing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Screen filter may reduce power. But amoled screens save power with lower brightness. There is no difference between lcd vs led on this issue. And modifying the framework to bring min brightness down to 5 rather than 15 saves much more power than screen filter. Its no contest. This isn't different from lcd in this case.
---------- Post added at 03:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:14 PM ----------
fnf said:
Thanks for the tip, on the Galaxy Nexus it's possible to set the brightness to 0 by writing to /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness but the brightness is checked and reset to the minimum (default 10) every time the screen is turned on. I guess Root Dim works to the same effect so it runs as a system service. Still, it'd be an awesome addition for people who haven't bothered to mod.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes we can write to that sysfs file, but it gets reset. The mod to the frameworks incorporates that backlight file so its now able to go down to 1, 2, 5, or whatever you want. It makes it now stock, so you are no longer capped at 10 (actually I think 15 is the cap I see). But that mod is just removing this cap and making it lower to whatever you want. Stock.
So no extra app is needed. No additional tweak. It now makes the stock brightness able to go down to 1 by itself whenever it needs.

ScreenDim 1.10 beta -- need testers

I apologize if this violates forum rules.
ScreenDim is my (paid) app for dimming the screen beyond standard OS settings. On OLED devices, it basically does what ScreenFilter does, but I think in a rather more friendly and useful manner, including pre-sets. (On LCD devices, it's much better than ScreenFilter, as it actually dims the backlight, thereby improving contrast and battery life.)
I just finished making a beta of ScreenDim 1.10. The main new feature is Easy Mode which combines the brightness and contrast sliders into one. Currently, Easy Mode only works on Galaxy S2 (including Epic 4G Touch and other versions) and Kindle Fire. You can toggle Easy Mode with Menu | Settings | Easy Mode.
I'd be grateful for any beta test results. To the first ten people who send me useful reports, I'll give give free copies of the paid ScreenDim 1.10 once it's released, as well as free copies of my LunarMap HD and Force2SD apps, if you want them. (Alas, I don't have a gift-code setup arranged, so the free copies won't auto-upgrade.)

I would be more than happy to be your first beta tester!
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

Buggy at times, when at 0% it doesn't work with volume keys --- only min: 0.0% and Max 0.1% when put down to 0.0% with volume keys...
Same applies when pressing min (highest will go to 0.1% when holding volume up and repeatedly hitting volume up...)
When screen is too low a dialogue should pop up saying if you do not confirm this brightness within 15 seconds, it will go back to your last setting...
There should be an option to disable notification icon (not invisible, just not at all) totally when using and/or not using the application.
A more detailed About/Help menu would be more useful...
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

If I've helped, I am interested in free paid versions of your apps... I believe that if you send a check in the mail after the person buys the app as reimbursement would be more easier than consistently updating via email. (Not to overstep you or anything, just a suggestion.)
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

App works as promised. Some screenshots attached.
Suggestions: have way to disable notification icon.
Also when not in easy mode the lowest you can go is 11.8 on both sliders. Not sure if that is design or a bug.
Sent from my Galaxy S2

Looks good, except the plus button above the brightness slider doesn't work. I'll play with it tonight and let you know how it goes.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

Nice app! Everything seems to be working, I just don't understand the "Active" action..I'm not sure what the purpose of it is.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

deedscreen said:
If I've helped, I am interested in free paid versions of your apps... I believe that if you send a check in the mail after the person buys the app as reimbursement would be more easier than consistently updating via email. (Not to overstep you or anything, just a suggestion.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great idea. I can send a paypal payment. I had someone do that for me when I tested their app, and I forgot that I could do it myself.

Bigt2003 said:
Looks good, except the plus button above the brightness slider doesn't work. I'll play with it tonight and let you know how it goes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When did you download? I think I fixed that problem around midnight last night and uploaded a version with that fixed. (But I forgot to mark a version number.)

chucky_93 said:
Nice app! Everything seems to be working, I just don't understand the "Active" action..I'm not sure what the purpose of it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You mean the "Active" checkbox? That turns ScreenDim on and off.

ravizzle said:
Suggestions: have way to disable notification icon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can't be done without sacrificing reliability. Unless you do something root-ish (and I really want this app to be non-root), the only way I know of keeping an app from being killed in low-memory situations is by using Service.startForeground(), but the OS requires a notification icon when you do that.
Also when not in easy mode the lowest you can go is 11.8 on both sliders. Not sure if that is design or a bug.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want, you can make the brightness slider go down to 0.4% by using the "Set minimum brightness" menu option. But you will find that below 11.8%, the brightness stops changing, so there is no point to that, and that's why I set the default minimum for the Galaxy S2 series to 11.8%.
You could make contrast go below 11.8%, but the display would probably be dimmer than anybody wants (I am about the pickiest user in terms of darkness, because I am an amateur astronomer, and I don't want the device to destroy night vision), and the display quality would be low. Unfortunately, given how OLED devices work, at low brightness levels there are much fewer colors available.
Technical stuff in case anybody is curious:
The way Easy Mode works is that 30% on the Easy Mode slider is equivalent to 11.8% on the brightness slider and 100% on the contrast slider. When you go above 30% in Easy Mode, you're increasing brightness and keeping contrast at 100%. When you go below 30% in Easy Mode, brightness stays at 11.8%, and contrast goes down, hitting 11.8% when the Easy Mode slider is at 0%.
On LCD devices, the brightness slider controls the backlight and the contrast slider controls the white level (by drawing a gray rectangle over the screen). On OLED devices, both of them have a similar visual effect, namely they both reduce the intensity of the miniature LEDs that make up an OLED display. But at low brightness levels, you have fewer color intensities available on the physical display.

Works great. I have been waiting for this so I don't have hear the wife complain that my screen is too bright at night and keeping her up.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

Loving it! I am trying to purchase the paid version but the Play Store keeps popping an error message on both phones. I guess I will have to buy it later today. Nice job!
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Xparent Blue Tapatalk 2

I just posted 1.10b (see link in original post) which fixes a few minor issues.

arpruss said:
You mean the "Active" checkbox? That turns ScreenDim on and off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh I see..well this app seems to be working great
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

everything works really well, tested in easy mode... only issue was the " + " button didn't work the first time I pressed it, and the n I pressed " - " and they both started working again. I could not get the issue to happen again, don't know why it happened the first time.

works as expected. only problem, and perhaps this is intentional, is that if you change the brightness in the android display settings (as oppoposed to the app), then it goes back to the standard android brightness scheme. in other words, the app and android settings dont seem to correlate with eachother? lemee try to give you an example...
i go into android display settings and change it to 100%. then i go into your app and set the brightness to 0%. this dims the screen down tremendously, which is exactly what i like. okay, now if i go back into android display settings (still leaving the app still at 0% with ultra dim display), and lower the android screen brightness setting to say... 95%, the app seems to disable or something and the brightness will jump UP to android's 90%. instead of the display getting further dimmer, it instead shoots back up to almost full brightness when it should be going down. i hope that makes sense.

cnstarz said:
works as expected. only problem, and perhaps this is intentional, is that if you change the brightness in the android display settings (as oppoposed to the app), then it goes back to the standard android brightness scheme. in other words, the app and android settings dont seem to correlate with eachother? lemee try to give you an example...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right, the system settings partly override ScreenDim's brightness setting. I can't lock in the settings without root.

this app rocks man, thx

I found a bunch of bugs when using "Quick activate" and loading presets and changing settings starting from a disabled state. I fixed the ones I found in 1.10c (now up), but there may be others.

How to tweak light brightness down even further even lower on the S3?

My screen dim level is at 1 and my phone is still too bright. How could I reduce this even further so that sliding my brightness toggle in the notifications bar all the way to low will reduce the brightness even further? Is there not an option or a mod that allows you to pretty much dim your screen to complete darkness?

zetsui said:
My screen dim level is at 1 and my phone is still too bright. How could I reduce this even further so that sliding my brightness toggle in the notifications bar all the way to low will reduce the brightness even further? Is there not an option or a mod that allows you to pretty much dim your screen to complete darkness?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
screen filter from playstore

harshrp11 said:
screen filter from playstore
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see screen filter, the only problem I have with it is its persistent notification. As far as I can see there's no way to remove it. If I could get rid of the persistent notification I would set it to boot with tasker.
Suggestions to remove from notification?

Try lux auto brightness not sure if it has persistent notification or not.

jefferson9 said:
Try lux auto brightness not sure if it has persistent notification or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know about lux too, but it's not what I need.
Is there a way to lower the brightness set by the kernel or is this unchangeable?

Download screen calibrator and it works like a charm, you can also remove the icon from the status bar
Sent from my SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app

I looked into this too, I believe the only option is screen filter or anything like it.. which makes no sense to me.
Lower brightness = better for eyes+battery

i386W7 said:
I looked into this too, I believe the only option is screen filter or anything like it.. which makes no sense to me.
Lower brightness = better for eyes+battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I actually prefer the dropdown notification built into AOKP roms for brightness, but the lowest brightness is too bright. In a room with lights off, reading the amazon kindle before bed is pretty discomforting if you're trying to ease into sleep. Way too bright.
Apparently the only way to do it unless the screen filter author comes up with a way to get rid of that persistent notification/load on startup is to kernel hack, and personally for someone who isn't a developer/programmer, I wouldn't touch an opensource code with a stick

I have the same problem. The lowest brightness is still too high to read something with the lights off.

Hey, I think I actually found something.. do you have cm10? If you do, you can turn on screen filter normally then go to settings > apps > screen filter and uncheck "show notifications". That took away the persistent notification for me.
I don't know if you can do this in aopk.

i have a great solution (with a notification-so i will try your suggestion 386 once my rom is done backing up), but want to make my own personalized "build (apps, tweaks etc) thread". Where can I make it without getting slapped by the mods? In the galaxy s3 general thread or since most of it is can be done on different android phones in the the overall general thread?

[Q] Z1compact: getting minimum brightness LOWER

Hello Everyone,
I have a problem with my amami and I doubt I am the only one but for some reason people do hardly complain: the brightness even at lowest possible setting is still too bright.
I had this back when I had original FW and I am having the same issue with CM11 (latest nightlies). Using manual control or auto-brightness doesn't make much difference, i.e. in a totally dark room the ambient light sensor reports 0Lux and the screen is still too bright.
I found a workaround already (the ScreenFilter app that people recommend all over the internet) but it sucks because it heavily reduces the picture quality, i.e. visibly reduces contrast and especially the gray color resolution. And it also doesn't reduce power consumption like real brightness value change would do.
I looked around for possible solutions and there is a trick with writting a new value of current limit to Linux settings (some mA value between 0 and 20 to some max_current file in procfs). And this really helps but also impacts the maximum brightness, the screen is hardly ready in sun light with reduced current.
Is there a silver bullet? I am thinking about writing an app for that but it would require SU permissions and is kinda dirty to implement. Can anyone recommend a better solution?

have you tried the xposed Modul "minimum brightness" ?

Install Lux Brightness. from play store.
You can overboost it or make the screen so dark that you can't even see it.
Another great screen mod is Twilight which basically dims the screen red based on clock so it helps fall sleep faster when using phone before bed.

New Folder said:
Install Lux Brightness. from play store.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, another vote for Lux. It lets you set brightness to negative levels, mine is usually around -50%. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux&hl=en

Vote for Lux here too.
Nothing comes close

camaro322hp said:
Yes, another vote for Lux. It lets you set brightness to negative levels, mine is usually around -50%. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux&hl=en
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the hint. I tried the Lite version and AFAICS it simply uses the same trick as ScreenFilter and other "sub-zero" regulators, putting an alpha overlay on top of the image stack.
You can identify this kludge easily by looking at the button areas, they don't get darker anymore. And you can see the black level not getting real black, i.e. the power consumption is not reduced.
However, Lux seems to be one of the better toys because of the plugin interface. Unfortunately there is no HW plugin for Sony devices but judging by the quick look at the Nexus-4 plugin (it's open source!!) it should be possible to adopt this method to Z1 as well. So, maybe when someone could eventually implement that.

xposed Modul "minimum brightness" works, i tested it for you. you can make the screen dim to complete black with your normal display brightness slider without grey or black overlay. it just sets down the minimum brightness level to 1 or 0 (default is 10 or 20), so it should also work with enabled auto brightness

chertVdetali said:
I looked around for possible solutions and there is a trick with writting a new value of current limit to Linux settings (some mA value between 0 and 20 to some max_current file in procfs). And this really helps but also impacts the maximum brightness, the screen is hardly ready in sun light with reduced current.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as i remember, /proc is only used to call upon information, not to set specific values. What you are looking for is placed within /sys.
To be precise in /sys/devices/leds-qpnp-ee125e00/leds/wled:backlight/. There you will find a file called max_current with which you can easily control the brightness and set it to a very low level. Note that this actually dims the screen and not just applies a filter like most apps do...
One drawback is that the value will change again after you restarted the device. I set up a little flow with Automate β that takes care of this for me. I find this solution a lot better than all the screen filter apps.
This is true for CyanogenMod 11 and GreatDevs Kernel. It might be different on Stock. I know that the path for my Nexus 7 is sys/class/leds/lcd-backlight.
I hope this helps you a little bit.

rob rich said:
xposed Modul "minimum brightness" works, i tested it for you. you can make the screen dim to complete black with your normal display brightness slider without grey or black overlay. it just sets down the minimum brightness level to 1 or 0 (default is 10 or 20), so it should also work with enabled auto brightness
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am wondering how you can claim that the result is complete black. Calling this black is like saying "TN monitors have good black values" (I know such people, they change their mind quickly when they see my Eizo with a VA panel at night).
No, seriously, the default was already 10 (see config.xml in cm11 repo) and the difference between 1 and 10 is hardly visible. It's still way too bright for work without eye strain in the darkness.
@Wooaarr: thanks, this is apparently the way to go, I just need to find time to configure it. And yes, of course, the file is in sysfs and not procfs (automated typing, when I grew up with Linux there was no sysfs out there ).

chertVdetali said:
I am wondering how you can claim that the result is complete black. Calling this black is like saying "TN monitors have good black values" (I know such people, they change their mind quickly when they see my Eizo with a VA panel at night).
No, seriously, the default was already 10 (see config.xml in cm11 repo) and the difference between 1 and 10 is hardly visible. It's still way too bright for work without eye strain in the darkness.
@Wooaarr: thanks, this is apparently the way to go, I just need to find time to configure it. And yes, of course, the file is in sysfs and not procfs (automated typing, when I grew up with Linux there was no sysfs out there ).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
when i disable autobrightness and push the slider to the left my screen goes completely off, so you wanna say that screen off isnt black? funny

chertVdetali said:
Thanks for the hint. I tried the Lite version and AFAICS it simply uses the same trick as ScreenFilter and other "sub-zero" regulators, putting an alpha overlay on top of the image stack.
You can identify this kludge easily by looking at the button areas, they don't get darker anymore. And you can see the black level not getting real black, i.e. the power consumption is not reduced.
However, Lux seems to be one of the better toys because of the plugin interface. Unfortunately there is no HW plugin for Sony devices but judging by the quick look at the Nexus-4 plugin (it's open source!!) it should be possible to adopt this method to Z1 as well. So, maybe when someone could eventually implement that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting information, I did not know that. You are correct, the navigation buttons are brighter than the rest of the screen at negative values. I had noticed that before but didn't know why. Works well enough for me though.

rob rich said:
when i disable autobrightness and push the slider to the left my screen goes completely off, so you wanna say that screen off isnt black? funny
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, you claim that it works for me because you tested it on your device. So... yeah, why not, I could say what you mentioned above just following the same logics. :silly: