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[APP] Galactic Night: nightmode for rooted Galaxy-series devices

Update: While GalacticNight is still available for older devices, if you have a newer device it probably won't work. But if you have Android 4.4 or higher, my new Color Changer app may work for you and will do everything GalacticNight did (but alas at a higher software level). I am therefore discontinuing work on GalacticNight.
Edited: Now in Google Play.
Galactic Night, now in the 0.99rc2 version, provides red, green or sepia (or blue if you really want!) night modes for rooted OLED Galaxy S2, S3 and Note 1 devices (not tested on Galaxy 7.7 but might work). You can invert the screen colors (so you can browse in white on black, or green on black, or red on black). There is also an Outdoor mode which washes out the colors but might improve legibility outdoors.
I like reading ebooks in green on black when in the dark.
As of my present knowledge, various pre-release versions of this have been tested on:
Galaxy S2: Gingerbread and ICS
Galaxy S3: ICS
Galaxy Note: JB
It should work on ICS on the Note as well, but I don't have any reports. GN works by adjusting the mDNIe profile. If you have some Samsung device I haven't heard of which has a Screen Mode setting in the Display settings that includes Dynamic/Normal/Movie options (and maybe others), there is a chance that this will work for you.
My benchmarking has not shown any statistically significant impact on graphics rendering speed.
Use at your own risk. If a mode screws up the screen display, you should be able to get back to normal by pressing "Standard" or rebooting, but I offer no guarantees.
Several users have asked for customizable settings. These could easily be provided, and could adjust for screen color tint and so on, but I haven't implemented them yet. I might in fact leave those for a Pro version.
You might be curious how the nightmode differs from that in ChainFire3D. ChainFire3D's nightmode works by dropping channels. E.g., in red mode, it simply drops the green and blue channels. This means that things on screen that were in pure green or pure blue get changed to black. Galactic Night uses a different color adjustment which is equivalent to this algorithm: first convert the RGB color on the screen to a luminosity, and then use the luminosity to set the night mode color. Thus, in red mode, pure white will go to maximum brightness red, but red, green and blue will go to different shades of red. This preserves a lot of the legibility.
There is also an odd "No blue" mode which converts RGB images to RG images, so white goes to yellow, blue goes to a dark yellow, etc. I've heard that blue light makes it harder to fall asleep, so it might help with falling asleep if you switch your phone to "No blue" mode for an hour before going to bed, if you can tolerate how ugly it looks.
Here is a photo of GN in action. It is not possible to take a screenshot of it in action, because the color changing is done between framebuffer and display, so the framebuffer that the screenshot accesses will not reflect the color changes.
I've already posted about this in a few device-specific forums, but now it's ready for wider dissemination.
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Let me add that the green mode should nicely help save batteries. Using just the green subpixels should use about 1/3 of the power, and yet maintain a lot of visibility because our eyes are very sensitive to green light.

Users report that on ICS there is a 1/2 second flash of the regular colors when you turn the screen on. In 0.99rc3 I implemented a red-and-black logo overlay that should cover up most of that flash (it doesn't cover up the status bar, alas). I can imagine it would be really annoying to be in the dark and get a flash of white light even for half a second.
Reports would be appreciated.
If the logo annoys, you can turn it off in GN's settings.

Great app. Works well. Having no trouble with the logo for screen on.
I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement, but it would be useful to have a tasker plugin so that red mode could be activated when you run certain apps or at specific times of day.
Keep up the good work.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app

arpruss said:
Let me add that the green mode should nicely help save batteries. Using just the green subpixels should use about 1/3 of the power, and yet maintain a lot of visibility because our eyes are very sensitive to green light.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The description for the app "Filter your screen" specifically says that you should avoid monochromatic filters which are not grayscale, in order to avoid some kind of burn-in, and thus a permanent tint on our (AM)OLED screens. Do you know anything about this?
I'd love to use the red or green filter, but I'm not sure I dare to, at least not for any significant amount of time.

ugumba said:
The description for the app "Filter your screen" specifically says that you should avoid monochromatic filters which are not grayscale, in order to avoid some kind of burn-in, and thus a permanent tint on our (AM)OLED screens. Do you know anything about this?
I'd love to use the red or green filter, but I'm not sure I dare to, at least not for any significant amount of time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I must say I haven't thought of that. That's an issue. But it's no more an issue than if you heavily use an app that uses a single color. Or if you heavily use an app that has a single bright display element in one place.
It's going to be more an issue if your background is all white, and then it turns, say, all green, and then the green subpixels burn out faster than the red and blue. But if you use green+invert with that, then you will have a lot fewer green pixels, most of them being black.
Moreover, I assume the issue will be mitigated to some degree if you set low screen intensity, and most of us will do that at night. Just use my ScreenDim app at night and use a combination of the two sliders to set a very low brightness. (Or use ScreenFilter or something else like that.) However, this does mean that we probably don't want to use a monochromatic screen all the time during the day, unless, well, we want to use it all the time and hence the tint will irrelevant.
If the burnin does a uniform tint across the screen (which may not be the case), then we can eventually correct for it with a custom color profile.
Or you can alternate between red/green/blue modes on a regular basis.

b631nz said:
Great app. Works well. Having no trouble with the logo for screen on.
I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement, but it would be useful to have a tasker plugin so that red mode could be activated when you run certain apps or at specific times of day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It would be easy to add Tasker support at the same time as I add launcher shortcuts.

I just posted 0.99rc4. New mode: Mono sepia. The standard sepia mode just changes white to sepia. Mono sepia changes white to sepia, and makes everything monochrome.
I've discovered a great use for the mono sepia and BW modes. The Kindle app screws up subpixel rendering (just as it is screwed up on the Kindle Fire), resulting in colored shadows around letters in some orientations (portrait on my S2, but this may differ). All the single-tone modes (sepia, BW, green, red and blue) will change the subpixel antialiasing to grayscale antialiasing, which to my eyes significantly improves appearance. (Subpixel antialiasing is wonderful--but mainly when done right.)

I just uploaded 1.00.

It's now in Google Play. Free, no ads (other than a link to my other apps). I am planning a pro version that will allow (a) automatic activation on boot (with some sort of safety mechanism in case you put in some bad settings like black on black--maybe if you boot with the device upside down or something like that it won't start on boot?); (b) custom modes.

just read the article on your app, and was wondering what you need to make this work on the Galaxy Nexus if it doesn't already work on it?

ROB281 said:
just read the article on your app, and was wondering what you need to make this work on the Galaxy Nexus if it doesn't already work on it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know, the Nexus doesn't support mdnie settings. Does it have display settings with dynamic, standard and movie modes?

arpruss said:
It's now in Google Play. Free, no ads (other than a link to my other apps). I am planning a pro version that will allow (a) automatic activation on boot (with some sort of safety mechanism in case you put in some bad settings like black on black--maybe if you boot with the device upside down or something like that it won't start on boot?); (b) custom modes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This app is EXACTLY what I was looking for...except I have a Nexus S 4G
Any way it might get supported? Or is the display tech too different from the GS series?

Great App! i always found the darkes possible darkness too bright for night use.
is this only for stock roms or also AOSP built ones like Cyanogenmod?

Unsupported Device
App not working on Samsung Infuse 4g ( SGH-I997 ). It says Unsupported device or not rooted(it's rooted).

Galaxy Note(att) rooted ICS(cm9) "no root or unsupported"
pgm msg & log attached
Thank you !

Works on SGS1?

Doesnt work on sgs 2 running aokp must need stock software
Sent from my SGH-I777 using xda premium

mikig_mkd said:
App not working on Samsung Infuse 4g ( SGH-I997 ). It says Unsupported device or not rooted(it's rooted).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here. Sending in logcat... Rooted on Sprint S3.

Does Not work on SGS 1 Epic 4G with cm9

S4 Screen Calibration: Brightness, RGB Balance, Gamut and Viewing Angles

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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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!
Click to expand...
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
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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.
?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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).
Click to expand...
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.

[APP][4.1+] Save your battery power with Pixel Battery Saver (Pixel Overlay App)

Hi!
At the beggining - I'm sorry if you won't understand something. English isn't my main language, I still learn.
In some smartphones with AMOLED screen (such as Samsung Galaxy S4) black pixel = turned off pixel.
I've always been irritated because of the fact that our batteries aren't too great, but phone producers still produce their phones with hiper-resolution, which practically we cannot even see.
I have invented something, that later I turned to real app.
I call it Pixel Battery Saver, because it displays some kind of totally black mesh on the screen (you can change its density), so at least half of the pixels (or more) are turned off (so the screen consumes less energy!), while you are still able to read anything on your screen.
If you still don't understand, just take a look at the screenshots.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
I've already created this app.
You may download and test it for free,
but if you really appreciate my work - I would be grateful for every donation (every single dollar would be helpful).
Let me know if you found any annoying bug or misspelling. This is my very first app - I still learn
FAQ:
What do I need this for?
- Imagine this situation - your battery level is really low, but you have to search for something important on the Internet. Making the brightness lower often isn't enough. That's when you would need my app - to turn off some count of pixels.
There are lots of apps that dim the screen...?
- This app works different. It doesn't overlay your screen with transparent image (but there is such option in premium version if you need it too). It overlays your screen with totally black screen, which makes some count of pixels off, to prevent them from consuming battery.
Do I really need AMOLED screen?
- The best results you can get right with AMOLED screen, where black pixel means turned off pixel. However, even in other type screens black pixels are saving some battery, so it's just worth to check.
In battery stats I can see that this app consumes a lot of energy. Why?
- Don't look at the stats, look at the real battery consumption. Probably, Android Battery Stats app "thinks", that this app display an image on the screen all the time, because of what it shows an information about consuming energy. In fact, this app turns OFF the pixels (in AMOLED screens with this function), so it SAVES that energy, not consumes.
When the mesh is on, I am unable to install apps (Install button is disabled). WTH?
- That's because of the Android Security. In premium version of Pixel Battery Saver I added an option to bypass this protection. In this free version you can simply turn off the app (by clicking "Turn off" button in Settings window) before installing any app and then turn on it again.
Density of the mesh that I recommend is "High".
Changelog in post #2.
Download: Google Play

Always use the latest version with fixed bugs and new options.
[CHANGELOG]
v1.3 (coming next month):
- new option to automatically start service at specific battery level
- hidden notification icon
- option to detect package installer to prevent its bug (stops mesh activity when you're installing new app and starts it again when it's done)
- new option to dim the screen (useful at night)
- small fixes
v1.2.1:
- fixed doubled mesh after reboot (black screen)
- fixed unnecessary scrolling to the bottom ad
v1.2:
- quickly show/hide the mesh with notification action
- Ads. Sorry =)
v1.1.1:
- shortcut to the donation page
v1.1:
- new option to automatically start service on boot
- small bugfixes
[TO DO]
- Widget
- Overlay bottom navigation bar too
[KNOWN BUGS]
- I can't install any app (unable to tap Install button)
> This bug is fixed in version 1.3 (added new option to prevent this)
- The bottom navigation bar (with back, home and recent apps buttons) isn't overlayed
> I know about this, I will fix it in the future

disip said:
So, the question is - is anyone able to create an app like this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are a couple of issues with the concept as you've outlined it.
1) Turning off 50% of the screen you make small text unreadable. Even in your example the not so tiny temperature values are illegible.
2) While this would definitely conserve power in terms of physically lighting the screen, it might not be by as much as you'd think. The screen has multiple power sucking components. The first is the light producing LED's. Turning half of them off saves half the power. Simple math
. But the GPU that processes the screen imaging still runs at full speed even if the screen is blank. While the LED pixels aren't working, the GPU is still working to render a black image. So turning off half the pixels doesn't reduce the power draw required to run the entire display to 50% in total.
3) The app that overlays the black mesh will require the GPU to work overtime. It's got to render the image that's supposed to be in the screen plus it's got to render the black mesh over the native image. That could potentially use up more energy rendering the black than the black saves by not lighting the pixels.
4) The already built in option is to just turn the screen brightness down 50%. It accomplishes the same goal, requires no additional image rendering, and preserves the original image design without loss.

Skipjacks said:
There are a couple of issues with the concept as you've outlined it.
1) Turning off 50% of the screen you make small text unreadable. Even in your example the not so tiny temperature values are illegible.
2) While this would definitely conserve power in terms of physically lighting the screen, it might not be by as much as you'd think. The screen has multiple power sucking components. The first is the light producing LED's. Turning half of them off saves half the power. Simple math
. But the GPU that processes the screen imaging still runs at full speed even if the screen is blank. While the LED pixels aren't working, the GPU is still working to render a black image. So turning off half the pixels doesn't reduce the power draw required to run the entire display to 50% in total.
3) The app that overlays the black mesh will require the GPU to work overtime. It's got to render the image that's supposed to be in the screen plus it's got to render the black mesh over the native image. That could potentially use up more energy rendering the black than the black saves by not lighting the pixels.
4) The already built in option is to just turn the screen brightness down 50%. It accomplishes the same goal, requires no additional image rendering, and preserves the original image design without loss.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1) Why do you think so? As you can see on my image, it doesn't make the text unreadable (if the "mesh" is pixel-by-pixel)
2) Right, but everyone know that black-layout apps are muc better for our battery than colorful or white, right because black screen isn't that "hungry" of power
3) Ok, but there are lots of apps that creates a full-screen black (transparent) overlay to make the screen more "shade" (dim?) to save the power. It works, even thou all the thing you described in #3
4) Oh, right, but when my energy power is really low, I turn the screen brightness to the lowest level, but it still consumes a LOT of energy.
Anyway! This discussion isn't even important, maybe we should just CHECK if this may work, or if not?
But, as I said, I am just asking someone to create a simple app like this.
Thanks anyway for reply.

Really? No one?

disip said:
Really? No one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it's not worth in my opinion, while rendering half of the screen black would help save some battery, the saving wouldn't be so great, yes the screen is what burns the most battery on android but, its not just having it on, its having the phone out of deep sleep, having the touch sensor activated and registering touches, etc, not to mention it would just kill the great viewing experience that the phone offers.

-Ric- said:
it's not worth in my opinion, while rendering half of the screen black would help save some battery, the saving wouldn't be so great, yes the screen is what burns the most battery on android but, its not just having it on, its having the phone out of deep sleep, having the touch sensor activated and registering touches, etc, not to mention it would just kill the great viewing experience that the phone offers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Though when we are using our phones it has to render the whole screen anyway, so I think rendering a half of it would be better?
I am not thinking about this app making our screen always on. I just mean to display this mesh when we are using our phones and the battery level is low.
And, of course, it would kill the viewing experience, but when your battery level is 5% and you have to do some important research on the internet - you don't care about the viewing experience.
If you think turning the pixels on is not the thing that consumes the most of the battery, then turn the brightness to the highest level and then to the lowest and see how much it consumes... (changing the brightness doesn't change anything with the touch sensor and other thing you described though)
I thought my idea is really simple to develop for any Android developer and to see if it really works...

I think that if you do some comprehensive tests, you could bring some attention.
Create one image with this pattern, put on your phone and open it with any image viewer, put the bright on max. Let it run for some time.... Measure how much battery was sucked.... Test again with the same image, but without the pattern, do some statistics with the results.
Are you rooted? You could invert screen color or make it grayscale.

That's exactly what I was thinking about. I will do this tomorrow.

I'll post my quick opinion. It really depends on how the phone handles the screen, but my experience is from my old Galaxy S2 with NoLED running over night. I think NoLED program was essentially accomplishing what you are proposing (i.e. rest of screen is "off" or black) and on portion of the screen is on for the LED to hop around. However, even though the screen was black the screen was still draining at a quite high rate (~6%/hr on average). The screen needs to be "off" not just black in order to save more power.
But having stated the above, I am looking forward to your test results to compare and determine if it can save more battery.

liquidzyklon said:
I'll post my quick opinion. It really depends on how the phone handles the screen, but my experience is from my old Galaxy S2 with NoLED running over night. I think NoLED program was essentially accomplishing what you are proposing (i.e. rest of screen is "off" or black) and on portion of the screen is on for the LED to hop around. However, even though the screen was black the screen was still draining at a quite high rate (~6%/hr on average). The screen needs to be "off" not just black in order to save more power.
But having stated the above, I am looking forward to your test results to compare and determine if it can save more battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your opinion, but the screen in s2 is way different than on s4. The screen in s2 doesn't turn off the black pixels. The one in s4 does.
II am looking forward to do this test tomorrow

I think this would be like a filter app, such as the found in Play Store.

Exactly. I was talking about it but I forgot the name. I next hour I will do some tests.

Ok, thread can be closed - I've created this app by my own. I mean, I used many of tutorials and examples, and finally got it. Thanks anyway.

Could you share your findings?

This would be pretty hard, as I have read dozens of sites and forums to understand everything. There wasn't any quick or simple solution.

Did it work and save as much battery as you expected?

leodfs said:
Did it work and save as much battery as you expected?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I still do not know, I have to test it multiple times to be sure.

Ok. I think it really works, but I'm still not sure. Give me few days to share the alpha version of my app (I just want to add some extra functions).
By the way, does anyone know where should I look for a list of phones with screens like in S4? I mean where the black pixel means it's off.

disip said:
Ok. I think it really works, but I'm still not sure. Give me few days to share the alpha version of my app (I just want to add some extra functions).
By the way, does anyone know where should I look for a list of phones with screens like in S4? I mean where the black pixel means it's off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's a list of some recent ones. Pretty sure the Moto X has one as well.
http://www.oled-info.com/oled_devices/mobile_phones

[Q] Having the screen on all night

So I use skype on my desktop to video chat with my girlfriend who is a few states away, we do this every night. I used my surface instead of my desktop sometimes but I stopped, I got paranoid that it's damaging the screen somehow even though the video is usually all black. So my question is, is it really doing any damage by having it on all night (brightness at lowest)?

Having a display on for a longer period of time will indeed cause image retention. This can be temporary or permanent depending on: how long, temperature of the device, content of the screen...
In any case: no, it's not good to leave it on for the entire night.
Not only can it cause permanent damage, the brightness of your screen will also wear off faster.
AMOLED screens are less affected but even there it can happen over time.
If you really want to do this and you don't care about the lifetime of your tablet, make sure the screen is entirely black. Full screen video without any buttons, interface lines, icons... (it's those things that will be visible after burn-in on the screen)

Question Adaptive brightness - do you think it works good?

Hello ,
I observe that, my s22ultra in the same conditions (light intensity) make darker screen than my old note10+.
In my old phone (note 10+), the adaptive brightness works very well for my eyes (maybe excluding reaction speed - but never it wasn't too bright or too dark (in my opinion), never had to change any settings.
S22Ultra always make's screen too dark for me (in all lighting conditions) and i compare works of with my old note10+ and approved my suspicion that s22u makes screen darker than note10+ in the same conditions.
In general, the "jump / scale" of switching from light to dark and vice versa is good, but I would have to move the "threshold / level 0" action to a slightly brighter - if anyone understands what I mean - you can do something about it, someone has an idea ? Can I fix working of this function ?
What do you think about adaptive brightness in S22U?
Are you satisfied with its functioning?
See the differences compared to your old phone (what mobile it was)?
Thank you very much for any suggestions

I have two N10+'s and as far as I'm concerned adaptive brightness never worked right. Maybe better than my S4. I disable and use manual control, easier on the battery, display and retinas. It also varies in spite of not seeing huge changes in lighting conditions when sitting, I find this very distracting.
Best practice to limit display on in direct sunlight to seconds not minutes. Avoid using in direct sunlight whenever possible.
I try to limit brightness to less than 50%, 30-40% is typical. As a result after almost 3 years of heavy usage my original N10+'s display is still perfect with no signs of wear.
If I know I'll need to use the phone in bright conditions I will temporarily enable auto brightness sometimes. Otherwise I find it useless and generally too bright.