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[Q] Light sensor issue on Android 3.1?

I updated my Xoomto 3.1 right after unboxing it. Then I found that its light sensor does not work.
Setting screen brightness to auto has no effect, it just keep the same brightness regardless of ambient light. So I must set the brightness manually, it is very annoying.
I installed some sensor utilities such as AndroSensor, Light Sensor,... but they don't display any value (just "waiting for event").
Does anyone meet the same problem? Is this an error in the sensor or a bug of Android 3.1?
(My Xoom is CDMA version)

Yeah I noticed the same thing the other day. Auto does nothing.

Could you give more details?
Did it work before upgrading? How is it now?

I'm not sure if it was doing it with 3.0, just noticed mine the other day.

Same here...

I have no light sensor issue--before or since the update.

I downloaded a sensor app and confirmed that i have no light sensor readings. I'm jusrt not sure when it happened or if it ever worked. could it be a kernel thing?

Thank you all for your replies.
Same here...
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What do you mean? Does it work or not on your Xoom?
Anyway, as I see, this is not a common issue, so I returned my Xoom.

Actually I take it back, the auto brightness is working for me

I didn't even notice mine wasn't working until this thread. I'm just going to go with it.

so this is weird. I upgraded to the new Tiamat kernel today and my light sensor is working again. It must be a kernel thing. I'll post a message in that thread.

[Q] Does the ambient light sensor even work?

I have been playing with my TF for a little over a month. I updated to 3.1 so I don't know it this is an issue. My problem is the ambient light sensor. It doesnt seem to work. No matter what brightness i have or if it's on auto or not I have never seen my screen get dimmer or brighter in any situation. I put a flashlight right on the sensor and I see nothing change onscreen. Anyone else have this going on?

My light sensor appears to work. It does have a fair amout of hysterisis in it otherwise it would drive you nuts.

Sounds like you're either not shining your torch at the actual sensor or yours really doesnt work. It's about an inch to the left of the front camera in case it's the former. It should poll every 4 seconds when on 'auto' brightness, and change the screen accordingly. I find that it works, but it doesnt really change the screen brightness to the best level for viewing. I'm sure there's an app to deal with this although I usually just set it manually. It's easy enough to do.

Oyeve said:
I have been playing with my TF for a little over a month. I updated to 3.1 so I don't know it this is an issue. My problem is the ambient light sensor. It doesnt seem to work. No matter what brightness i have or if it's on auto or not I have never seen my screen get dimmer or brighter in any situation. I put a flashlight right on the sensor and I see nothing change onscreen. Anyone else have this going on?
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It's perfectly possible the sensor is sensitive to IR or some other wavelength in daylight that's not emitted by your flashlight. The sensor definitely works just fine for me.

I never notice the screen changing brightness (it's designed to gradually change according to the different light exposure so human eyes don't notice it changed, but in reality it did change). When I'm in a car however, if there's trees near by and it blocks the sun every so often, I can clearly see the brightness suddenly shooting up and dropping down. I don't think it works with lamps though (turning on my lights didn't make the display brighter), only light from the sun.

It works quite well now that I'm updated to 3.1. It went through various stages of not working or just messing up back on the 3.0 updates. Now it reacts, increases and decreases and the screen is bright enough.

Mine seems broken too. Strange, because this would be the first thing wrong with me Transformer and it doesn't even seem like a common problem.
This and the browser typing lag alone are making me think of selling it.

Okay, mine is definitely broken.
I just tried it by going out in the balcony and then going in the bathroom and shutting the door - nothing happens.
Seriously Asus, what were you doing when you designed and built this thing? My Tranformer is otherwise perfect - no light bleed, no creaks, no pubes under the screen, no issue at all. Except the light sensor... it seems maybe the perfect Transformer doesn't exist.

mine works

Okay, some progress.
Shinning my HD2's bright dual LED's right onto the sensor actually makes the sensor work.
But still, this thing is apparently not calibrated well because going from outside to a totally dark room didn't change the brightness - it doesn't matter if putting two LEDs right onto the sensor makes it work, that's not why it's there.

On my TF, it takes about a minute for the brightness to change when I move from a dark room to the great outdoors.
Give it a little time for the software loop to kick in

Is this any way to calibrate this sensor? It's works horrible!

Shawn_230 said:
Okay, some progress.
Shinning my HD2's bright dual LED's right onto the sensor actually makes the sensor work.
But still, this thing is apparently not calibrated well because going from outside to a totally dark room didn't change the brightness - it doesn't matter if putting two LEDs right onto the sensor makes it work, that's not why it's there.
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Do you have a screen protector?

Not to go off topic but I only had keyboard lag when I was using the Asus keyboard Shawn, have you tried the default Android keyboard?

There is an app in the market called androsensor that will tellyou the values for many sensors including the light sensor.
Mine is measured in lux and ranges from 0 to 400 indoors it does not update quickly mine updates every few seconds.
Sent from my Transformer TF101

vladdt said:
Is this any way to calibrate this sensor? It's works horrible!
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There is a paid program i use and love called lux
Well worth the price imo. It essentially lets you manually adjust the screen brightness for the various light levels over time, remembers these and will automatically put the screen at those levels next time. It alo has some logic too but i cant talk to that.
Sent from my Transformer TF101

It seems to work for me except that it doesn't adjust the levels properly. I can be in a somewhat bright room and the brightness is still at its lowest level, making it difficult to read. However, in broad daylight, the brightness shoots up.
I might try Lux as suggested previously.

lrissman said:
There is a paid program i use and love called lux
Well worth the price imo. It essentially lets you manually adjust the screen brightness for the various light levels over time, remembers these and will automatically put the screen at those levels next time. It alo has some logic too but i cant talk to that.
Sent from my Transformer TF101
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 for Lux - great app
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalkr

[Q] MT4GS lcd brightness levels

Hi guys! I need to confirm something if this is just an issue of my phone or this is just it on all MT4GS devices.
When manually adjusting lcd brightness does anybody notice that brightness levels past middle seems the same? I mean when I adjust the brightness level on settings and when it's past the middle level the brightness doesn't seem to increase anymore. It's just very noticeable on the first 3 levels. Hope anybody here could give some feedback.

Riyal said:
Hi guys! I need to confirm something if this is just an issue of my phone or this is just it on all MT4GS devices.
When manually adjusting lcd brightness does anybody notice that brightness levels past middle seems the same? I mean when I adjust the brightness level on settings and when it's past the middle level the brightness doesn't seem to increase anymore. It's just very noticeable on the first 3 levels. Hope anybody here could give some feedback.
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On mine the increase or decrease past the middle is subtle but it does make a difference. Whether you can notice it depends on your ambient lighting.

Really? I'm pretty sure mine doesn't really adjust it's brightness... And I tried every ROM I can get even stock and still the same. Would love to have feedback on some users also from this. Maybe it's with the LCD type. If I can confirm that this is a software problem then I will really be increasing the brightness level by modding it.

Riyal said:
Really? I'm pretty sure mine doesn't really adjust it's brightness... And I tried every ROM I can get even stock and still the same. Would love to have feedback on some users also from this. Maybe it's with the LCD type. If I can confirm that this is a software problem then I will really be increasing the brightness level by modding it.
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I checked again in different lighting... a dim room, a brightly-lit bathroom, and outdoors in daylight. I could not tell any difference outdoors or in the bathroom, but in normal lighting and more so in the dim room, it was very obvious that there was change past the middle. This is using the Miktouch 0.7 rom with standard kernel.

Ok I'm gonna try it in a dim room later. If it doesn't change only means I got a broken hardware :/ BTW I'm using a full stock ROM when doing this.

Riyal said:
Ok I'm gonna try it in a dim room later. If it doesn't change only means I got a broken hardware :/ BTW I'm using a full stock ROM when doing this.
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Im on pacman rom and my brightness adjusts past halfway

Ok confirmed I got a broken brightness level... lol dunno how this can happen but the level works only up to 1/8 of the full scroller in the brightness setting. Any adjustments past that won't work anymore.
tried it in stock rom, miktouch rom, sense 4.0 rom and CM9 ROM results are the same. So lame I just noticed this when I used my phone from a very bright sunny day and the screen is barely noticeable.

Riyal said:
Ok confirmed I got a broken brightness level... lol dunno how this can happen but the level works only up to 1/8 of the full scroller in the brightness setting. Any adjustments past that won't work anymore.
tried it in stock rom, miktouch rom, sense 4.0 rom and CM9 ROM results are the same. So lame I just noticed this when I used my phone from a very bright sunny day and the screen is barely noticeable.
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On mine, when moving past the middle there seems to be just two minor alterations, at the 3/4 mark and the full mark. I can notice them when I'm in normal room light and more so in dim light.

Riyal said:
Ok confirmed I got a broken brightness level... lol dunno how this can happen but the level works only up to 1/8 of the full scroller in the brightness setting. Any adjustments past that won't work anymore.
tried it in stock rom, miktouch rom, sense 4.0 rom and CM9 ROM results are the same. So lame I just noticed this when I used my phone from a very bright sunny day and the screen is barely noticeable.
Click to expand...
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It could be that automatic brightness is turned on overriding the manual setting, depending on what rom you are running.

Nope can't be possible... The setting is working but not fully. I can adjust brightness only up to the 1/8 level of the scroller past that brightness does not change anymore.

Two major issues with the Nexus 5 ambient light sensor

1. The sensor reading often jumps to 30000lx momentarily, (measured using Lux Dash in Debug mode), and so the phone blinds you for while. This happens in a repeatable fashion when you hold the phone at certain angles. Try it yourself.
2. The N5 reads zero lux even in moderate/dim light, while my old N4 still reads around 10 lux. The N4 was much better as you could make a distinction between the dim light and no light at all.
On the new N5 you have to set the zero lux level so it's bright enought for moderate light, which means it's far too bright at night.
Why is the N5 sensor so poor? Or is the kernel? Really, this is pretty basic stuff. Come on Google, we want the autobrightness to work fine without having to download apps to try and fix the most basic settings.
(As per other threads, the N5 stock autobrightness is almost unusable!)

Same here. Only occurs in the kitchen under the spotlights. I've had 2 phones and the same has happened on both using lux.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Happy to see others having this issue as well. I always figured it was a Kitkat bug.

I had some dead pixels on my first N5, so I got a replacement. The replacement is now exhibiting this weird sensor issue (also spiking up to 30,000lux based on device orientation).

I have the same issue on my N5, sudden freak peaks of 15000 lux or more, then suddenly back to normal values of 50-80. Same behavior on stock kernel and Francos Kernel.
Hoping for a quick fix by Google.
Kusie

I'm having the same issue too, but it appears to be under certain lightbulbs that I have this issue. For example in 2 different situations, one I was in a restaurant and another while I was in my bathroom, and my phone would constantly pick up either 0 lux or 30000 lux (depending on the angle of the phone under the light). This is under halogen lighting.
When I get out of the restaurant and under regular lighting and when I'm in my bedroom (LED/CCFL lights), the light sensor would behave normally.
Anyone else have these issues?

Aria807 said:
Anyone else have these issues?
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Yes, and it's not really reproduceable for me but it's very annoying and sometimes painful. This screen can get very bright and it's blinded me in the dark when this happens.
Is it the light sensor? Is it LUX? Does this happen without lux installed?

Can the sensor be calibrated or is it just bad hardware? This is a real annoyance. My S4 doesn't read 0 lux unless there is absolutely zero and it never jumps around. Even it's own screen reflecting on my face will cause it to read 1-10. That level of sensitivity is great for setting up lux to go subzero. Maybe the kernel is translating the sensor voltage output incorrectly?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using xda app-developers app

rabaker07 said:
Yes, and it's not really reproduceable for me but it's very annoying and sometimes painful. This screen can get very bright and it's blinded me in the dark when this happens.
Is it the light sensor? Is it LUX? Does this happen without lux installed?
Click to expand...
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Lux is a measurement of brightness.

I thought it was Lux causing it, but I have tried full wipe + reflashing a new rom, and my sensors still go a lil whack. This is flashing new rom + immediately downloading a sensor tool and checking the readings before installing Lux or any other apps.
However, Lux came out with a new version a week or so ago and it seems to have been waiving those spiked readings, so my phone atm isn't acting up super dim to super bright and back.

I still have this issue on 4.2.2.,very annoying. Is this a software issue or bad sensors?
Starts to piss me off so badly I think about sending my N5 back to google.
Happens both on stock auto brightness and yaab.
Help please?
Kusie

Yeah same here, very annoying, have to use Manuel britness very often

I have this same problem too. Using the Lux app debug mode I rotated the phone while in a room lit with incandescent bulbs and one lit with daylight. When rotating the phone I sometimes see a spike of 30000 lx but more importantly the sensor drops to 0 even though there is plenty of ambient light. During daylight I don't see the 30000 lx spikes but I still see the sensor dropping to 0 when there's plenty of ambient light.
I feel like the sensor is too far recessed into the phone and causing a tunnel effect. If the phone is looking at a dark shirt or surface that's a foot away from it, it will register 0 even though there's plenty of ambient light. This seems like a design flaw or a flaw in android's API.
Using the full version of Lux app might be able to fix it since it allows you to use the camera for ambient light detection but I haven't purchased the full app yet so I don't know.
Really wish android would have a solution for this because it's quite irritating.

Are you guys using the Lux app? I haven't had this problem with stock auto brightness.

clocinnorcal said:
Are you guys using the Lux app? I haven't had this problem with stock auto brightness.
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With the stock auto brightness it was too bright in most cases and also in some cases the brightness would spike. Downloaded the free version of lux app in order to try to fix the problem and while it can adjust the brightness to be lower, the problem is that the light sensor gives low readings straight from the api.

I just installed Lux and I can't reproduce it on my Nexus. Mine always behaves correctly in automatic brightness, so I guess it's a hardware problem that only affects some devices?

I jump now in here as i have the same problem unfortunatley. I have no clue if its hardware related or software, but on my HTC One with kitkat running the same rom i dont have such issues s i guess its a HW fault. If anyone finds a solution or something that fixes this mess, would highly appreciate if wwe could keep this thread alive

I hope it's just a kernel issue where it's not translating the sensor output to the OS granularly enough. On my S4, it has to be truly zero light for it to see 0lx. Even in low low light, it's registering a value between 1 and 100. It makes it very easy to distinguish between no light (laying in bed) and low light (driving in the car, movie theater, etc). I hope they fix it because it's rather annoying that we're having this issue.

coolguy949 said:
I hope it's just a kernel issue where it's not translating the sensor output to the OS granularly enough. On my S4, it has to be truly zero light for it to see 0lx. Even in low low light, it's registering a value between 1 and 100. It makes it very easy to distinguish between no light (laying in bed) and low light (driving in the car, movie theater, etc). I hope they fix it because it's rather annoying that we're having this issue.
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The next interesting thing is that it happens only in 1 out of 6 rooms at home. I hope I'm not totally crazy but could it be a bad combination between a sort of light bulb and the sensor?? I know this sounds totally stupid but I only can reproduce it with one light bulb. Or it is because that one light bulb is really low dimmed. I have to test that further tomorrow. Only have one dimmable light bulb atm to test so I will dim the others tomorrow that working atm.
noNeedforAsig

n3ocort3x said:
The next interesting thing is that it happens only in 1 out of 6 rooms at home. I hope I'm not totally crazy but could it be a bad combination between a sort of light bulb and the sensor?? I know this sounds totally stupid but I only can reproduce it with one light bulb. Or it is because that one light bulb is really low dimmed. I have to test that further tomorrow. Only have one dimmable light bulb atm to test so I will dim the others tomorrow that working atm.
noNeedforAsig
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I remember reading something weeks ago that the sensor doesn't work well with certain bulbs. I can't seem to locate the thread though.

[Q] Super Low Brightness Mode?

Is there a Super Low Brightness Mode on this phone or on the International version? I could have swore there was such a thing for the HTC ONE M8... Thanks in advance.

The closest thing I can think of is the "brightness settings" component of GravityBox (a Xposed Module)... I don't know if they work, as I have never fiddled around with them, but you could always give them a go.

I use the app called night mode to do this as well
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pt.bbarao.nightmode

I use Lux Auto Brightness (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux). It's the best automatic backlight adjustment app I've used (I had some problems with running out of memory on my Galaxy Nexus, but no such problems with my M8). It lets you set the backlight so low the screen is almost black.

Sevinex said:
The closest thing I can think of is the "brightness settings" component of GravityBox (a Xposed Module)... I don't know if they work, as I have never fiddled around with them, but you could always give them a go.
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Click to collapse
d1ez3 said:
I use the app called night mode to do this as well
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pt.bbarao.nightmode
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Click to collapse
Zieen said:
I use Lux Auto Brightness (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux). It's the best automatic backlight adjustment app I've used (I had some problems with running out of memory on my Galaxy Nexus, but no such problems with my M8). It lets you set the backlight so low the screen is almost black.
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Click to collapse
Just wanted to say thanks guys! all these are great workarounds. I thought I saw a sense feature for Super Dimming mode or reading mode like the S5.

Zieen said:
I use Lux Auto Brightness (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux). It's the best automatic backlight adjustment app I've used (I had some problems with running out of memory on my Galaxy Nexus, but no such problems with my M8). It lets you set the backlight so low the screen is almost black.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This app hasn't been working for me. It doesn't change brightness regardless of the light in the room. Yours has been working fine?

Yeah it's been working great for me. Are you using a screen protector? Lux relies heavily on the light sensor on the front of your devices (which on my M8 is seemingly infinitely better than my Galaxy Nexus was). A screen protector can interfere with the amount of light the sensor collects and mess up the very sensitive Lux app.