TL;DR: On opening the default camera app, the screen brightness goes to maximum, then reverts when closing it, and the settings drawer brightness slider doesn’t do anything. How does one stop this?
A friend of mine (who isn’t on the forum) has gotten a new Fairphone 5, and the camera app screen brightness goes to maximum when it’s opened. On closing it, about half a second later it reverts to the previous level. This happens whether or not the screen is set to automatic or manual brightness, and even happens in a dark room.
I have an FP4, and have no such issue. Both devices are on the latest available version of the software.
Decompiling the FP4 and FP5 versions of the apps, we have found the following:
Both apps contain a class com.android.camera.special.AutoBrightness, which causes the screen to be set to maximum brightness.
Both apps contain a class com.android.camera.special.SpecialManager, a singleton which can hold a single instance of AutoBrightness.
In the FP5 version of the app, an instance of AutoBrightness is created inside SpecialManager when SpecialManager is created/
In the FP4 version, when SpecialManager is created, it contains null rather than an instance of AutoBrightness.
We therefore suspect that the difference in behaviour between our devices is due to this difference in class instantiation. Does anyone know which is the intended behaviour, or if there is a setting somewhere that we’ve both overlooked that enables and disables this behaviour?
This makes the device unusable for his use case (can’t comfortably take photos at night, for example) so if it’s not fixable (or intended to be fixed imminently), he’ll need to contact customer service for a return.
I’ve just tested this and I think I can confirm this behavior, although I’ve never really noticed it. I’m running the dark design, so only the text and the controls are really bright white anyway. I could imagine that the intention of this is to have the best color reproduction possible on the screen while taking the picture.
In the Android 15 update thread you mention that the issue is especially because of some high light sensitivity. Before returning the phone I’d try the following steps: Switch the phone to the dark design if not already done and check if it is usable with this. If that’s not sufficient, then you could try a different camera app. I’m aware that this may impact the photo quality (to the good or the bad, depends) but we don’t have to love all stock apps, if the rest of the phone is okay. If that’s no option, get in touch with support. For returning I understood that you’d have to do that anyway. Your friend only has it for less than 14 days? Then returning would be relatively easy. If not you’ll have to convince them that this behavior is a fault and then they have the right to fix it, otherwise they can offer you to indeed return it.
Well, it defaults to dark theme, and changing this doesn’t affect the camera app anyway since it uses white text/UI on black background regardless of system theme (as does every camera app that I have seen…).
But the image preview exists and is also painfully bright to look at.
Using a third-party camera app does not allow access to all features of the camera (macro/wideangle, slow motion, quad pixel, etc.) and perhaps if this was fixed then we wouldn’t need to be so reliant on whatever stock camera app the phone manufacturer decides to ship, but despite Google continually expanding the camera2 API to encourage OEMs to open up wider access to the more advanced camera features for all apps not even Fairphone/their OEM have actually taken the bother to implement these APIs.
Hi, I just installed the update today hoping that the issue with the screen being forced to high/maximum brightness in the camera app might’ve been noticed and fixed incidentally at some point during the Android 15 development/release preparation cycle, but unfortunately I am disappointed to see that this is still an issue as explained by my friend here.
I am also somewhat perplexed as to why nobody appears to have picked this up before as this is a major accessibility issue for people such as myself who are sensitive to light (autism) and frustrating from a company that (I would assume) should be considering the accessibility of their products as part of their wider social impact alongside environmental impact, and when other features such as DC dimming have been considered and provided.
If this is even intended behavior it should at minimum imho be placed behind a setting as there are multiple ordinary use cases where this is also a problem and forcibly overriding the screen brightness is really bad UX.
First it’s important to know that the Fairphone staff don’t necessarily read the forum. Fairphone should be contacted through the official support channels.
Which app are you using? I’m aware of a setting for this in Open Camera but not in the standard Camera app.
If you’re using Open Camera and the screen is going to full brightness when you start the app, use the cogged wheel in the app to open the app settings, then choose “On screen GUI” and scroll to the bottom: you’ll find a toggle switch called “Force maximum brightness”.
However, now that I look at it, this function doesn’t seem to be working on my phone. I just tested it and it worked, but having closed the app and relaunched, it’s not working. I suppose it may be linked to some system setting such as Sunlight mode.
I am of course using the default camera app, as said in the linked post. If I was using Open Camera, I would obviously not be asking about an issue with Open Camera on the Fairphone forum. Edit to add: this is also with automatic brightness and any other such display settings disabled.
We have also opened a support ticket about this as I will unfortunately need to try to return the phone if there is no plan to fix this issue. But I am posting mainly because there appear to have been no other posts about this although the code of the camera app indicates that this behavior should be affecting everybody.
It’s not happening here. Just tried it. Maybe some more or less unrelated settings which in combination lead to following a code path later that’s causing it? Did you try to clear the memory in app settings so as to completely reset the cam?
And I have read the code of the camera app in a decompiler and there is no code path that enables/disables this behavior, it always forcibly overrides the screen brightness regardless of settings or external factors. Although it’s possible that you may not notice it if you are already using a fairly high screen brightness anyway (or automatic brightness mode, which tends to set the brightness quite high).
No, I just verified it again, just to be sure (never had this in dark places anyway), but it definitely does not touch brightness in my case. I switched off automatic brightness, and set it fairly low, but even in this case it does not touch brightness
