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Looking for a simple brightness managment app

All I want is an application that can switch between Auto Brightness to Minimum setting (OS specified or lower) at specific time, time when it gets dark. or maybe it can choose the time automatically based on dusk and dawn.
I noticed that Auto setting NEVER drops to minimal setting for some reason......

kolyan said:
All I want is an application that can switch between Auto Brightness to Minimum setting (OS specified or lower) at specific time, time when it gets dark. or maybe it can choose the time automatically based on dusk and dawn.
I noticed that Auto setting NEVER drops to minimal setting for some reason......
Click to expand...
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There is an app called Timeriffic (I think that's how it's spelled). You just input the settings into the app and at that predetermined time, it will adjust settings (including brightness, not sure about auto brightness).
I have it set so that at a certain time (when I leave the house) it will turn off the wifi, turn on vibrate, etc...
But if you fall out of your routine, you kind of go bonkers because you forget that you have timeriffic set and can't figure out why the wifi turned off, etc... LoL!

How about just using Power Widget when to switch between auto/minimal when you realize the screen is too bright?

Thanks. Timeriffic gets the job done, but i wish it would support auto brightness. using power widget doesnt work for me because if i forget to switch back to auto setting, in sunny day i cant even see the screen at all and have to find shaded area just to switch back

kolyan said:
Thanks. Timeriffic gets the job done, but i wish it would support auto brightness. using power widget doesnt work for me because if i forget to switch back to auto setting, in sunny day i cant even see the screen at all and have to find shaded area just to switch back
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I've had to learn where certain objects are on my home screen.
*Unlock* *Swipe right* *press top right of phone*
Haptic feedback is my friend
It's a shame, OLEDs are so much better than TFT screens for battery conservation but they suck in the light, you know, outside, the one place you are most likely to use your MOBILE phone. Ah well, it performs almost as well as the iPhone when the N1's on full brightness. I held it next to my friend's 3GS, but thinking about it forgot to check what brightness hers was on... DOH.
I think they've corrected it now though, with newer designs.

There is also an app that is called auto bright and it can be made into a homescreen shortcut and is basically a macro that turns on autobright. I put it next to my power control widget so in the case where I need to switch brightness manually I can easily switch back. FYI Froyo's power widget has added the autobright setting so soon as a stable version of Froyo comes out this will be a mute point.
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Setting Profiles does the same as well, and a whole lot more.

App I use is called, dimmer. It has to manually be switch.

jimtc said:
There is also an app that is called auto bright and it can be made into a homescreen shortcut and is basically a macro that turns on autobright. I put it next to my power control widget so in the case where I need to switch brightness manually I can easily switch back. FYI Froyo's power widget has added the autobright setting so soon as a stable version of Froyo comes out this will be a mute point.
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OP pointed out (correctly) the Automatic Brightness setting will never automatically set the brightness to the minimum point (that is, as low as you could set it manually). I can confirm that, though Froyo does include the Automatic option on the power control widget, it still won't go all the way dim. It seems rather silly that the Automatic range doesn't go all the way down.
Also, the word you're after is "moot", not mute.

codesplice said:
OP pointed out (correctly) the Automatic Brightness setting will never automatically set the brightness to the minimum point (that is, as low as you could set it manually). I can confirm that, though Froyo does include the Automatic option on the power control widget, it still won't go all the way dim. It seems rather silly that the Automatic range doesn't go all the way down.
Also, the word you're after is "moot", not mute.
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Click to collapse
yes. thats correct. if auto setting would go all the way down, then i would not need any 3rd party software to begin with. i really wish we could adjust the range and sensitivity of the sensor
ps. developer of Timeriffic said that its not possible to add Auto Brightness setting to his app because there is no API for that and the only way around is to hack it.

Brightness lower limit?

I was trying to lower the brightness very low to test how it would affect battery drain and it seems that the phone won't let 3rd party apps lower the brightness lower than what you can set it to, in the phone's settings. I tried an app called timerrific that lets you schedule various settings changes, but the phone seems to be overriding it. When I set the brightness to go down to 15% via the app, it does go very dim, but then immediately bounces back up to lowest level the phone's settings let's you set it at. Also, I had auto brightness off and the power saving mode off.
Has anyone been able to get the phone to go to very low brightness?

Thats a good question and would like the answer too... to me, the lowest brightness which must still HOG the battery as sometimes it seems to drain very fast with usage (and I have it on the lowest setting)... seems overly bright. I would without a doubt use it at a lower brightness to conserve energy depending on what I was doing at the time.

hey maybe its just the screen that makes it look bright

labbu63 said:
hey maybe its just the screen that makes it look bright
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Click to collapse
Not sure what you mean? For example, if I set the brightness to go down to 5% through the app Timeriffic, the screen will dim down to where I can barely see anything, but then it immediately raises back up to the lowest setting you can set in the phone's normal settings, which seems to me to be about 25-30%.

Yep
labbu63 said:
hey maybe its just the screen that makes it look bright
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Click to collapse
This is actually correct, the screen is what makes the "Automatic" brightness setting on the SGS phones look brighter than their LCD brethren. As we all know, currently all AMOLED displays use some kind of Pentile Matrix. All HTC devices (The N1 included) currently use RG:BG Pentile Matrix.
Do a google search on: "RGBG Pentile" and Samsung's site details it.
The SAMOLED display Samsung has made uses a new Pentile Matrix called RGBW:
Do a google search on: "nouvoyance" and it's the first site (sorry for the odd instructions, won't let new users post links )
Using the new RGBW, a white subpixel is introduced on top of the standard RGB stripe. From my reading, this allows the screen to achieve the same resolution to the eye with 33% less subpixels and is a brighter display in the process.

Asori said:
This is actually correct, the screen is what makes the "Automatic" brightness setting on the SGS phones look brighter than their LCD brethren. As we all know, currently all AMOLED displays use some kind of Pentile Matrix. All HTC devices (The N1 included) currently use RG:BG Pentile Matrix.
Do a google search on: "RGBG Pentile" and Samsung's site details it.
The SAMOLED display Samsung has made uses a new Pentile Matrix called RGBW:
Do a google search on: "nouvoyance" and it's the first site (sorry for the odd instructions, won't let new users post links )
Using the new RGBW, a white subpixel is introduced on top of the standard RGB stripe. From my reading, this allows the screen to achieve the same resolution to the eye with 33% less subpixels and is a brighter display in the process.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good explanation, but are saying that no you can't dim it to low levels because it makes it look brighter than it is? If so, I don't buy it. I see it being dimmed to a low level. It just doesn't stay there.

Aldiko reader can get the screen even more dim
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Also since there is less air gap in the new display, it is brighter.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

This is just me speculating, but I'm thinking maybe the brightness setting is universal to android devices, except that it's calibrated to normal lcd. So the same voltage(or however they regulate the display brightness) on an LCD will look brighter on the Super AMOLED. For me, the dim setting on the auto-brightness seems too bright.

One thing I've noticed is I can take the brightness down to its lowest setting and it still seems bright..however on almost every phone I've used its like this.
The weird thing is on the Captivate I can open the browser, men then scroll down to settings and it has a brightness toggle there that takes it lower.

nbohmer said:
One thing I've noticed is I can take the brightness down to its lowest setting and it still seems bright..however on almost every phone I've used its like this.
The weird thing is on the Captivate I can open the browser, men then scroll down to settings and it has a brightness toggle there that takes it lower.
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Click to collapse
Yeah that does take it down lower than the home screen by a small amount. I put the browser brightness on the lowest setting and the global brightness on the lowest. Both auto brightness and power save are off. When I switch from the browser to the home screen, it brightens up a touch. So, it does go lower, but not all that much though, and it's only for the browser.

pjs2004 said:
Good explanation, but are saying that no you can't dim it to low levels because it makes it look brighter than it is? If so, I don't buy it. I see it being dimmed to a low level. It just doesn't stay there.
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You can totally dim it more. In doing so, it will use even less power than an LCD screen at the same brightness setting.

Asori said:
You can totally dim it more. In doing so, it will use even less power than an LCD screen at the same brightness setting.
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Click to collapse
Yeah, that's what I thought was cool about this type of screen, but I still don't know how to to dim it below the the lowest setting in the phone's control panel (which isn't very low). 3rd party apps I've tried don't really work, or they work, but the phone immediately raises it back up. Are you saying you've dimmed it down to where you can barley see the screen, like 5-10 percent? That's what I'm looking for confirmation on. If so, what app did you use?

pjs2004 said:
Yeah, that's what I thought was cool about this type of screen, but I still don't know how to to dim it below the the lowest setting in the phone's control panel (which isn't very low). 3rd party apps I've tried don't really work, or they work, but the phone immediately raises it back up. Are you saying you've dimmed it down to where you can barley see the screen, like 5-10 percent? That's what I'm looking for confirmation on. If so, what app did you use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have used this app and seems to be pretty good, makes the brightness lower than system brightness.
http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-curvefish-widgets-brightnesslevel-jDiB.aspx

i use brightness level too but the brightness goes back to the highest level when you plug the phone in and you cant use the presets on the widget anymore

sfernandez said:
I have used this app and seems to be pretty good, makes the brightness lower than system brightness.
http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-curvefish-widgets-brightnesslevel-jDiB.aspx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried this app, and while it's a good app, it still doesn't make the screen go super dim. It looks to me like the lowest level (0%) is the same as lowest setting from the control panel. Zero percent should really be totally black.

Screen Filter
Here is your 100% working solution.
It doesn't work with the bright level, it applies a shade/filter to the screen. No matter what app you're using.
Set the bright to the lowest with your default system settings, because if you use a third party that goes below normal, with some apps like explorer, it set it to minimum allowed be system or whatever you set and then you will notice a setp up, shaded but a change.
I'm using it weeks ago and I found it's the best choice to suft the web at night. Also you can turn off softkeys lights
http://www.appbrain.com/app/screen-filter/com.haxor

flash speedmods new kernel.

do you use auto-brightness or manual?

I have been using auto-brightness, but I feel that it is usually brighter than necessary. I'm trying to get better battery life ( get a day just fine as is using the phone quite a bit) but I'm going to experiment with manual brightness to see how much life I can save. What do you use? How has it affected your battery life?

I use auto brightness too, but have been thinking about using manual brightness with the screen always #1 in my battery history (consistently 60-70% battery use).
It seems like the only people able to get the screen out of the number one slot for battery history are those setting screen brightness manually. Can anyone confirm this?

I use auto brightness and it seems to do fine. I will agree with you that it does seem a bit bright in some situations though. I can get a day's worth of battery out of it with auto brightness, and wifi on (never sleep policy).
I need to do a bit more testing without wifi, but I don't see why it wouldn't be that much different (I could be wrong though)

It sucks that auto-brightness can't be adjusted at all. On the iphone you could "weight" auto-brightness to lower or higher settings. It worked great because you could still use auto brightness, but keep the screen a little dimmer to save power.

NOSintake said:
I... and wifi on (never sleep policy) ...
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Sorry for this off-topic question - does it mean you got your Captivate without a data plan?

rexian said:
Sorry for this off-topic question - does it mean you got your Captivate without a data plan?
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Click to collapse
He's referring to whether or not your Wifi chip will go into sleep mode when the screen is off. By default your wifi will go into sleep mode when the screen is off.
To change the setting navigate to settings -> wireless and network -> wi-fi settings -> tap the menu button and select advanced which has an option for wi-fi sleep policy that had been defaulted to sleep "when screen turns off". There you have the option to change it to "never" or "never when plugged in".

phishie said:
He's referring to whether or not your Wifi chip will go into sleep mode when the screen is off. By default your wifi will go into sleep mode when the screen is off.
To change the setting navigate to settings -> wireless and network -> wi-fi settings -> tap the menu button and select advanced which has an option for wi-fi sleep policy that had been defaulted to sleep "when screen turns off". There you have the option to change it to "never" or "never when plugged in".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the advantage to keeping wifi on?

Some people only have the 200MB data plan like me.
I also use google voice for my text messages because it is free. Has worked like a charm!

I used autobrightness for a few days, but then I found out that you can adjust the brightness just by sliding along the notification bar. I never went back.

k2snowboards88 said:
What is the advantage to keeping wifi on?
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Click to collapse
Wi-fi uses less battery power, and is faster than 3G in most cases.

I use Manual brightness and i Have the power widget loaded which gives you a 3 position brightness toggle - low medium high, just in case i want to change.

alphadog00 said:
I use Manual brightness and i Have the power widget loaded which gives you a 3 position brightness toggle - low medium high, just in case i want to change.
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Click to collapse
Try sliding your finger horizontally over the top bar. Samsung made it so that it acts as a brightness slider.

Yep I use the notification bar swipe method. Works great.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

unclejimbo88 said:
I used autobrightness for a few days, but then I found out that you can adjust the brightness just by sliding along the notification bar. I never went back.
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Click to collapse
That's brilliant (pun intended)! Thank you for letting me know about that. I was using auto, but I'm going to try this now.

So if your using manual do you use the power saving option? I feel this is the same as auto bright ness.

How can you dim the screen further?

Hey Everyone,
As has been mentioned many times in other threads:
1) The LCD is often the biggest battery drainer
2) The 'minimum' setting of the brightness setting is still needlessly bright.
It certainly can be pushed further down for dim/night/dark settings.
3) Certain apps "dim" the screen but are just changing the color, not the backlight. So while useful they still aren't helping your battery.
Following some tips from a different android phone, I found this file:
/sys/devices/platform_/nov_cabc.0/leds/lcd-backlight/brightness
Which appears to contain the current 'brightness #' of the LCD backlight.
Using the normal Brightness slider, the value changes from 30 - 255, with 255 being the brightest. So this clearly could be reduced further.
Setting 'Screen Filter' to 50% brightness has no effect on the value.
Here's something interesting:
Assume the screen is already set at lowest brightness.
When I use 'Widgetsoid' to set brightness to '1', the screen dims slightly, then brightens back up. The 'brightness' file gets set to 20.
'widgetsoid 20' feels the same as 'min brightness 30'. - I wonder if Android is enforcing minimum backlight?
Anyway, thought that would be interesting to note. I'm going to download some other screen dimmer apps and see what they do.
- Frank

I found this online which is very interesting reading:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/35972886/An-Analysis-of-Power-Consumption-in-a-Smart-Phone
At '30' they said the display consumed 7.8 mW, while at 255 it consumed 414 (!!!)
Various apps coud push the value to 20 - tasker, adjbrightness.
Tasker tries to set it lower but as with widgetsoid, you can see the screen get forced back up to 20.
adjbrightness can "set" it lower than 20, but the entire screen blacks out, even at 19. Remember where the other buttons are so you can restore brightness!
- Frank

Whoa, thanks for the information. That pretty insane but its an apparently in the Market: Screen Filter, saves a helluva lot of battery.
Edit: Nevermind, Frank shut me up LOL.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

I read a thread that said that the stock rom just doesn't allow setting it that low.
Ah well
- Frank

ChodTheWacko said:
I read a thread that said that the stock rom just doesn't allow setting it that low.
Ah well
- Frank
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you set it lower in other roms - like cm7?

netter123 said:
Can you set it lower in other roms - like cm7?
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Click to collapse
I've been playing with CM7 which has some nice features for customizing the auto-brightness settings as well as the "dim" value which seems to be the lowest value the screen will go to and what it gets set to when the screen dims before shutting off after a timeout.
For the Dim setting in CM7, the default is 20. The next highest setting in the picker is 18. I believe it goes down to 0 or 1. When set to 18 or lower the screen blanks out completely when dimmed. Depending on how you test this, you may have a problem getting the screen back, so be careful you know where your widget button is on the screen to bring it back... 20 seems to be the lowest value. However, while dim, in a very dark room it could certainly be even dimmer so I don't know why lower values don't work.
I've also found the light detector doesn't seem to detect a continuum of light levels. It seems to be quantized at particular values, so there's a pretty hard limit on how fine you can set the auto brightness levels since the lowest light reading it seems to take is not very sensitive. It can't seem to distinguish between a fully darkened room and a dimly lit room, so setting the lowest value automatically makes the screen too dark to be comfortable in many environments, but then too bright for a really dark room. I don't know if this is an issue with the ROM software or a hardware limitation of the sensor. I've set my lowest auto setting to 40 which seems to work well, then I manually switch it to the dim value (20) if I'm in the dark.

[Q] Auto brightness

What am i missing regarding screen auto brightness? I keep having to manually change brightness when going from light to dark places even though i have "adapt to lighting conditions" ticked?
It feels like im wasting battery having the screen so bright at night unless i turn it down, then I have to turn it up again in the morning.. Some secret setting?

jeremy_inc said:
What am i missing regarding screen auto brightness? I keep having to manually change brightness when going from light to dark places even though i have "adapt to lighting conditions" ticked?
It feels like im wasting battery having the screen so bright at night unless i turn it down, then I have to turn it up again in the morning.. Some secret setting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here, Someone said that the screen does dim but it does so slowly so you barely notice it! Hoever iam not convinced! Iam almost certain mine is not adjusting at all

For normal day light conditions i feel the auto brightness adjusts very well. Its definitely better than the s4 i had. I have the auto brightness selected and the bar at 50%. I agree for night time reading i have to manually adjust the brightness may be its not as quick to adjust in very low light conditions compared to day light

I was using CM11 on the S4 which had very good brightness control, not sure about standard. I agree during the day I don't have problems at all, and the screen is very good. It's just when I'm somewhere with low brightness and I have to turn it down, and then when I go back into day I have to turn it back up again. Pretty annoying having to change it all the time.
I will get an app to do it for me for now, but this must be some sort of bug this action couldn't be on purpose.

*#*#7378423#*#*
Go to service test and test it your self.
Sent from my C6903 using XDA Free mobile app

I find the auto brightness not very good.
Sometimes when the lighting condition does not change, it will start to increase/decrease the brightness to the level which does not suit the lighting condition.
It also have the tendency to favor lower brightness.
Thinking of trying out Lux Auto Brightness instead.

electrash said:
*#*#7378423#*#*
Go to service test and test it your self.
Sent from my C6903 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know if you mean to test the sensor, but the sensor works absolutely fine (with other apps)

My auto brightness works just fine and i have mine on lowest possible setting.