Minimum screen brightness increased

[Alxndr]

Since the last update the minimum screen brightness suddenly increased (again) making it quite blinding at night/in a completely dark room. Had anyone else noticed this and know how to fix this? (Can’t find any special setting, night light is but what I mean, it is the actual brightness, but the colour temperature) maybe there is an app for this?

To be clear, I used to have the same issue with the brightness before, it was only the last few months that I noticed the minimum brightness of the screen was all of a sudden significantly reduced - which was really nice and convenient and I want it back!

It meant I could still read/watch things on my phone in bed without keeping my partner awake or check the time when I wake up without blinding myself.

Ps my software version now is 8901.3.A.0132.20211027

[OldRoutard]

Hi Alxndr
The brightness has returned to its behaviour of before the 3.A.0129 update of 5 August. As you will see from that very long thread, the 0129 sought to implement a wider range of brightness but failed to compensate for this in the adaptive brightness function. The result was, that for many users their phones would suddenly go almost black!
There is also a thread dedicated to the problem:

Update Aug 0129 Ambient light | Adaptive brightness

Carrying on from the discussion on the Adaptive brightness issues noted since the latest update The issue appears to be a) the ambient light sensor is not working as it did before and b) setting the slider at any value is overridden once the ambient sensor reads again. So this happens in the evening as the light fades, even before sunset if there is no direct light on the sensor and early morning before such light and probably any other situation where sensor reads zero As soon as the s…

The version you’ve just updated to, 0132, simply returns to the previous values. A fresh attempt at improving brightness has been promised for a future update.

For my part, I also regret this return to a “minimum brightness” level that is far too high. I don’t use adaptive brightness much and was happy to adjust the level manually. Let’s hope they provide a better solution soon!

[CosmoSteve]

Yeah I was having exactly the same thoughts. So first of all: forget screen brightness apps. Even the one requiring root are just…yikes. Functional workarounds, but unpleasant. They basically just keep a permanent new slider open that forces the brightness.

So I collected a bunch of resources yesterday to look into altering the config files myself. Like adding a few more values, or just modifying the lowest three.

What I found was this post: Official LineageOS 18.1 for Fairphone 3/Fairphone 3+ - #198 by TeamB58

It’s about altering a config file for brightness in LineageOS, but there should be an equivalent for Fairphone OS. But so far I haven’t had the time to find the file in Fairphone OS, or yet alone modify it.

So feel free to look into it.

[OldRoutard]

@CosmoSteve

there should be an equivalent for Fairphone OS

Nice work.
But direct write access to the config files likely requires root? That’s not an option we all have (some apps won’t work for security reasons).

[CosmoSteve]

So I dug a little bit deeper. Changing the minimum screen brightness is sadly quite complicated and requires much more than just rooting.

It requires one to export the framework-res.apk (a crucial system app), decompile it, change the values, compile it again, and push the modified .apk back on the phone.

I’ve so far succeeded in creating a modified framework-res.apk, but I haven’t tested it yet (no time).