We have all seen the side by side web browsing comparisons between the S4 and the HTC One. Because of the screen reviews, which measured brightness at 300cd/m² and higher, we were a bit dubitative.
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Well, it turns out the poor results are due to brightness throttling on white or near white content, which will vary depending on the power saving options that are activated. In Chrome and in the Stock Browser, this is further aggravated by the undefeatable activation of the Power Saving mode.
The measurements below were conducted with an i1 Pro 2 spectrophotometer and a profiled i1 Display Pro (for dark readings).
Maximum Brightness (Adapt Display/Dynamic/Standard Mode)
Even without any Power Option engaged, white levels on white or near white content will be 15% to 20% below peak brightness (290cd/m² from 355cd/m²)
Auto-Tone will clip whites further above 60% Average Picture Level
Power Saving reduces brightness by 25%
In Chrome and in the stock browser the Power Saving mode is activated as a default (surely in an attempt to fool battery tests into overestimating number of browsing hours on battery) - and cannot be defeated. It is therefore recommended to switch to another browser (e.g. AOSP) for better outdoor viewing.
The graph below outlines the brightness throttling mechanism in Dynamic/Standard/Auto Mode at maximum brighness.
As we can see, web browsing is the activity that will take the most serious hit, seeing as web browsing average picture levels typically falls within the 70% to 90% APL range. Although the throttling is to conserve battery life, this a bit sneaky from Samsung, as this tricks reviewers into overestimating battery life and consumers into believing they have the best of both worlds (brightness and battery life). There is a choice that can and has to be made.
Auto-Brightness (Adapt Display/Dynamic/Standard Mode)
Using auto-brightness instead of maximum brightness will actually enable a boost mode, which will activate under prolonged exposure to extremely bright light (I had to use my HTC One's flash at close range to simulate this).
Summary
The boost mode offers a 35% brightness gain, however this gain starts to plummet at around 60% APL, which means that the gain for web browsing and Google Maps will only be 5 to 15%
The peak brightness under prolonged sun exposure at 1% APL level is 478cd/m² (displaymate measured this at 475cd/m²). whereas the maximum brightness for pure white ends up at the unboosted level of 383cd/m²
Without Boost Mode, the brightness curve in a birghtly lit environment is exactly the same as the maximum brightness captured in my earlier graph.
The auto brightness -5/+5 radio button has no impact on the maximum brightness achievable - it will go full throttle if it has to. Only brightness at lower ambient light levels is impacted by this fine-tuning...
There is no Power Saving mode override in auto-brightness, and those browsers even benefit from the Boost Mode.
Just to put the graphs into perspective, I am showing the maximum reachable brightness for various Android applications:
Android Menu: 5% APL | Maximum Brightness: 465cd/m²
Android Menu with radio buttons: 10% APL | Maximum Brightness: 455cd/m²
OLED fiendly web site: 15% APL | Maximum Brightness: 445cd/m²
Random Gallery Picture: 40% APL | Maximum Brightness: 410cd/m²
Google Play: 60% APL | Maximum Brightness: 395cd/m²
Anandtech with zoom on picture: 70% APL | Maximum Brightness: 350cd/m²
Google Maps: 75% APL | Maximum Brightness: 320cd/m²
Whatsapp: 80% APL | Maximum Brightness: 305cd/m²
Android Contact List: 85% APL | Maximum Brightness: 295cd/m²
Google Results page: 90% APL | Maximum Brightness: 290cd/m²
Google: 95% APL | Maximum Brightness: 285cd/m²
Greyscale and Color Gamut (Film Mode)
RGB balance has a discernible green push above 50% brightness (less exposed in Anantech's review because Brian measures at 50% brightness rather than maximum)
Color Space is oversaturated even in film mode (consistent with Anantech's and Displaymate's findings)
Gamma will also get worse on content that has a high proportion of bright content, with brightness compression happening at the top end of the spectrum. For videos, it is therefore recommended to use 50% of maximum brightness or auto-brightness
White point color Temperature:
6410cd/m² in Film/sRGB Mode - again, this is at maximum brightness, the green dominance will be different at different brightness levels (as can be seen on the curves below)
6940cd/m² in Standard Mode, Dynamic Mode and Auto-Adjust Mode (I personally prefer that color temperature because it is more consistent across the whole scale, so the picture looks more harmonious)
Gamma is improved versus previous iterations but there is still a slight black crush and white crush happening at the extremities (nothing too major). The white crush will not be observed with smaller test patterns but will be worse for bright content! The black crush will be worse with Auto Tone on (to conserve battery, the transition into blacks is quicker).
Color gamut as expected is oversaturated. But what is more surprising is that it is oversaturated even in Film mode, although to a smaller extent. I went back to Brian's review, and this was also what he found. I believe two other reviews had different findings - but I may remember this incorrectly
Measurements in Film Mode
Color Space (Adapt Screen/Dynamic/Standard Mode)
Viewing Angles (Film Mode)
Summary:
Viewed directly, the display exhibits a green push in spite of near perfect color temperature
Viewing at an angle reduces green and red and increases blue
The most neutral white balances (Delta E of 2.8) can be obtained by viewing the screen at a 15° angle (you can do the test and notice how the green push disappears!)
The color temperature at this angle is further away from the 6500K standard than for direct viewing but it is still more neutral (shows the importance of RGB balance)
The following charts shows the RGB balance, correlated color temperature and Delta E for viewing angles of 0° to 40°.
This is an important lesson: sometimes it is preferrable to calibrate at a somewhat higher color temperature to improve the RGB balance (generally a blue push is less perceptible than a green push). However in this case, Samsung's calibration was most certainly to improve the overall brightness of the screen (green has a stronger luminance than red or blue).
Throughts and Recommendation to Devs for Kernel Calibration
Essentially, the adaptative brightness without power saving options is to fool regular gamma testing and make it look flat even though it isn't - again to conserve battery!
Using Average Picture Level patterns, to keep brightness constant across the greyscale, we can clearly see that the gamma is too high (2.4).
By reducing brightness as IRE levels increase, the display conceals the fact that brightness increases too slow across the full IRE spectrium - because the final brightness ends up being lower, regular test patterns will say that brightness at each IRE level is where it should be when in fact it lags behind. It only catches up with target brightness at 100 IRE because brightness is being throttled more with each IRE level.
For example, at 50 IRE, the theorectical brightness should be 21.46% of white brightness, except the white brightness at 50% IRE is higher vs. 100% IRE. What is important is not the 100% IRE brightness, though. because it is throttled and has no impact on intra-picture gamma.
What is important is the 50% IRE brightness, which is higher. So while regular test patterns lead you to believe brightness is where it should be and gamma is 2.2, in fact it is lagging behind for the full brightness spectrum.
So in conclusion:
We need to recalibrate gamma on this display by using APL test patterns - they are the only ones that should ever be used on displays with adaptative brightness where brightness is a moving target.
OR
We need to deactivate the adaptative mechanism (which would have the secondary effect of improving overall brightness)
But as long at the adaptative mechanism exists, we will never be able to have perfect gamma at all APL levels. If we choose to have perfect gamma at 50% APL, we will have brightness below target for low APL levels (since the 50% APL brightness will be lower than at lower APL) and it will be ahead of target for higher APL levels (since the 50% APL brightness will be higher than at higher APL levels).
So in essence, because of the adaptative mechanism, we can never have a perfect intra-picture gamma that works equally well at all APL levels.
The standard error will be smaller at lower brightness levels because the peak brightness range will be more narrow. But in boost mode the max brighness will be 70%higher than minimum brightness, so the standard gamma error at low APL and High APL levels will be higher, so black crush will be quite big for low APL and white crush will be quite big at high APL.
In a nutshell, if we want perfect gamma, we will have to acccept lower intra-picture contrast at lower APL and equalize brightness on the maximum achievable non-thottling 100% brightness. Since the display is very linear, this should yield us perfect gamma and RGB balance for all brightness levels that the user chooses between 0 and max user-selected brightness.
On plasma displays, throttling typically only happens above a certain brightness level. and it is enough to stay within that comfort range But the fact that brightness is being modulated for different APL levels on the S4 makes a good calibration that works at all APL levels impossible...
I can't believe how imaginative Samsung is when it comes to fooling reviewers. The display has potential, I just know that calibrating this thing with undefeated adaptative brightness will not yield perfect results - unfortunately.
The most pressing issue at the moment is the green push though and oversaturated colors, though. I am pretty sure that reducing color saturation will also impact greyscales and brightness on this display...A lot of fun coming our way
So basically the s4 is claiming a longer battery life through web browsing by dimming its screen automatically? I could already tell this, which is when I first bought a galaxy phone I downloaded another browser. I can't stand how Samsung handles the web in terms of the screen. Really annoying.
coming from the og one x
Isn't part of this issue due to thermal throttling? As amoled screens work at maximum load on while backgrounds, so could it therefore heat up more and thereby have to adjust the brightness?
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
Ddot196 said:
So basically the s4 is claiming a longer battery life through web browsing by dimming its screen automatically? I could already tell this, which is when I first bought a galaxy phone I downloaded another browser. I can't stand how Samsung handles the web in terms of the screen. Really annoying.
coming from the og one x
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This is not only in web browsing, so this affects all browsers (though there may be different treatment for video, I would have to test using video patterns).
The really annoying thing is that the throttling mechanism can't be defeated, so let's say you want to check something really fast while in the sun, you can't even temporarily make your browser go brighter. But you're right that with the Stock/Chrome browser this is actualy worse.
I must say that I did not have other Samsung devices except the S2. I am interested in other user views on the S3 and Note II. Was the same observed? Was the clipping that bad? Those who installed the Perseus Kernel on their Note II, was this circumvented or was only the color temperature and color accuracy fixed? I heard from one user I met at the shops that when he used the Persus Kernel to correct the screen, his battery would get depleted.
A brightness cap at 250cd/m² is not acceptable for web browsing. But then a battery life of 3 hours screen time would not be acceptable either. It is a trade-off. Still, one would wish the user had a choice to boost the brightness for short periods of time.
Jme369 said:
Isn't part of this issue due to thermal throttling? As amoled screens work at maximum load on while backgrounds, so could it therefore heat up more and thereby have to adjust the brightness?
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
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Click to collapse
No thermal throttling is indicated with a message. This is more of an adaptative brightness mechanism, but much more aggressive than what can be observed on the HTC One (the One will vary between 400cd/m2 and 530cd/m² depending on the content).
This is the regular behavior for bright content handling.
You can actually observe this on your browser while browsing and when scrolling from content that is bright (text) to content that is less bright (darker picture) and vice versa, you will clearly see how suddenly the brightness increases and decreases (in real time). The same can be observed when you launch your browser. Coming from a less bright picture level into the browser will cause it to clip whites, so you will see it dim within the first second.
No such thing on my 9500, even compared to a HTC its bright in browser.
You must have a faulty unit or some setting that prevent full brightness in browser.
DocRambone said:
No such thing on my 9500, even compared to a HTC its bright in browser.
You must have a faulty unit or some setting that prevent full brightness in browser.
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Click to collapse
The pictures were not from me! They all behave the same. This is something I had observed in 4 different shops. This is something that others have reported. It can be observed in Anandtech's readings on the S4 review.
All I am doing is quantifying what users and testers, including myself, have observed. It is a generalized mechanism.
You can actually observe this on your browser while browsing and when scrolling from content that is bright (text) to content that is less bright (darker picture) and vice versa, you will clearly see how suddenly the brightness increases and decreases (in real time). The same can be observed when you launch your browser. Coming from a less bright picture level into the browser will cause it to clip whites, so you will see it dim within the first second.
Note that on mixed content with only patches of bright colors/white (e.g. page with pictures or video), white point brightness will be more around 300cd/m². This happens when the average picture increases.
puremind said:
The pictures were not from me! They all behave the same. This is something I had observed in 4 different shops. This is something that others have reported. It can be observed in Anandtech's readings on the S4 review.
All I am doing is quantifying what users and testers, including myself, have observed. It is a generalized mechanism.
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Click to collapse
Still, some setting/unit is clearly wrong. The brightness with a full white webpage is very high. Check settings again, turn off the adaptive screen settings etc.
Uh yea, turn off Auto Adjust Screen Tone in the screen settings.
Otherwise this is the CABC / content aware brightness control on the AMOLED controller. I'll have to check it later in the kernel.
AndreiLux said:
Uh yea, turn off Auto Adjust Screen Tone in the screen settings.
Otherwise this is the CABC / content aware brightness control on the AMOLED controller. I'll have to check it later in the kernel.
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Click to collapse
Yes the Auto-Adjust off improves the white clipping but does not solve the issue. It is still a 20% loss. Thanks for showing-up Andrei, as you are probably the most knowledgeable person in this forum regarding the trade-offs between brightness and battery on those AMOLED devices. My short testing on this device makes me worry that with Auto-Adjust and Power saving turned off, the S4 will run out of battery after 3 hours of web browsing (average white level at 250cd/m²)....Does this sound about right?
To what brightness level was the Perseus Kernel calibrated on the Note II?
That would be a high price to pay to have an equivalent browsing experience as on competing LCD devices!
This is the detailed analysis for all settings combinations (except auto-brightness, which would vary depending on environment light).
puremind said:
My short testing on this device makes me worry that with Auto-Adjust and Power saving turned off, the S4 will run out of battery after 2 hours of web browsing....Does this sound about right?
That would be a high price to pay to have an equivalent browsing experience as on competing LCD devices!
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Click to collapse
No, wrong, with all power savings off i loose 10% battery for each 45-50 min web-browsing session. (autobrightness +5)
No problem to get 6+ hours out of one charge
DocRambone said:
No, wrong, with all power savings off i loose 10% battery for each 45-50 min web-browsing session. (autobrightness +5)
No problem to get 6+ hours out of one charge
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Click to collapse
Auto-brightness+5 is very aggressive battery saving - it caps brightness at 145cd/m² in the sun! In terms of brightness, this is equivalent to having both power saving and auto adjust ON and run maximum brighness.
I agree that with this setup you can probably reach 6 hours, but this is quite conservative. Suppose you increase brightness to 250cd/m² (screen not completely white), would this then translate into 4 hours of battery?
The Galaxy S4 performs very well in high ambient lighting in spite of its typically lower screen brightness because it has one of the smallest screen Reflectance values of any display we have ever tested, and its more saturated colors can help cut through the reflected light glare. When Automatic Brightness is turned on, the screen brightness increases considerably at high levels of ambient lighting as mentioned above. The Galaxy S4 is then comparable or brighter than most LCD Smartphones.
http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S4_ShootOut_1.htm#Table
DocRambone said:
No such thing on my 9500, even compared to a HTC its bright in browser.
You must have a faulty unit or some setting that prevent full brightness in browser.
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Click to collapse
One of this comparison pics was mine. And I had several S4 devices to test. They all behave the same way.
BoneXDA said:
When Automatic Brightness is turned on, the screen brightness increases considerably at high levels of ambient lighting as mentioned above. The Galaxy S4 is then comparable or brighter than most LCD Smartphones.
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Click to collapse
Tried that with three different units. In the most direct sunlight possible they increased brightness only a bit, not even remotely close to the ONE I'm afraid.
puremind said:
Auto-brightness+5 is very aggressive battery saving - it caps brightness at 145cd/m² in the sun! In terms of brightness, this is equivalent to having both power saving and auto adjust ON.
?
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No, i use s4 without any problem outdoors, its much brighter than 145cd/m2
The brightness is rather high, much brighter than my Note2 in same conditions.
In direct sunlight all screens have poor visibility.
In the shadows the s4 behaves as good as the htc one.
And my findings is that 6+ hours screen on in well lit (outdoor) conditions is rather normal.
DocRambone said:
In direct sunlight all screens have poor visibility.
In the shadows the s4 behaves as good as the htc one.
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Click to collapse
Tested that on sunday and have to disagree completely. HTC ONE: Watching the VERGE Videos with sunglasses worked perfect in direct sunlight.
S4: Not even remotely possible without sunglasses. And the difference even in shady surroundings is very real.
slind said:
Tested that on sunday and have to disagree completely. HTC ONE: Watching the VERGE Videos with sunglasses worked perfect in direct sunlight.
S4: Not even remotely possible without sunglasses. And the difference even in shady surroundings is very real.
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Click to collapse
Lol, why would you look at videos in direct sunlight with sunglasses?
A more normal scenario is in the shadows and there the s4 behaves as good as the htc one.
DocRambone said:
Lol, why would you look at videos in direct sunlight with sunglasses?
A more normal scenario is in the shadows and there the s4 behaves as good as the htc one.
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Click to collapse
Because it was still very enjoyable on the ONE and not as stressful on my eyes. Don't mean to be rude, but did you actually had the chance to look at S4 and ONE at the same time in the shadows? I really doubt that.
And a normal scenario for me would be in the park, at the beach, shopping outside etc. as well as in shady areas.
I still got both devices here for today, might do some additional photos to prove the S4s lack of brightness outside (in every situation).
slind said:
Because it was still very enjoyable on the ONE and not as stressful on my eyes. Don't mean to be rude, but did you actually had the chance to look at S4 and ONE at the same time in the shadows? I really doubt that.
And a normal scenario for me would be in the park, at the beach, shopping outside etc. as well as in shady areas.
I still got both devices here for today, might do some additional photos to prove the S4s lack of brightness outside (in every situation).
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Click to collapse
I have access to a htc one also and even if it brighter in direct sunlight, its not better in the shadows, high brightness is not the only factor, low reflectance is as important.
BoneXDA said:
The Galaxy S4 performs very well in high ambient lighting in spite of its typically lower screen brightness because it has one of the smallest screen Reflectance values of any display we have ever tested, and its more saturated colors can help cut through the reflected light glare. When Automatic Brightness is turned on, the screen brightness increases considerably at high levels of ambient lighting as mentioned above. The Galaxy S4 is then comparable or brighter than most LCD Smartphones.
http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S4_ShootOut_1.htm#Table
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, we all read that, but unfortunately that only true outside of web browsing, where you mainly see more mixed conent The Displaymate reflectance tests were conducted on color patterns which had much dimmer average picture level and therefore do not create white clipping. Also correct me if I am wrong but I believe they used a market app. which does not have as much clipping as the browser for some reason (well we know it's to put down a good web browsing battery test...).
So the Displaymate results cannot be transposed to most Smartphone applications, such as texting, Whatsapp. GPS Nigivation, Web Browsing. In those situation white point brightness gets severely clipped and this is what we see clearly in all the pictures. That's exactly the problem.
Smartphone manufacturers have become incredibly shrewed and inventive when it comes to thwarting poor benchmark results. Measuring brightness and battery life used to be so simple. Nowadays displays behave in ways that most reviews do not have the time or patience to study, so it is easy to be mislead.
Hello! Me and my wife both got this phone at the same time from the same place, but hers goes to a much lower minimum brightness than mine.
Does anyone know of a way to lower the minimum brightness?
EDIT: Okay, i did some poking around in ADB, found the "current brightness" file in /sys/class/leds/lcd_backlight0/brightness. Both phones report a brightness value of 65 when manually set to minimum brightness. The 65 sounds to me like they could go lower, is there any way to change the values used for the brightness slider? Or the automatic brightness curve.
Why not just use the screen filter app? I'm using it on every device to make screen real dark.
Skickat från min Nokia 3110i
Screen filter apps can't lower the backlight, which means they all ruin the screen contrast. They do work all right on OLED screens though since the blacks are already black.
It can be fixed with a buildprop edit, MAYBE
Here are some steps you can take to help fix your issue with the brightness.
Please restart your phone. If restarting your phone does not work, perform the following steps:
- Check if the light sensor works properly. If the light sensor is blocked, the screen brightness may become abnormal.
- By default, your phone automatically adjusts screen brightness according to the ambient brightness to bring you an optimal visual experience.
- If you need to adjust the screen brightness manually, turn off the function and manual adjust the brightness.
- If you think that the screen color temperature is too cool or warm, adjust the color temperature.
- If the screen has experienced an external shock, the internal LCD may have been damaged, resulting in abnormal screen brightness or color. Please back up important data and take the receipt issued with your phone to an authorized Huawei service center for repair.
Another option you can do is to purchase one of our third-party tempered screen protectors on Amazon. (NS)
Sure seems like this phone has so many bugs.
Sent from my SM-N900T using XDA-Developers mobile app
Has anyone else had issues with their Adaptive Brightness not working. Toggling the setting has no effect on my display. For such an expensive phone I expect things like this to work.
Yes, it doesn't work that great for me either. I mean I can see it adjusts the brightness "somewhat". But it appears it is not nearly as dramatic as on my Galaxy S7 which would pretty much perfectly adjust the brightness.
I agree that a phone this expensive should do it correctly out of the box. Google please listen.
This is the intended function as I understood it, so I googled it and here confirms. This is not intended to operate the same as auto brightness many other phones use.
In Android L, Google's introduced a new feature called Adaptive Brightness that combines manual and auto brightness. You can manually adjust the brightness level to a state you like. Once it's set, your screen will adjust based on ambient light so it stays at the same brightness relative to the light around you. This way you can set the screen to your preferences without sticking to an absolute level.
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Been this way a long time. Would this be your first Nexus/Pixel phone?
Source
The problem I have is that every time the phone is rebooted, adaptive brightness is set back to Off, even though it was On when the phone was restarted. Running NDE63V and not rooted.
Hi, I'm new in this forum. I want to change to the OnePlus 6, but I have a question:
¿On 9.0.3 Pie (the last upgrade) autobrighness works fine?
Works just fine for me. I also have High Brighness mode (requires root) installed from flar2 that increases max brightness for better outdoor viewing.
DanielRR. said:
Hi, I'm new in this forum. I want to change to the OnePlus 6, but I have a question:
¿On 9.0.3 Pie (the last upgrade) autobrighness works fine?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Works like it should.
And if you think it's too bright or too dim in a particular situtation, just adjust it with the slider, it will learn with time and it will happen less frequently.
For me auto-brightness never worked.
At home inside my house the screen is at a comfortable level move my phone ever so slightly the intensity becomes too bright.
Inside it should be a level and stay at the level, who knows what light source the sensor is seeing to boast the level it should leave the brightness alone.
So what do you do .....
1) Set level
2) If light source is detected wait 5 seconds before increasing brightness "because it maybe a false light source"
Then you will be in the sun and waiting for the brightness to increase.
Hate auto brightness all together.
So I set a level, likely on the dim side because I want to conserve battery life.
My problem is when I am in direct sunlight I see nothing.
I should look and see if there is anyway to program something easily accessible for a brightness boost.
In the sun can not see the screen, press the brightness boost button.