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Apple Watch Ultra brightness issues

I don't have the Ultra but I bought the series 7 about 3 weeks ago coming from a series 4 and have noticed the same low brightness when in a dark environment.
I updated to 9.0.2 yesterday and it seemed like the screen was brighter in the dark, not as bright as the 4 but bright enough that I could read it without straining.
 
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Just echoing what a few others have said. I'm coming from a S4 and in dark surroundings the Ultra is too dark. Changing brightness has no effect.
 
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I just received my Ultra 2 days ago. I can confirm the same issue with the dim display in the dark. (Yes my brightness is set to the highest level.) I can barely read text messages. I can read them it's simply frustrating. In ambient lighting or outdoors the brightness is amazing.

I have tried the above workaround posted by achappy and it does work! However, you must have AOD on and for me I must keep the phone app open in the background, otherwise it goes back to the same crappy dimness when in dark settings....

For the price....I'm likely returning it. Hopefully Apple with fix this.
 
Like most in this thread I’d like to be able to adjust the brightness in dim environments but I don’t think this is a sensor /hardware issue, it‘s probably not a software one either, I’ll explain my point of view:

The sensor detects when the watch is in bright light and raises the brightness up as needed to reduce washout from the brighter surroundings exactly as designed to do, it doesn’t auto raise the brightness in dark surroundings instead it lowers it down this serves 2 purposes the first being a saving in battery power the second is that especially on the red Wayfarer face Apple touted retention of night vision as a feature, if it’s blasting even the red face at full power it’ll affect night vision so it drops it down to the lower limit.

Still I’d wish they’d give a way to override this but then if you could and you set it to halfway all the time someone would be claiming that the sensors broken because it now doesn’t go all the way up in bright light.

As long as they leave the keypad bug in I can live with it.
 
URDOC said:
I just received my Ultra 2 days ago. I can confirm the same issue with the dim display in the dark. (Yes my brightness is set to the highest level.) I can barely read text messages. I can read them it's simply frustrating. In ambient lighting or outdoors the brightness is amazing.

I have tried the above workaround posted by achappy and it does work! However, you must have AOD on and for me I must keep the phone app open in the background, otherwise it goes back to the same crappy dimness when in dark settings....

For the price....I'm likely returning it. Hopefully Apple with fix this.
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I’ve come to think this is more of a AWos 9.x issue and not the AWU overall. My AW 6 does the same thing now that it has been upgraded to AWos 9.1. Maybe apple is trying to eek out a bit of battery life by not illuminating the watch face as much when in the dark or very low lighting?

At this point my AWU and AW 6 do exactly the same thing. I haven’t ever looked for it before, but maybe there is an ‘auto brightness’ setting that can be changed or adjusted not to take the ambient light sensor into account. Or maybe we’ll GET that setting in a future .X release.
 
As mentioned in the postings before I ordered a replacement for my AWU at Amazon, which arrived last week (took longer as expected ...).
The first watch had the dim issue, so I could hardly or not at all read the display in darker surroundings.

Now, the second watch (SW ver 9.1) shows the same behaviour with display "always on" option turned off, BUT by switching the display to "always on", the screen brightness of all apps, selection screens and in "always on" mode in darker surroundings is much better compared to the first UWA and really acceptable, even it is not the level of a series 4 watch.
The first UWA did not show any difference, it was too dark with "always on" option turned on or off.

This is really strange and indicates, that the issue may not or not only be a software problem.
It may be the case, that there are different brightness sensors built-in the watches, so a software update may have different effects.

I would assume, that this is the case, because my first watch showed a different behaviour after updating it from beta 9.02 to 9.1. And this was strange as well. With 9.02 the screen was too dark in general as long as I was in a darker surrounding. After the update the app selection screen was brighter than before, but by starting an app it got really dark again, so the display was not readable. Switching back to the app selection screen, the display was brighter again.
I checked this behaviour many times, the effect was reproducible.

There are many postings in different Apple watch forums in this matter, starting with series 5, but I am not aware of any related statement by Apple. The Apple support specialist I talked to told me, that this issue is not known at all.

Anyway, I hope, that it will be clarified soon.
 
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Brightness is disappointing no different from my AW4 in fact dimmer.
Also shows that you cannot trust any of those youtube tech reviews, they all talk **** just for clicks and to please apple.
 
Rainforest said:
Why does my watch take a second each time I look at it to go to full brightness?
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I have exactly the same question on a brand new ultra.
In some combinations and only in semi shadow spots, when I turn my wrist to check the time there is a one second delay to adapt to full possible brightness. It immediately lights the screen and after one second it reaches the brightness.

I did some testing and below my findings :

1) it happens on specific watchfaces.
On wayfinder and worldtimer for example it happens

On Mickey, activity or explorer never

It never happens when you are inside a menu or app and you turn your wrist or operate the screen. It need to be on each watchface

2) its more visible when brightness is set either to level 2 or 3 inside the display and appearance setting. It’s even more visible in white backgrounds of wayfinder for example.

3) it never happens in total darkness or in areas with good indoor light or outside

4) regarding the readability of other users mentioned, I am not experiencing issues in low light or medium light.

I do believe it’s a software issue, bug or poor calibration but again this combination with specific Watch faces is super weird.
I really don’t know if I will return it back or not but for sure it makes me upset
 
Bost85 said:
I have exactly the same question on a brand new ultra.
In some combinations and only in semi shadow spots, when I turn my wrist to check the time there is a one second delay to adapt to full possible brightness. It immediately lights the screen and after one second it reaches the brightness.

I did some testing and below my findings :

1) it happens on specific watchfaces.
On wayfinder and worldtimer for example it happens

On Mickey, activity or explorer never

It never happens when you are inside a menu or app and you turn your wrist or operate the screen. It need to be on each watchface

2) its more visible when brightness is set either to level 2 or 3 inside the display and appearance setting. It’s even more visible in white backgrounds of wayfinder for example.

3) it never happens in total darkness or in areas with good indoor light or outside

4) regarding the readability of other users mentioned, I am not experiencing issues in low light or medium light.

I do believe it’s a software issue, bug or poor calibration but again this combination with specific Watch faces is super weird.
I really don’t know if I will return it back or not but for sure it makes me upset
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It’s totally dependent on ambient light.. in the dark, doesn’t happen, stays relatively dim. I see no step up in my living room from 05:00 am PST till about 07:15 these days, THEN it starts doing the TWO step wrist raise illumination.

I’m not saying to specifically temporally configured, so software and time based, but it clearly seems to be software interpreting ambient light and THEN deciding to either simply come on, low, or come on and then STEP UP illumination.

one can test this for themselves fairly easily.

In a not TOO bright room, cup your hand over the watch face and raise or rotate the wrist to wake. Keep your hand about .5-1 inch cupping over the watch face.. you’ll notice it just comes on with the base level of illumination. Then, slowly raise your hand and the watch will step up to the +1 from base illumination. So, it’s clearly doing something related to ambient light.
 
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tivoboy said:
It’s totally dependent on ambient light.. in the dark, doesn’t happen, stays relatively dim. I see no step up in my living room from 05:00 am PST till about 07:15 these days, THEN it starts doing the TWO step wrist raise illumination.

I’m not saying to specifically temporally configured, so software and time based, but it clearly seems to be software interpreting ambient light and THEN deciding to either simply come on, low, or come on and then STEP UP illumination.

one can test this for themselves fairly easily.

In a not TOO bright room, cup your hand over the watch face and raise or rotate the wrist to wake. Keep your hand about .5-1 inch cupping over the watch face.. you’ll notice it just comes on with the base level of illumination. Then, slowly raise your hand and the watch will step up to the +1 from base illumination. So, it’s clearly doing something related to ambient light.
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it's exactly like this and many thanks for the effort of analysis. The only point i don't get, it's why it's also watch-face-related. Please have a try on the ones I propose above, like Mickey Mouse and you will realize it's not there, in any ambient scenario! Activity face or explorer have no impact of this two step dim. Truly appreciated if you can let me know.
 
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travis64 said:
This has been like this since series 5 this is not a ultra problem.
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I upgraded last year from a S4 to the S7 and noticed this as well - S4 didn''t have auto-brightness settings and it annoyed me a bit initially.

If you go to the phone app on the watch and then numeral pad it will brighten a lot - press out of the app with the digital crown and it keeps the brightness a bit - but still weird
 
So, I read through the entire thread. I noticed that the colors on the Apple Watch Ultra are a bit pale over my S5. Which is weird.

Also, the watch faces seem to be designed more for the S8 and NOT for the Ultra. I notice a lot of space left on the screen for the Ultra’s real estate vs on the 8 where the watch faces look more edge-to-edge.

I was looking for confirmation that this is true and it seems that there is some basis to this observation, specifically on color (pale in comparison to S5), and probably less bright?

Still looking for answers though 😭😭😭
 
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