Update Aug 0129 Ambient light | Adaptive brightness

I’ve tried everything, doesn’t work.
Solution for me: disable auto brightness…

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Have you just tried the idea in my last post or had you already tried that?

Yes that was an early reaction of mine but clearly just avoiding the problem.

I’m still hoping my last procedure will work :crossed_fingers:

Update: 2 hours later and it’s all black again. Oh well! Will try again

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I have been having this issue some as well. Has anyone made a support request yet?

To everyone who is facing this issue, please make some noise and send reports to support@fairphone.com . Support must become aware of this issue immediately. Mail them as much info as possible, Of course they will ask a lot of questions at the beginning of the troubleshooting process, but the longer it lasts, the sooner they begin to realize that the source of the problem lies deeper than they (probably) have thought…

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rae has already been tagged in this post and hopefully noted the issue in the replies to her update notification.

And whereas this issue can be annoying I’m interested to see if I can resolve it so I will not be asking for official support. My experience is that they are very busy and this would seem such a small issue for them to divert their time too urgently.

So I would not encourage or discourage people to make a noise, I don’t like this gang mentality which amounts to bullying applying pressure. I’m not saying it wouldn’t work but seems more unpleasant for me to do it even as an individual let alone a mob than having to cope with an iffy ambient light sensor.

Actually doing it as a mob or gang or collective is far more comforting, almost fun and to me that’s a warning to avoid such action.

Tagging does not seem to be a proper way, the official way is to contact support and not gang mentality. Only when support is Aware that many people are affected they will work on this and even faster. Overall probably a bit patience would still be good to give the system the time to adopt to preferences, die to different light during days this might take some.time. and what is too bright or too dark is very individual.

Edit: or use the official thread created by Fairphone instead of using a duplicate thread, because

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It is a personal decision of yours, which is fine, but please consider that there are plenty of users who are not that technically adepted. If you want to support them, please write your findings to Fairphone support, because the issue seems to be a part of the latest update. Your attempt is to find a workaround, but the main goal must be a fix supplied by Fairphone. They have rolled out an update with a bug, now it is their turn again to fix it.

Obviously you got me totally wrong when I wrote “make some noise”. I never encourage anyone to bully anyone! The more users raise their hands, the more attention Fairphone will pay to that issue.

I have never had that much “fun” with Fairphone bugs, believe me…

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Yes bullying is a bit heavy it seems but cajoling and pushing people to act seems too heavy for me. I’ve striked the word out :slight_smile:

And the fun wasn’t with the ‘failing’ application but doing things with other people, but I have realised that co-operative action can be very intimidating when it’s directed at a person/body corporeal.

You may cope with all these bugs, but many other people get frustrated and buy elsewhere because they do not want to have their time stolen by an unreliable phone…

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I’m not sure what is going on but again as twilight engages the screen ambient sensor messes up.

However although the brightness reads zero, it is brighter than the day before, I can actually read the screen. maybe there’s hope for a better tomorrow.

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There is a similar thread to this issue, but it has occurred before the latest update:

Maybe reducing the backlight (rolled out with the latest update) lets the issue occur more frequently now…

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Yes I commented on that post which though is a different issue and wasn’t so for other users. Also it was the opposite in a sense

The odd thing here is that the dimming is related only to the fact that the ambient light sensor can read zero when there is still sufficient light and drops the brightness, so it’s not so much that the lower level of brightness has been reduced, which is fine but the sensor is not calibrated to a low level also.

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I wonder whether the reading of the ambient light sensor needs some fine tuning (software), or the sensor itself is too light sensitive (hardware)…

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I think the opposite ~ it is not sensitive enough it goes to zero when there’s plenty of light and then turns the screen dark thinking it’s midnight in a forest.

There’s also a time element. Each time I set the brightness to a specific level it fine for a while even if the ambient light sensor reads zero, I can check by covering with my finger.

It seems as though it stays OK for a couple of hours.

I may start timing the changes. ??

@gr3821 reported:

I believe it could be like this: The phone automatically reduces the backlight in dark ambience. However, the screen light is reflected by the face when the phone is held in front of, causing the backlight to be increased again. This may occur too fast so that auto brightness immediately drops to zero probably by accident. The solution might be to lengthen the time frame(s) in which sensor readings are done, and introduce (a) delay(s), to calculate and apply proper brightness values…

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Don’t forget the post you are referring to was before this update and as I said quite the opposite.

In this case, at the moment it’s working fine in that although the sensor may read zero the auto brightness does not drop to zero but at some time, maybe in the morning there is plenty of light but the sensor reads zero. So unless the phone is turned towards incident light it record no light

Hey thank you for the proposed solution. I will test this now.
Could you maybe edit your original post because the forum did not show your reply with the solution untill I clicked the ‘2 replies’ button. If you edit your original post, people will see the solution faster.

Edit: Tried it, but no cigar. Turned adaptive off for now…

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Hi @Ciaran and welcome to the forum.

The post you refer to is not a solution but I have found many adjustments make a temporary change.

It will be good to hear from you what happens when you try the ‘advice’. Please keep this topic updated with your findings.

Thanks

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I know, but as I have already pointed out, the change in the latest update obviously made the issue worse, so more users likely will experience it.

We shall not forget that the OS is learning all the time, and these sudden backlight changes might have produced a lot of weird patterns which - theoretically - cannot be applied by the backlight controller…