Develop Bugs

[Q] Automatically Adjust brightness option?

Hello all,
I'm just curious as to how this feature is supposed to work. I have my device set to automatically adjust while it's on medium brightness and I've noticed that the brightness jumps from low to medium frequently, especially when I'm on just one page.

manny84 said:
Hello all,
I'm just curious as to how this feature is supposed to work. I have my device set to automatically adjust while it's on medium brightness and I've noticed that the brightness jumps from low to medium frequently, especially when I'm on just one page.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe it just counts the number of white pixels on the screen on the omnia. this is why it jumps so much. The only way to prevent the jumping is to set the birghtness on low, with the auto setting off. Even on medium or high it jumps when the page has a certain % of white pixels. Like for opening the browser its really annoying however on low brightness the colours are really nice and its just perfect for me. Its just too bright on med or high brightness for my preferences.
But the way how the "feature" itself work I have no clue. Maybe a light sensor. But the jumpiness is caused by the number of white pixels on the amoled screens, and occurs only on samsung devices I believe.

Marvin_S said:
I believe it just counts the number of white pixels on the screen on the omnia. this is why it jumps so much. The only way to prevent the jumping is to set the birghtness on low, with the auto setting off. Even on medium or high it jumps when the page has a certain % of white pixels. Like for opening the browser its really annoying however on low brightness the colours are really nice and its just perfect for me. Its just too bright on med or high brightness for my preferences.
But the way how the "feature" itself work I have no clue. Maybe a light sensor. But the jumpiness is caused by the number of white pixels on the amoled screens, and occurs only on samsung devices I believe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that explanation, Marvin

How does the autobrightness function? IE Normally.

I've noticed with my GNEX that it seems like all of the sudden it won't auto dim. When I unlock the device it will brighten if needed, however if I walk into a dimmer area it will not auto dim. Is this the normal behavior for the light sensor?
I'm used to my Xperia Play which would constantly adjust the screen up and down.

My auto-brightness setting sets the screen brightness lower than the lowest actual brightness setting regardless of whether I'm in light or dark.
There's a fix for it here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1377410&highlight=auto+screen+brightness
I haven't tested that out though.

Kinbote said:
My auto-brightness setting sets the screen brightness lower than the lowest actual brightness setting regardless of whether I'm in light or dark.
There's a fix for it here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1377410&highlight=auto+screen+brightness
I haven't tested that out though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea I was worried maybe the brightness sensor was not working since. Turns out my wife's droid 2 with CM7 acts the same way. Lowest setting until you unlock at which time it only increases the brightness, never decreasing.

"Auto Adjust Screen Tone"

Under display settings, there's this "Auto Adjust Screen Tone" that confuses me. Looking for the explanation as for what it does, I found it supposedly plays with the screen brightness based on the on-screen image, but it's very vague. What's the point of having both this and auto brightness? How do they work together?
Setting it on and off shows absolutely no difference. Does it really save battery at all?

Doesnt really do much for me either. I think its for a better accurate brightness level when you turn on auto brightness. When you turn on auto brightness and the adjust screen tone I think that would mean that the auto brightness would adjust its brightness by the sensor next to the front camera and the auto adjust screen tone would adjust to the image being displayed makeing the brightness best for the envrioment your in(how much light is in your room). Lets say your in a dark room and your trying to veiw a dark image, so the screen would get brighter even if the sensor is saying "theres no light here" based on the screens image. Thats my guess and someone correct me if im wrong. Idk if it saves battery but I just adjust my screen brightness manually.

It should actually be an attempt to match the color temperature of the screen to your environment. For example if you're outside it'll shift everything more blue (around 5,500 degrees kelvin) than if you're indoors with a "warm white" lamp lighting the room (closer to 3,200 kelvin). All this in an attempt to make colors appear more accurate wherever you are. It's safe to assume it uses the camera to read the colors of your environment, I'm pretty sure the light level sensor only measures luminance (brightness). Hope this helps.
Sent from my SM-T800 using XDA Free mobile app

^^^ that's what you'd think from the name, but if you read the description it says adjust display brightness based on image on screen to save battery. So I think for example if you have a mostly white screen it'll reduce the brightness. If done right, you won't notice it because it'll still look plenty bright.
Has nothing to do with temperature. I wish there were a feature for that.
I'd try it for a while to see how it feels. Probably a good feature.

Screen too bright at night, and turning down brightness results in too dark blacks?

This is my first AMOLED screen phone and something I think I may be noticing that maybe you guys can help confirm or deny about AMOLEDs vs LCDs, is that at night when turning the brightness down (way down, like -50 in the Lux Dash app as an example) results in getting the screen to a point where not bright enough to hurt your eyes at all but the blacks are too dark. So there's no real ideal brightness setting in a dark room that equals no eye pain but still allows you to able to see everything on the screen. Or are my eyes just too sensitive and most other people don't need to turn it down as much as I do and therefore don't have this problem?

You tried night mode

Lux is garbage. Factory adaptive brightness and still being able to use the brightness slider to allow on-the-fly adjustments is far superior - it works perfectly on this phone. And in a pitch black room, with adaptive brightness, setting the slider from 0-25% results in an extremely dim screen (1-2 nits) will information still perfectly viewable. Blacks may have uniformity issues, but that is the nature of OLED panels since it is extremely hard to control voltage at near-black levels when the brightness is extremely low.

s1dest3pnate said:
This is my first AMOLED screen phone and something I think I may be noticing that maybe you guys can help confirm or deny about AMOLEDs vs LCDs, is that at night when turning the brightness down (way down, like -50 in the Lux Dash app as an example) results in getting the screen to a point where not bright enough to hurt your eyes at all but the blacks are too dark. So there's no real ideal brightness setting in a dark room that equals no eye pain but still allows you to able to see everything on the screen. Or are my eyes just too sensitive and most other people don't need to turn it down as much as I do and therefore don't have this problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Amoled displays, when used with automatic brightness adjustment, have a small problem - when you are viewing them in the dark, they appear too dark. Their contrast ratio is infinity, which means that dark colors are basically zero luminosity or close to zero. A lot of internet imagery is calibrated for lcd displays, so when you lower your phone brightness to make the brightest parts viewable on an amoled display, the dark colors become too dark and blend together. This is especially true when you are viewing a screen in a dark environment. There's nothing you can do but increase device brightness by hand when you are using automatic brightness adjustment and viewing in the dark,
---------- Post added at 08:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:07 AM ----------
Nitemare3219 said:
Lux is garbage. Factory adaptive brightness and still being able to use the brightness slider to allow on-the-fly adjustments is far superior - it works perfectly on this phone. And in a pitch black room, with adaptive brightness, setting the slider from 0-25% results in an extremely dim screen (1-2 nits) will information still perfectly viewable. Blacks may have uniformity issues, but that is the nature of OLED panels since it is extremely hard to control voltage at near-black levels when the brightness is extremely low.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You do realize that Adaptive Brightness simply changes the brightness of the screen in response to the light sensor reading?
In other words, the phone doesn't care about your preference - it will change the brightness to preset levels.
On Samsung phones, this situation is far more intelligent. The phone still uses the light sensor to adjust the brightness, but the phone also applies a user preset to augment the brightness - when you slide the brightness slider up, the phone will make auto brightness adjustment higher, and vise versa.

nabbed said:
You do realize that Adaptive Brightness simply changes the brightness of the screen in response to the light sensor reading?
In other words, the phone doesn't care about your preference - it will change the brightness to preset levels.
On Samsung phones, this situation is far more intelligent. The phone still uses the light sensor to adjust the brightness, but the phone also applies a user preset to augment the brightness - when you slide the brightness slider up, the phone will make auto brightness adjustment higher, and vise versa.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WHAT? You have it totally backwards. Stock Android, including the Pixel, uses user input to augment the auto light sensor brightness when adaptive brightness is enabled. If my phone thinks 50% brightness is appropriate, but my slider is set to 100, it will choose something like 75% brightness instead. If I drop the slider to 0% in the same instance, it might choose 25% instead. The user preference will ALWAYS be impacting auto brightness.
Samsung phones, unless it changed with Nougat, rely strictly on what the phone thinks is best for auto brightness. The user can adjust the slider with auto brightness on, but the slider is a direct adjustment 0-100% of the true brightness level, and the slider will change automatically when there is a large shift in ambient light after the display has been turned off at least once. User preference does NOT impact auto brightness unless you set it at that specific moment.

Nitemare3219 said:
WHAT? You have it totally backwards. Stock Android, including the Pixel, uses user input to augment the auto light sensor brightness when adaptive brightness is enabled. If my phone thinks 50% brightness is appropriate, but my slider is set to 100, it will choose something like 75% brightness instead. If I drop the slider to 0% in the same instance, it might choose 25% instead. The user preference will ALWAYS be impacting auto brightness.
Samsung phones, unless it changed with Nougat, rely strictly on what the phone thinks is best for auto brightness. The user can adjust the slider with auto brightness on, but the slider is a direct adjustment 0-100% of the true brightness level, and the slider will change automatically when there is a large shift in ambient light after the display has been turned off at least once. User preference does NOT impact auto brightness unless you set it at that specific moment.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Girl, are you kidding me? I just returned a Note 7 for Pixel XL. What were your phones?

nabbed said:
Amoled displays, when used with automatic brightness adjustment, have a small problem - when you are viewing them in the dark, they appear too dark. Their contrast ratio is infinity, which means that dark colors are basically zero luminosity or close to zero. A lot of internet imagery is calibrated for lcd displays, so when you lower your phone brightness to make the brightest parts viewable on an amoled display, the dark colors become too dark and blend together. This is especially true when you are viewing a screen in a dark environment. There's nothing you can do but increase device brightness by hand when you are using automatic brightness adjustment and viewing in the dark,
---------- Post added at 08:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:07 AM ----------
You do realize that Adaptive Brightness simply changes the brightness of the screen in response to the light sensor reading?
In other words, the phone doesn't care about your preference - it will change the brightness to preset levels.
On Samsung phones, this situation is far more intelligent. The phone still uses the light sensor to adjust the brightness, but the phone also applies a user preset to augment the brightness - when you slide the brightness slider up, the phone will make auto brightness adjustment higher, and vise versa.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nabbed said:
Girl, are you kidding me? I just returned a Note 7 for Pixel XL. What were your phones?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a Note7, Pixel XL, and LG V20. Google how adaptive brightness works. There won't be a single article that matches how you say it works.

Nitemare3219 said:
I have a Note7, Pixel XL, and LG V20. Google how adaptive brightness works. There won't be a single article that matches how you say it works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Give me evidence. I don't care what your hypothetical "articles" say, I had the actual phones and played with their brightness settings.

nabbed said:
Give me evidence. I don't care what your hypothetical "articles" say, I had the actual phones and played with their brightness settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you seriously can't tell how adaptive brightness works just by using it as compared to Samsung and LG, I don't know what to tell you. It's pretty damn obvious. If I'm the kind of person who prefers a bright screen, I can set adaptive brightness to 100% and it will always be bright, but stay relative to the ambient lighting. If it's a dim room, the screen will be bright, but nowhere near 100% manual brightness. It only hits 100% manual brightness when under bright light like the sun.
Samsung's auto brightness is still very cookie cutter. If you put 2 Samsung phones side by side with auto brightness on, they will always be the same no matter the ambient light. If I take 2 Pixels, both set to adaptive, and put one on 25% and one in 75%, they will always maintain a brightness difference even when ambient light changes. Samsung phones do not maintain user preferences once the ambient light level changes. I almost never have to adjust my Pixel. I always have to adjust my Note7 because I prefer a slightly brighter screen.

Nitemare3219 said:
If you seriously can't tell how adaptive brightness works just by using it as compared to Samsung and LG, I don't know what to tell you. It's pretty damn obvious. If I'm the kind of person who prefers a bright screen, I can set adaptive brightness to 100% and it will always be bright, but stay relative to the ambient lighting. If it's a dim room, the screen will be bright, but nowhere near 100% manual brightness. It only hits 100% manual brightness when under bright light like the sun.
Samsung's auto brightness is still very cookie cutter. If you put 2 Samsung phones side by side with auto brightness on, they will always be the same no matter the ambient light. If I take 2 Pixels, both set to adaptive, and put one on 25% and one in 75%, they will always maintain a brightness difference even when ambient light changes. Samsung phones do not maintain user preferences once the ambient light level changes. I almost never have to adjust my Pixel. I always have to adjust my Note7 because I prefer a slightly brighter screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What you are saying is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of my experience with Note 7 and Pixel XL. I NEVER had to adjust my Note 7 brightness once I set it.
I find myself constantly adjusting Pixel XL brightness setting.
Maybe they both have "adaptive brightness", but the Note 7 version was perfect, and the Pixel XL is just sh`1rt.

nabbed said:
What you are saying is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of my experience with Note 7 and Pixel XL. I NEVER had to adjust my Note 7 brightness once I set it.
I find myself constantly adjusting Pixel XL brightness setting.
Maybe they both have "adaptive brightness", but the Note 7 version was perfect, and the Pixel XL is just sh`1rt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or maybe you two just have differing opinions on what a "perfect" brightness setting is...

Doesn't matter how you adjust your brightness. I'm just saying that when brightness is low, blacks are darker and disproportionate to other colors.
I love Lux especially with it's profiles. Much better control and accuracy than adaptive brightness. I just wish Lux had an auto-profile switcher based on time of day. I have a day profile, night profile, and car profile.
One thing to note is that Lux allows me to bring the darkness down below 0% to negative values, which is where I usually notice my concerns. But that's what I need to not hurt my eyes at night. So I don't blame the phone or anything - just posted this article out of curiosity. The blacks are probably just turning off completely at some point when I bring the value to below 0% which I think makes sense based on the nature of OLED.

You should just turn on night mode to help with eye strain. If 0% brightness is too bright I don't think you will ever get lux to work the way you want, but night mode helps my eyes a lot.
Pixel XL adaptive brightness adapts to what you set the brightness to. If you go from 0 to 100 in a totally dark room, you notice how the screen stays really bright and doesn't go back to 0 on Pix
Many phones use auto brightness to fullly determine brightness based on sensor and ignores user brightness. If you go from 0 to 100 with an auto brightness phone, the phone will go back to 0.
Some prefer one over the other.

Adaptive Brightness Issues

With adaptive brightness on my screen frequently (every 20 seconds or so) changes brightness slightly even when the ambient light isn't changing. It's very annoying when reading and most noticeable with light backgrounds.
Is this a common issue or does it sound like I have a defective sensor?

dmacarth said:
With adaptive brightness on my screen frequently (every 20 seconds or so) changes brightness slightly even when the ambient light isn't changing. It's very annoying when reading and most noticeable with light backgrounds.
Is this a common issue or does it sound like I have a defective sensor?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here.
So annoying I had to turn adaptive off.
Seems to be when I move, probably changing sensor and it's too sensitive. My head mush change/reflect light on sensor
Anyway it's so distracting that I can't use adaptive brightness, except when pitch dark I can set to 0% adaptive to have lowest light output
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Yep, reminds me of a disco strobe light!

No issues here. I actually think the brightness swing is much better than the OG Pixel XL. I can just leave the setting at 50%. On the OG XL I'd have to turn the brightness down in the living room with lighting from 1 lamp and a tv because it'd be burning my retinas.

I installed Lux Dash and disabled "adaptive brightness" and let Lux handle it. You can go into the profile editor for Lux and setup different presets for different levels of light, you can also adjust the min and max allowed brightness and even setup how you want it to adjust brightness (fade, only set on unlock, dynamic, etc)
It has really made this screen amazing and even helps with battery because most the day my screen doesn't go above 15-20%

AndrasLOHF said:
No issues here. I actually think the brightness swing is much better than the OG Pixel XL. I can just leave the setting at 50%. On the OG XL I'd have to turn the brightness down in the living room with lighting from 1 lamp and a tv because it'd be burning my retinas.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been fine here with the Adaptive Brightness too. Doesn't change too often at all for me.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

I installed Lux also and that did the trick. I assume the sensor is fine since Lux uses it with no problem. It's odd that some of us are having problems and others aren't but it doesn't seem to be a sensor issue.

Having this same issue any solution?

Mzzyhmd said:
Having this same issue any solution?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm curious but how exactly is it reacting for you? Are you just sitting in bed with the lights on and it's still adjusting up and down the brightness? Cause that's what I'm doing right now and it hasn't fluctuated at all. If I put it on the bedside table it'll brighten up and when I pick it up it dims but that's it.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Yeah that's too much fluctuations don't you think I mean on my iPhone x or any other iPhone that I have have used so far I never could tell that the adaptive brightness was on but this device does it in an obvious way and way too frequently that im not sure anymore if this is what it's supposed to do I chatted with a Google agent and they forced quit ambient service thing from system apps and I think that still didn't resolve the issue. I will pop up in a vz store tomorrow and check out if their display devices are doing the same

Mzzyhmd said:
Yeah that's too much fluctuations don't you think I mean on my iPhone x or any other iPhone that I have have used so far I never could tell that the adaptive brightness was on but this device does it in an obvious way and way too frequently that im not sure anymore if this is what it's supposed to do I chatted with a Google agent and they forced quit ambient service thing from system apps and I think that still didn't resolve the issue. I will pop up in a vz store tomorrow and check out if their display devices are doing the same
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm curious to hear what the tell you. Lux has helped me a lot bit I still notice it. To be fair I think I only notice in a dim or dark room with the TV on but this is the first phone I've used where it's noticeable to me. I'm also wondering if this is how it's supposed to work or if there's something wrong with my phone.

Mzzyhmd said:
Yeah that's too much fluctuations don't you think I mean on my iPhone x or any other iPhone that I have have used so far I never could tell that the adaptive brightness was on but this device does it in an obvious way and way too frequently that im not sure anymore if this is what it's supposed to do I chatted with a Google agent and they forced quit ambient service thing from system apps and I think that still didn't resolve the issue. I will pop up in a vz store tomorrow and check out if their display devices are doing the same
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What I described was too much? Sounds appropriate to me. If there's extra light on the phone, I want it to get brighter. If that light goes away, I want it to get dimmer. Now if it was happening with no light changing then I would be annoyed. I keep it at 29% with Adaptive Brightness on and it's not too dark in outside light and not too bright in pitch dark.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

I'm having the same issue. I'm on my second Pixel 2 XL so I don't think it's a sensor problem. I only notice it in lower lighting but it's really annoying when it happens. Haven't seen this issue on any other phone. Im trying out Lux now and set it to only adjust when waking up. There were similar issues when Lux was set to Dynamic.

Ever since Google thought they knew better than everyone else and got rid of auto brightness for adaptive brightness, it's been trash for me. I CONSTANTLY have to raise it in dark rooms and lower it in bright rooms. AKA, I might as well turn it off because I'm manually adjusting it every time anyway.
All in all, it's terrible.

Hobox10 said:
Ever since Google thought they knew better than everyone else and got rid of auto brightness for adaptive brightness, it's been trash for me. I CONSTANTLY have to raise it in dark rooms and lower it in bright rooms. AKA, I might as well turn it off because I'm manually adjusting it every time anyway.
All in all, it's terrible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You know Adaptive Brightness is a mix of manual and auto brightness right? I remember auto brightness actually having the issues you're describing because there was no way to adjust it if it was set. If you have Adaptive Brightness on high enough, it should be bright enough in dark and bright situations. I believe people's issues are that it adjusts too often or the opposite, it's too dark in light rooms and too bright in dark rooms.

EeZeEpEe said:
You know Adaptive Brightness is a mix of manual and auto brightness right? I remember auto brightness actually having the issues you're describing because there was no way to adjust it if it was set. If you have Adaptive Brightness on high enough, it should be bright enough in dark and bright situations. I believe people's issues are that it adjusts too often or the opposite, it's too dark in light rooms and too bright in dark rooms.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I know it's supposed to be a mix somewhat. It's supposed to match the setting you set to whatever the surrounding brightness is relative to your brightness setting.
That's exactly WHY it's trash in my opinion though. It's a flawed methodology. I don't want it matching my setting relative to anything. I want it low in the dark and bright in bright rooms or the sun to be legible and not more. It tries to do some meet-you-in-the-middle garbage and it just doesn't work well.

Hobox10 said:
Yeah I know it's supposed to be a mix somewhat. It's supposed to match the setting you set to whatever the surrounding brightness is relative to your brightness setting.
That's exactly WHY it's trash in my opinion though. It's a flawed methodology. I don't want it matching my setting relative to anything. I want it low in the dark and bright in bright rooms or the sun. It tries to do some meet-you-in-the-middle garbage and it just doesn't work well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found the threshold for the lowest brightness in pitch dark with Adaptive Brightness on to be 29%. That should be dark enough in dark rooms and outdoors it's readable to me. What percentages have you been trying?

Mines doing the same thing. Did anyone work out whether it was hardware?
I used a sensor app to see what light was reporting, and it was stable. I can only assume it's a bug.
For those who aren't sure - if the screen is on, and not moving, without any changes to ambient or direct light, every 20 or so seconds the screen will dim to a warmer colour, and then 20 seconds later will brighten to a whiter colour.

superbestfriends said:
Mines doing the same thing. Did anyone work out whether it was hardware?
I used a sensor app to see what light was reporting, and it was stable. I can only assume it's a bug.
For those who aren't sure - if the screen is on, and not moving, without any changes to ambient or direct light, every 20 or so seconds the screen will dim to a warmer colour, and then 20 seconds later will brighten to a whiter colour.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I had a feeling that's what people might be experiencing.

To add on to this thread, this is also occuring on my gen 1 Pixel.
Ever since I upgraded to 8.1 the adaptive display will brighten/darken while the phone is sitting still in a constantly lit room.
I also appear to have lost much of the granularity in the brightness selecting bar. The first 25% or so is as dim as it goes, and only after that does it begin to alter the brightness. Previously it would begin around 10% on the bar.
Additionally, the logic behind adaptive brightness seems to have gotten worse. I previously left my brightness setting always in the same place, and no matter where I was it was either dim enough (at night) or bright enough (during the day).
Real unhappy with this update.