Apple Seeking New Vendor for Improved iPhone Ambient Light Sensor?

[MacRumors]

Arrow on left points to iPhone ambient light sensor (Source: ReadWriteWeb)​

DigiTimes reports that Apple is in discussions with two Taiwan-based integrated circuit design firms, Integrated Memory Logic (iML) and Capella Microsystems, for sourcing of components for the company's iOS devices.

The more interesting of the two claims appears to be related Capella, which is said to have delivered new ambient light sensors to Apple for testing and verification. According to the report, Capella could be in a position to begin supplying Apple with such sensors for the iPhone by the end of the year and that the components would likely represent an improvement over existing sensors.Capella, which ships over one million ambient-light sensors to HTC a month currently, has reportedly delivered its products to Apple for verification as the ambient-light sensors currently used by iPhone 4 have been criticized for some problems, said the sources, noting that Capella may received Apple's orders before the end of the year at the earliest.iML is said to be in discussions to provide Apple with programmable gamma buffers for the iPad, components which help regulate the luminance of the LCD displays.

Article Link: Apple Seeking New Vendor for Improved iPhone Ambient Light Sensor?

 

[dustinsc]

Don't know that this is huge news, but it would be nice to see the ambient light sensor do something. I see the adjustments when the light turns off on my MacBook, but I don't think I've ever noticed a change on my iPhone.

 

[BC2009]

Who is Apple's current vendor?

 

[leon44]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

Someone's popular

 

[DavidLeblond]

Don't know that this is huge news, but it would be nice to see the ambient light sensor do something. I see the adjustments when the light turns off on my MacBook, but I don't think I've ever noticed a change on my iPhone.

Do you have Auto-Brightness turned on?

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

Don't know that this is huge news, but it would be nice to see the ambient light sensor do something. I see the adjustments when the light turns off on my MacBook, but I don't think I've ever noticed a change on my iPhone.

the light sensor on the iphone also shuts the screen off when you put it up to your face...


thank god for this news, the sensor on my iPhone 4 sucks... granted it has definitely been better after iOS updates, it still sucks major balls and I mute people or put them on hold all the time.

 

[dustinsc]

Do you have Auto-Brightness turned on?

Sure do. And I guess to say that I haven't noticed any change is an exaggeration, but it takes quite a bit for the phone to change noticeably. The point is, the MacBook is much better at this than the phone.

 

[cvaldes]

the light sensor on the iphone also shuts the screen off when you put it up to your face...

No, they're different components.

The iPod touch has an ambient light sensor, no proximity sensor.

 

[DavidLeblond]

the light sensor on the iphone also shuts the screen off when you put it up to your face...


thank god for this news, the sensor on my iPhone 4 sucks... granted it has definitely been better after iOS updates, it still sucks major balls and I mute people or put them on hold all the time.

No, that's the proximity sensor.

Sure do. And I guess to say that I haven't noticed any change is an exaggeration, but it takes quite a bit for the phone to change noticeably. The point is, the MacBook is much better at this than the phone.

I definitely notice it more on my MBP than on my iPhone. I'm not sure about my iPad.

 

[TimUSCA]

the light sensor on the iphone also shuts the screen off when you put it up to your face...


thank god for this news, the sensor on my iPhone 4 sucks... granted it has definitely been better after iOS updates, it still sucks major balls and I mute people or put them on hold all the time.

No, it isn't. That's the proximity sensor. Otherwise, the screen would never turn on in the dark.

Personally, I'm glad for this. I see it react in the daylight, but I've always thought it was very slow to do so. In the dark, I find myself being blinded by the screen for up to a couple minutes before it finally dims the screen.

 

[LegendKillerUK]

It never works when on the lockscreen. Turn on iPhone in bed, backlight kills your eyes, slide to unlock and go to home screen then it dims. Too late!

 

[GCardoso]

Always wondered what was that brown circle on my iPod Touch.

 

[Piggie]

Call me stupid, but.............

If you have a camera lens on the front of the phone, then why do you need any other sensor at all.

A camera sensor should be able to see how light or dark it is in the room, and also be able to see when you are holding the device next to your ear.

I don't really understand why (with correct software/programming) and the appropriate camera unit, you would need any more than this one unit anyway.

 

[nwcs]

Many reasons why the camera sensor shouldn't be used as an ambient sensor: power drain, sensor blooming (all sensors are subject to it when used over a short period of time, especially in the dark), and what if you need to use the camera to do something at the same time ambient readings are needed? The ASICs processing the sensor data aren't that good to multiple task without dropping scans.

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

No, that's the proximity sensor.

oh, then they need to replace the prox sensor... thought they were one in the same. thanks for the info.

 

[Consultant]

Call me stupid, but.............

If you have a camera lens on the front of the phone, then why do you need any other sensor at all.

A camera sensor should be able to see how light or dark it is in the room, and also be able to see when you are holding the device next to your ear.

I don't really understand why (with correct software/programming) and the appropriate camera unit, you would need any more than this one unit anyway.

Probably takes more power to have camera always on.

 

[zorinlynx]

One annoying problem on both the iPad and iPhone, which seems to be a *software* problem, is that when the environment gets brighter, the screen gets brighter as it should, but when the environment gets dimmer, it stays the same brightness.

It's almost as if brightness can only ratchet up as ambient light increases. To get it to dim again I have to lock the device and unlock it.

This problem has been around forever, too; I bet there will be at least a few people in this thread that'll go "Yeah I noticed that too."

 

[tigress666]

This problem has been around forever, too; I bet there will be at least a few people in this thread that'll go "Yeah I noticed that too."

Actually what I noticed is that the light sensor never seems to do anything. I have my iphone set to auto brightness but it just seems to stay at the same brightness.

I've always wondered if it was some bug and the auto brightness just never really turned on (like whatever brightness setting I had had over rid the light sensor). Or maybe I had to have brightness at 0 for it to work or something.

 

[FasterQuieter]

This has to rank as the least interesting rumor I ever read. I'll take it though. There's certainly nothing more interesting going on at my place of work.

 

[iansilv]

I have auto brightness turned on, and I have never, ever seen this function do anything on my 3GS. I don't understand this- I thought it was supposed to kill the brightness when in the dark, and brighten the display in the light? I always just have to manually adjust the brightness, which is a huge PITA.

 

[mikerr]

Not entirely sure why this is on page 1 ?

Never got on with auto brightness anyway - seemed to be too slow, or not work much at all,
SBsettings (jailbroken) has always worked pretty well for adjusting brightness when needed:

 

[rgarjr]

Yep, SBsettings FTW

 

[baryon]

Call me stupid, but.............

If you have a camera lens on the front of the phone, then why do you need any other sensor at all.

A camera sensor should be able to see how light or dark it is in the room, and also be able to see when you are holding the device next to your ear.

I don't really understand why (with correct software/programming) and the appropriate camera unit, you would need any more than this one unit anyway.

The camera's sensor eats a lot of energy. If it would always be on, the battery would die within a few hours hour of just doing nothing.

The ambient light sensor eats less energy, but even that needs to be turned off as much as possible. This is why the iPhone's screen brightness doesn't react as fast as the MacBook. The iPhone's sensor is only turned on when you unlock the screen, and then every once in a while to save battery life.

I guess they could do the same with the camera, but since it's got a lens, it would not see "ambient" light, but only the light reflected of whatever's right in front of it. Your black t-shirt, for example, could cause the screen to dim even in bright daylight. An ambient light sensor senses light in 180 degrees, which is more accurate.

 

[QuarterSwede]

The original iPhone had a great ALS. The iPhone 4 has a pretty good one too, at least for me. It takes 5-10 seconds for it to react to an increase in brightness but does sometimes fail to ratchet down the brightness with a dramatic decrease, although most of the time it works as advertised. That said, it's world's better than the 3G which, for me, didn't work at all.

 

[theOtherGeoff]

The original iPhone had a great ALS. The iPhone 4 has a pretty good one too, at least for me. It takes 5-10 seconds for it to react to an increase in brightness but does sometimes fail to ratchet down the brightness with a dramatic decrease, although most of the time it works as advertised. That said, it's world's better than the 3G which, for me, didn't work at all.

There's an ambient light sensor on an iPhone 4 that's feeding data to 'autobrightness'?

Other than doing a 'sub-par' (compared to my iPhone3G) method of ear placement detection, it does not do any brightness adjustment for me. 5-10 seconds or 50-100 seconds.... no difference.