Why Auto-Brightness on iPhone, Android is Awful

[Marcus Yam]

The auto brightness settings don't work so well on these so-called "smart" phones.

Why Auto-Brightness on iPhone, Android is Awful : Read more

 

[ericburnby]

They are completely wrong. Everyone with half a brain knows the iPhone sucks as adjusting brightness while Android phones are able to detect ambient light, angle of viewing by the user, if you have sunglasses on and even your mood to display the perfect brightness every time.

 

[tronika]

really, this guy tests auto brightness and probably makes more than me. fml

 

[cekasone]

My DROID X seems to be alright.

 

[figgus]

The main brightness issue with the iPhone is the user...

 

[myriad46]

Scoll to the bottom of this page http/www.displaymate.com/about.html to see what a pompous A$$ he really is... He probably thinks Bose is worth the price, too.

 

[anarchy4sale]

I shut mine off, I noticed this right away.

 

[lukeiamyourfather]

[citation][nom]cekasone[/nom]My DROID X seems to be alright.[/citation]

Ditto. My DROID X does just fine when set to automatic brightness.

 

[magruder13]

I just have a widget on my Samsung Galaxy where I can set the brightness easily and fast.

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]figgus[/nom]The main brightness issue with the iPhone is the user...[/citation]

What, because it doesn't match your own opinion of what constitutes a suitable phone?

 

[MxM]

There is a difference in "having bugs" and absolutely useless or awful. I wish people would not exaggerate problems that much.

 

[casperstouch]

Oh come on, the sun was hitting it wrong...

 

[nonameworks]

I think they should make a better control for auto brightness. Instead of having one horizontal slider, have 4 or more vertical slider. The left most slider would be the brightness when in a zero light environment, the right most slider would be the brightness level when in direct sunlight. The remaining sliders would be percentages in between. It would also be useful to see the current ambient brightness on a horizontal slider. Then use linear interpolation between the sliders (it seems linear is best based on the graphs in this report).

 

[frye]

[citation]The problem with the iPhone automatic brightness is that the phone jacks up the brightness when it detects bright lights, but then it doesn't dim the display when things are dark again.
[/citation]

It actually does dim the screen again, it just takes it a minute. Not sure if it's intentional or a bug though. If it's really bothering you, locking and unlocking the phone quickly will set the screen's brightness relative to the ambient light.

 

[Guest]

I don't particularly understand the problem, to be honest.

I took my iPhone (with Auto Brightness enabled) to Greece a few months ago and used it very comfortably in the blistering beach sunshine. I took it out on the same evenings and found it to be similarly usable.

Yes, the brightness does take a little time to decay from Bright to Dim, but this is generally fine since it takes my eyes time to adjust to the same change in any case.


Am I missing the point?

 

[N.Broekhuijsen]

wow.... one feature my Sony Ericsson beats all these smartphones in... and this thing costs be no more than 150US$ a couple years ago!

It actually does dim the screen again, it just takes it a minute. Not sure if it's intentional or a bug though. If it's really bothering you, locking and unlocking the phone quickly will set the screen's brightness relative to the ambient light.

Bug or not, not good, and not appreciated by many. yet another something apple should do something about, but probably won't and instead if complaints come in apple will say: "Your looking at it wrong!"

 

[eddieroolz]

I don't own any of the Western smartphones, but I leave them enabled on 2 out of my 3 devices. Sharp phones handle automatic brightness quite well, whereas NEC handsets somewhat fail at it.

 

[jellico]

[citation][nom]lukeiamyourfather[/nom]Ditto. My DROID X does just fine when set to automatic brightness.[/citation]
Double-ditto. With my previous phone, I was constantly having to adjust the brightness when I moved from the office to outside to my living-room couch. With my DROID X, I have yet to be in a situation where I felt I needed to adjust the brightness. In fact, until I read this article, I hadn't given the phone's auto-brightness feature a second thought... that tells me it's working just fine.

 

[bustapr]

At least you can fix it on android. According to Jobs "tampering" with the iphone will make the phone worse. thats why open source wins, a developer can fix this easily, but for the iphone you gotta wait till the next gen iphone comes out to have a good fix if Jobs says its better for you.

 

[mikeadelic]

auto brightness works fine on my Captivate. i leave it off most of the time tho, too much of a drag on battery life. plus super AMOLED basically works in almost any environment.