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iPad brightness discrepancies?

kenbrinkman

kenbrinkman

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 20, 2009
166
0
Daytona Beach, FL
I found that the overall iPad brightness level in settings doesn't actually make the iPad as dim as it can be. Try putting the brightness all the way down in Settings then open iBooks. In iBooks, use the brightness control to make the screen even dimmer. When you exit iBooks, the iPad's brightness goes back up to the Settings' setting. Weird, huh? Why wouldn't the device settings app let you make it as dim as the iBooks app?
 
I just tried it and when I exited iBooks, the screen was back to bright though in settings it was at the lowest setting.
 
kenbrinkman said:
I found that the overall iPad brightness level in settings doesn't actually make the iPad as dim as it can be. Try putting the brightness all the way down in Settings then open iBooks. In iBooks, use the brightness control to make the screen even dimmer. When you exit iBooks, the iPad's brightness goes back up to the Settings' setting. Weird, huh? Why wouldn't the device settings app let you make it as dim as the iBooks app?
Click to expand...

i find myself want to go dimmer at times and its already dimmed to the max in system settings.
 
Could it be that the control in iBooks is simply changing the contrast of the screen, and not the actual backlight level?
 
Screen right side bright/dark

Anybodys iPad seem to be darker and lighter along the side(mine right side)
Looks like alternating bright & dark areas.

Just curious if this is normal, maybe I'm picky.
 
I'm sitting in a dark room right now, and I also find it too bright at its darkest setting. Hopefully jailbreaking it or an official update fixes this discrepancy between iBooks and every other app. I love how dim iBooks can let the device go, so I hope we can use that brightness setting for the other apps/springboard.
 
savatage said:
Anybodys iPad seem to be darker and lighter along the side(mine right side)
Looks like alternating bright & dark areas.

Just curious if this is normal, maybe I'm picky.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a normal LCD variance to me. IPS panels can often have slightly brighter areas.
 
haven't test this yet - but could it be that they just wanted more fine tuning available for when you use it to read a book. You know - a master brightness and then a sub brightness. When not in the app - it returns to the master brightness
 
My contention is that this is an Apple jerk move.

To demonstrate, last night I was reading a book in the Kindle app. It was completely dark in the room and even at the lowest brightness setting it hurt my eyes.

When I opened iBooks, however, I was able to reduce the brightness to a much more tolerable level.

I think this is intentional to make iBooks more readable... just a theory.
 
This brightness issue is one of the reasons I want a jailbreak so badly. I suspect we'll be able to adjust the brightness more with a hack, until Apple addresses it.
 
macboy4 said:
My contention is that this is an Apple jerk move.

To demonstrate, last night I was reading a book in the Kindle app. It was completely dark in the room and even at the lowest brightness setting it hurt my eyes.

When I opened iBooks, however, I was able to reduce the brightness to a much more tolerable level.

I think this is intentional to make iBooks more readable... just a theory.
Click to expand...

I stand corrected. After a back and forth with Jason Chen at Gizmodo I "discovered" that you CAN adjust the brightness from the Kindle app making it every bit as dim as the iBooks app.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

macboy4 said:
macboy4 said:
My contention is that this is an Apple jerk move.

To demonstrate, last night I was reading a book in the Kindle app. It was completely dark in the room and even at the lowest brightness setting it hurt my eyes.

When I opened iBooks, however, I was able to reduce the brightness to a much more tolerable level.

I think this is intentional to make iBooks more readable... just a theory.
Click to expand...

I stand corrected. After a back and forth with Jason Chen at Gizmodo I "discovered" that you CAN adjust the brightness from the Kindle app making it every bit as dim as the iBooks app.
Click to expand...

Ok so are you going to share the solution or are we supposed to just guess?
 
mcdj said:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)



Ok so are you going to share the solution or are we supposed to just guess?
Click to expand...

No, you don't have to guess, but you could tinker a bit :) When you hit the "Aa" button at the bottom, brightness control is an option.
 

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Ruahrc said:
Could it be that the control in iBooks is simply changing the contrast of the screen, and not the actual backlight level?
Click to expand...

kenbrinkman said:
No it can't be, the black levels aren't changing. It's definitely backlight.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Actually, Ruahrc is onto something. The backlight level doesn't actually change.
To prove this while in iBooks with the brightness set to the lowest(in app) tap and hover over a word, the magnifying glass is super bight compared to the page. You can also take a screen shot of a page(home and lock button together) with the brightness as medium/high. Then take one with the brightness set to the lowest(in app). Then go to the photos app and compare the two, the screenshot taken at the lower setting is visibly darker than the other one.

Looks like the app is lowering the brightness level of the device, not just the backlight.

But I really wish apple would make some way to make the system wide brightness lower.

PS: Also, sorry for the thread bump. But I found this thread via google and thought that other people might want answers.
 
I definitely still struggle with the backlight in the dark. I hope someone comes up with a way to adjust those soon. With the jailbreak being available, it's crazy that nobody has tapped into whatever Apple is doing.
 
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