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Hey xda,
I'm curious as to what you all use for your screen brightness settings. For the duration of my ownership of the fascinate, I've kept it at the lowest possible setting. I'm wondering if that's really doing that much for my battery life. I'm contemplating turning it to auto.
What do you guys think about screen brightness as it compares to battery life. Is the screen not lit with LEDs? If I'm not mistaken, a typical LED could run for like 40 years on a single AA battery.
I am on auto with GPS, Data, and sync on all time. I use it pretty heavily I would say. Nothing like hours at a time but 15 min here, 5 there, 10 there. I get about 16 - 18 hours out of my phone.
gkirby11 said:
I am on auto with GPS, Data, and sync on all time. I use it pretty heavily I would say. Nothing like hours at a time but 15 min here, 5 there, 10 there. I get about 16 - 18 hours out of my phone.
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Thanks for the reply. I was wondering if I should keep GPS on too. I mean as long as I'm not actively using it for navigation, is it really going to be draining any battery life?
djk21108 said:
Thanks for the reply. I was wondering if I should keep GPS on too. I mean as long as I'm not actively using it for navigation, is it really going to be draining any battery life?
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Adryn has stated "Keep GPS off" for better battery life. Idk if you are using SC tho, but this would apply to any.
xHoLyx said:
Adryn has stated "Keep GPS off" for better battery life. Idk if you are using SC tho, but this would apply to any.
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Ah, thank you for the reply. I am currently on SC.
I keep all but wifi on w/ brightness varying bc im outside a lot. Im seeing 24 hours minimum w jt's aosp w nextheme. I use my phone for everything.
If forget to leave the brightness up all d way, i notice a huge difference. These are a little different that an LED and a double A my friend.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
hbc.ciccone said:
I keep all but wifi on w/ brightness varying bc im outside a lot. Im seeing 24 hours minimum w jt's aosp w nextheme. I use my phone for everything.
If forget to leave the brightness up all d way, i notice a huge difference. These are a little different that an LED and a double A my friend.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
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Thanks for the response. So what you're saying is you leave the brightness high, but you know that's detrimental to your battery life?
djk21108 said:
Thanks for the response. So what you're saying is you leave the brightness high, but you know that's detrimental to your battery life?
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Yep...but i'll sacrifice in favor of beauty for a loss of thirty min. Of use
how long an LED runs on a AA depends, some might run a day (not 40 years), others less than an hour, and the most powerful ones need multiple D batteries just to turn on. these phones have a SAMOLED screen, broken down into: Super Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode. the important part here is the organic. instead of having a single, or a few LEDs behind or around the screen, the screen uses an organic (not organic like the meaningless buzzword, but no ****, it's organic cells) compound for each colour. these organic compounds produce light when electrically charged, and only when a colour is displayed. this gives you the possibility of a truly infinite contrast ratio, and brilliantly rich colours.
I leave mine on auto.
Was using the lowest setting, but I'm now using auto setting.
I normally have it at its lowest setting unless I'm outside. I used to have it on auto, but it didn't work exactly like I wanted. Now that the notification bar brightness feature was added with Froyo, I just use that to adjust the brightness without having to open up settings.
As long as you don't have the screen on for minutes at a time, the difference between automatic brightness and the lowest setting is minimal. I switch to automatic for days that I tend to be outside a lot, but I normally leave it on the lowest setting because I occasionally go on binges where I read the news when I'm bored. If I don't do that too much and don't have any phone calls that last over 15+ minutes then I get about 48 hours of battery life on JT's AOSP ROM.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
What gives you better battery life - keeping it on Auto or setting it manually to a lower setting?
People say auto brightness affects battery life because it utilizes CPU power. I call shenanigans on that though because it will use very little CPU power... I vote AUTO.. cause if your out in the sun and your settings are set to low... You are just going to tweak them to accommodate your needs.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA App
I have mine set on auto, but it doesnt dim or brighten up.
Bet it does! just when it needs to brighten and dim, you never notice. I thought the same thing until I played with it for a while thenI noticed it working.
auto eats more power, but it does what it needs to.
DDiaz007 said:
People say auto brightness affects battery life because it utilizes CPU power. I call shenanigans on that though because it will use very little CPU power... I vote AUTO.. cause if your out in the sun and your settings are set to low... You are just going to tweak them to accommodate your needs.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA App
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It uses more power to make the display brighter. Think of it like those 3-way light bulbs. The lowest setting is like 25 watts, the middle 50 watts and the brightest is 100 watts.
There is a widget that lets you change it manually between 33, 67, and 100% brightness with the touch of the button. I have that on my 2nd screen (along with WiFi, GPS, etc) and keep it at 33% most of the day every day.
I use auto due to ease and I easily get through the day without charging. I do use manual if I am in a dark room b/c auto just doesn't seem to dim the screen enough.
I like the 3 setting Brightness widget also. I like to set it where I prefer, didn't really care for auto. Don't know about battery savings with either one.
Is this a stock brightness widget or do I have to get it in the market?
I keep mine low...
24 hours later... 55% battery.
I use battery level its a small widget to change every 25% its great my battery is amazing Im at 58% after 12 hrs using 25% the brightness level and of course WiFi always on and turn in mobile network when I leave the house which saves me SO much battery
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA App
I always run mine at 100% brightness. I don't care about battery life. I prefer a bright screen.
Using a widget is probably no bad but I just auto , come on the phone was made with the sensor for it and it doesn't use much battery unless you have it a t 40% or lower all day long and struggle in the sun. I been using in auto since the iPhone I changed it for Android but i went back to auto cause it waste time just to change the setting everytime and annoying too
If you don't have an Evo3d well you don't have an Evo3d
Mine is manual and i see great results same with evo 4g.
Sent from a blazing fast 1.8 GHZ Evo 3D.
clankfu said:
Is this a stock brightness widget or do I have to get it in the market?
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It's a stock HTC Widget, but they also put powerpanel in there. I just think the HTC widgets look nicer.
I wished the auto brightness function had user-defined options. I agree with it being way too bright at night.
I have been using the 3 setting brightness widget/button. Usually always leave it on medium till I'm at home with the wall charger then I use max brightness.
Sent from my EVO 3D
The best widget I've tried is Brightness Level made by Curvefish. You get easy access to preset levels, a slider to adjust brightness to any level, and enable or disable auto brightness.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA App
it would be nice to find a widget that sets a daytime and nighttime level. i use tasker but i think it's just too big of a program for just this one little thing.
I shut off my auto brightness off yesterday after a few hours to see if it made a difference and set my level to 40%. I don't know if it was a fluke or not but after 13 hours when I plugged my phone back in to go to bed, I was at 63%.
That is a huge difference from what I have been seeing. I am going to see how it turns out today with the same setting but I must say it is looking pretty good so far. After 2.5 hours with some texts, a little web surfing, some theme changes and emails and I am at 93%.
I will post back my results later tonight. I am also using power control plus which has a brighness widget that you can set to a percentage for each hit. So in case I need fill brighness, one click and I am there. Another click I am back to 40%.
I found a thread on hacking auto brightness values to save battery life. In the process I noticed my light sensor's lowest value is higher than HTC's first few values in the stock auto brightness array. This means my EvoLTE doesn't even use the lowest couple of auto brightness steps because the sensor never reads that low.
That got me wondering whether my phone was defective or if this is normal.
The lowest value my sensor will return is 90. I would love to have a few people install the "AndroSensor" app from the market, cover up their light sensor (top left bezel area), and give me their light sensor number reading. Thanks in advance!
90 here
Sent from my EVO using xda premium
ckoadiyn said:
90 here
Sent from my EVO using xda premium
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Same here.
Thanks for the quick replies! So it seems this is more a software calibration issue than a hardware problem. ROM developers can easily work around this in their auto brightness arrays by considering 90 as the floor and working up from there.
What are you folks using to read this value?
gpz1100 said:
What are you folks using to read this value?
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"AndroSensor" app from the market.
If you have an Amaze then you know that the secret to long battery life is minimizing screen brightness. Problem is the default auto-brightness levels are brighter than needed and there is no way to adjust.
I recently installed Lux which allows you to customize the auto brightness curve. This should theoretically extend battery life. I'll report what I find here on this thread.
Meanwhile one thing I noticed.... In Lux you can monitor the level reported by the phones built in light sensor. On my Amaze I get really strange readings. There are four levels: 90, 320, 640, 11000. Really? With careful shading of the sensor I was able to get a reading of 2400 once. 11000 was reported even in shade on a cloudy day.
But it seems like the sensor doesn't read light levels well at all. There isn't enough granularity and the calibration is way off.
Anyway if we can fix it or address it, that should make a real difference in the battery life of the device.
Sent from my HTC Ruby using Tapatalk 2
I use elixir 2 and the personal add on.. I set my icon/widget to whatever percentages I want.. Then tap it till its right for my environment
e-Sex.. All of the carpral none of the tunnel
Use screen filter from play.. works great..
Sent from my Amaze using xda app-developers app
This one is pretty awesome.. "Display Brightness".. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=rubberbigpepper.DisplayBrightness&hl=en
You can put a 'slider' anywhere you want and simply slide it up and down to change the brightness to the exact levels you want.
Works great an you can customize it quite a bit. :good:
It's shown in on the top in the screenshots at the link, but I always put it on the right hand side, a little higher than mid-way, and I make it translucent grey so you cant even really see it unless you're looking for it.
That's the free version, I have the Pro version and it's worth it. lol
This module aims to fix Nexus 5 ambient light sensor issues leading to random auto-brightness spikes under certain lighting.
The issue
Sometimes the light sensor goes crazy and reports 30000 lux even in a dim light because of what auto-brightness attempts to blind you in a moment. These random spikes happen when you hold a phone at certain angles and depend on light bulbs used in a room.
The solution
The fix is implemented as an Xposed module.
Basically, it is a filter inserted near a point where native HAL communicates to Android framework. It intercepts all sensor readings and replaces abnormal 30000 lux (and 0 lux following 30000) with an averaged value from a sliding window. This affects any process that use Android sensors API including system_process, so that default Android auto-brightness works fine too (no need to use apps like Lux Dash to workaround the issue).
Installation
Download and install Xposed framework
Then install Nexus 5 Light Sensor fix module and activate it
Reboot
Usage
The module provides no user interface, nor it runs any services in a background. It only injects a proxy method to the implementation of Android sensors API. You won't be able to notice it in the main menu or in a task manager. Think of it as a patch that can be turned on and off through Xposed installer.
Source
The mod is open source (with permissive MIT licence), the source code is available on my GitHub.
Thanks
@rovo89 for his Xposed framework
@n3ocort3x and @wantabe for the initial attention and for kicking me up to finally create a new thread
and you (the community) for your feedback
More on the issue
Two major issues with the Nexus 5 ambient light sensor (original module announcement)
Palmadores said:
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.
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exorz said:
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.
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Is the Auto-Brightness Functionality wonky on the Nexus5?
Aria807 said:
I think it may be bugged with Halogen lighting (correct me if I'm wrong). My home is ~ 18 years old, and we have some bulbs that have not been changed yet (yellow). Sometimes when I use my N5 under those lighting, the sensors go whack and don't register properly picking up 0lx, then spike up to 30000lx. Once I move to areas in the house with newer bulbs, the sensors work normal, picking up the right readings.
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Well done! Auto-brightness accuracy is much improved indoors! Appreciate your work on this!
Do I need to disable the modules if I dirty flash a new Carbon nightly? Or is that not necessary
augoza said:
Do I need to disable the modules if I dirty flash a new Carbon nightly? Or is that not necessary
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I'm not sure, cause I use stock ROM, but I guess there is no need to disable it. As I can see from Carbon sources, related parts of code was not modified at all. To be sure, please ask ROM developers or other Xposed guys.
1.1 update won't install on nexus 5 signature mismatch
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
ddloco said:
1.1 update won't install on nexus 5 signature mismatch
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I know, this is my fault and this is actually stated in the module description. Please remove version 1.0 and install 1.1 from scratch.
Still coming up very bright compared to Lux. Battery drain WILL be an issue.
mcnob said:
Still coming up very bright compared to Lux. Battery drain WILL be an issue.
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The mod only removes random spikes reported by sensors. It does not affect an algo used by stock auto-brightness (any auto-broghtness is basically a function that maps a given input value from the sensors to the screen brightness; the mod just removes some trash from the input).
AFAIK the stock auto-brightness is configured through framework-res (google: config_autoBrightnessLcdBacklightValues, e.g. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2616914). Probably there is some app/mod for tweaking these options.
Wonder if custom ROMs like Omni and CM already have the fix baked in?
Anyone tries this on something other than an N5?
Motorola perhaps?
Sent from my DROID RAZR M using Tapatalk
FirePsych said:
Anyone tries this on something other than an N5?
Motorola perhaps?
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I'm pretty sure this wouldn't make any sense, at least with current implementation, which compares each input value against hardcoded 30000 lux.
bland.life said:
Wonder if custom ROMs like Omni and CM already have the fix baked in?
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The problem is that a code to be patched is located in a device-independent part of Android, but only Nexus 5 build should be modified. However, I didn't research well whether there is a way to build some piece of base framework only for a particular device. Probably Omni/CM guys know better.
mcnob said:
Still coming up very bright compared to Lux. Battery drain WILL be an issue.
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Must be a variance between different devices because on my N5 auto-brightness indoors at night looks just a little on the dim side. In brighter light it looks good to me but I can't tell you what percentages it's using. I would probably like it 2 or 3 percentage points higher indoors but I'm fine with the way it is now. At least on my device I haven't seen any noticeable effect on battery life with auto-brightness on most of the time. Still getting 5-9 hrs of screen on time with my use. I made a comment in a previous post about auto-brightness being more accurate, I was referring to the way it would constantly adjust the brightness level and the changes would be big ones. Personally I think auto-brightness is much better with the module installed and in my case useable now. No, it's not as accurate as the auto-brightness is on my One X, which is amazingly accurate, for that kind of accuracy I would use something like Lux, maybe in conjunction with the module. I would give it a shot myself but I've purchased enough apps to modify the display brightness as it is. Running stock 4.4.2.
Edit:
Forgot to mention I'm using the dimmer backlight setting in the config file for the ElementalX kernel. I don't think that makes much of a difference in accuracy, if any, just how dark the display can potentially go. I also completely forgot that the dimmer backlight and auto-brightness levels are options available in the GravityBox module. As effing long as I've used GB I've never used those two options!
abusalimov said:
I'm pretty sure this wouldn't make any sense, at least with current implementation, which compares each input value against hardcoded 30000 lux.
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Yup. Didn't work on my Razr M.
Sent from my DROID RAZR M using Tapatalk
I don't know what the issue is lol, but I have Franco kernel so I assume I'm immune to this right?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Deeco7 said:
I don't know what the issue is lol, but I have Franco kernel so I assume I'm immune to this right?
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It doesn't matter, which kernel do you run, ALS is a user space driver. BTW I use franco kernel too.
10000 lux
My N5 reports 10000 lux instead of 30000, very annoying
Running CM11.0 m5
zbloh said:
My N5 reports 10000 lux instead of 30000, very annoying
Running CM11.0 m5
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Thanks for reporting. Is it reproduced on CM11.0 M5 only, did you try other ROMs? Does it show exactly 10000.0 lux? If so, I could catch this value as well.
New version 1.2 is available now:
- Always replace 0 lux with 1 lux to prevent auto-brightness changing hither and thither in a very low light environment
- Do not feed replaced values back to EMA filter (makes it more responsive to newly coming proper readings)
- Filter out 10000 lux as well (reported by zbloh)