CM7 Automatic backlight settings

ctinsley · Mar 7, 2011

There has been a lot of posts under the CM7 nightly thread about people not being happy with the auto brightness settings on the Droid Incredible, I was one of these people till I decided to take sometime and figure out how it works and now I would like to share the setup I've came up with. I'm sure that not everyone will like my setup, but I do think it's much better than the current defaults so hopefully it'll make some people happy.

I started out with a list of goals I wanted achieve for my setup and I think I did pretty well.
1

. It needed to be easy on battery life
2. It has to work in all lighting conditions. It must be easily read in really dark rooms and in bright sun light.
3. I didn't want the screen brightness to "jump" it had to be subtle.
4. It has to be responsive to changing light conditions.

I want to give credit to byrong because with out his testing that he published here, I'm not sure if I would achieved all of my goals especially when it came to battery life. Also to the entire CM team, you guys are great and its much appreciated that you guys give us such support for the latest android OS.

Below you'll find all my settings, please feel free to comment and let me know how it works for you. Please remember I've only tested these settings in CM7 and that I have an AMOLED Incredible so I'm not sure how these settings work for people with the SLCD Incredible.

Settings>CyanogenMod settings>Display>Automatic backlight

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[Standard Disclamier: I take no responsibility for any damage your device may incur due to rooting, flashing custom roms or anything else you may do to it.]

byrong · Mar 7, 2011

Thanks for showing your entire setup. A lot of people have been sharing their levels without sharing their other settings.

I've been meaning to mess around more with the CM7 auto-brightness. The one day I tried it, I became very frustrated: it seemed that the sensor was only detecting a few ambient brightness levels and was especially sloppy in dark areas.

When I get some more time, I want to try out your settings and see how they work for me.

Hm, looks like I'll have to wait until tomorrow to hit the Thanks button; apparently I've already clicked it too many times today

ctinsley · Mar 7, 2011

NP at all.
You are absolutely right the sensor itself only picking up a few levels; 160,225,640,1280,& 2600 to be exact, from what I can tell. Thats why having filtering on is so important.

TheBr0ken · Mar 7, 2011

brightness levels have been a pretty frustrating subject for me, keeping the brightness to max is what I usually have to do, but its an obvious battery killer. Giving this a shot. thanks for the info!

ctinsley · Mar 17, 2011

Any update guys?? I want to gauge how well it is working for other people. For me its perfect I have not had to tweak it one bit yet.

Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

byrong · Mar 18, 2011

I went back to manual levels.

The filtering definitely helps, but unfortunately only delays the inevitable. They are just averaging the current raw readings against previous raw readings. This creates in-between values as you shift from one ambient lighting condition to another, but since the raw sensor only reads a fixed number of levels, even the filtered value will eventually shift back to one of the fixed raw levels.

userjf and slayher have been experimenting with ways to add more raw light levels via a custom kernel. Seems that the max number of readable levels is 10. Hopefully that will become a more commonplace mod that will make the auto-brightness more usable.

neur0tk · Mar 20, 2011

I was wondering how you got all those different levels to display? mine only displays about 5 is that because I am running a SLCD dinc versus an AMOLED dinc

GatorsUF · Mar 20, 2011

Click the "set number of levels" button at the bottom, then input the number of levels you would like...

yolo2die · May 11, 2011

I will try these levels out, looks like they may work great, I will report back n let you know...

Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

scook9 · May 12, 2011

I am giving these a try as well. The automatic brightness has been generally dissapointing on my Dinc with CM7 thus far

ctinsley · May 12, 2011

These settings are an improvement but they are not as good as they used to be on CM7 RC1 & the early nightlies. In the final version of CM7 they increased the brightness scale, see this thread for more details, you can see it now scales to 10240 instead of 2600 which makes my settings not as effective, it stay brighter longer than they did before but at its still an improvement of the defaults since the levels don't jump and down often. I recently upgraded to a Tbolt, so I don't have my Inc handy, once I do I'll see if I can dig up my modified settings for the final version of CM7 and post them here.

scook9 · May 12, 2011

I am running CM7.0.0 if it helps

Nothing in .0.1 or .0.2.1 or .0.3 was compelling enough for me to go through reconfiguring everything.

ballbusta · May 13, 2011

I have been using these settings for a couple of weeks now and I am very satisifed withe the results . It helps saving the battery by dimming the screen in doors or low light situations and brightens the screen in high light situations making it easier to see the screen in sunlight

mamarley · May 13, 2011

Works well for me. Much better than the stock levels.

yolo2die · May 15, 2011

I agree, these settings are much much better than what's in the latest nightly! Great work!

Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

mikesincredible · May 17, 2011

The best settings I've found to date! Works as needed. Thanks for your time and effort figuring these settings!

sent by 1 of the many droids

ucluglee · May 26, 2011

Ok, I'm going to assume for a moment (yes, I know what happens when you assume) that I have something not set right. I have my settings exactly like the ones in the updated screenshot, yet my back light stays at a very low setting and never changes. I have the auto back light box checked in my settings, but I'm still not getting any brightness changes from one lightning environment change to another. I'm running CM7 RC3, no nightlies (which may be the problem). Not sure which screen I have but I will research how to tell.

kenneu · Jun 2, 2011

Here are my settings on CM7. They seem to work for me pretty well except in bright daylight... This setup keeps my battery for quite a long time, even if I use it a bunch.

tiny4579 · Jun 5, 2011

ucluglee said:
Ok, I'm going to assume for a moment (yes, I know what happens when you assume) that I have something not set right. I have my settings exactly like the ones in the updated screenshot, yet my back light stays at a very low setting and never changes. I have the auto back light box checked in my settings, but I'm still not getting any brightness changes from one lightning environment change to another. I'm running CM7 RC3, no nightlies (which may be the problem). Not sure which screen I have but I will research how to tell.

Make sure Automatic Brightness is checked in Settings->Display->Brightness or Automatic Brightness will not work at all.

PS: This came in handy tonight when I did a clean install of CM7.

pk2018 · Jun 5, 2011

Click the "set number of levels" button at the bottom, then input the number of levels you would like...

okey i'll try it help for my battery

thanks

CM7 Automatic backlight settings

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