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I’ve been troubleshooting my 12pro for a couple days now, worried it was a dud.

With Auto Brightness “ON” it does lower the max brightness for sure. With it turned “OFF” it has a higher max level, very noticeable.

But with Auto Brightness “ON”, if you place a light directly on the ambient light sensor it will then increase the screen brightness to max. I assume this is or when you are in a very bright environment, like outside in direct sunlight. It seems to overrides the Auto Brightness “ON” lower max level to accommodate the brighter environment.

Exactly how it’s meant to work
 
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I tried it but wasn’t able to discern a noticeable difference. Do I need to wait ten seconds after toggling the auto brightness on?

I did notice something while testing though which was disappointing. I always have Apple’s all black wallpaper for my Lock Screen to save the AMOLED panel over time and battery life when I get notifications. When I picked up my 12 Pro I saw this at about 30% brightness. My Xs Max was pitch black throughout its entire brightness range.
 

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I tried it but wasn’t able to discern a noticeable difference. Do I need to wait ten seconds after toggling the auto brightness on?

When you turn off auto brightness, it takes a few seconds for the brightness to start ramping up. You are making sure that before disabling it, you have got your brightness set to maximum?
 
When you turn off auto brightness, it takes a few seconds for the brightness to start ramping up. You are making sure that before disabling it, you have got your brightness set to maximum?

Yes, True Tone off as well and I’m just in settings. I’ll try again.
 
I also noticed this and got my 12 Pro to go brighter by disabling auto-brightness in Accessibility, and then reducing brightness to 0%, then to 100%. Seems as bright as my 11 Pro Max now but still a little worried about this because I’ve never had to disable Auto Brightness. Anybody have any luck contacting Apple about this issue?
 
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It may be that the auto-brightness algorithm is different and being a little too aggressive in the new phones, and turning the brightness down too much, or even altering the nits value for a given percentage altogether
You can kind of “train “ the algorithm to give you the brightness you want for a given ambient light level. Go to a few different light levels and adjust the brightness in the phone in auto-brightness. Keep doing that for a few days and it will learn your preferences. That’s what I do and for months on the 11pro max I’ve never been fiddling with brightness
 
And I think the reason Apple moved the auto-brightness toggle was to discourage people turning it off. No coincidence it occurred as they moved to OLED, they are worried about long term burn-in and if lots of people turn it off and have brightness too high, it could cause screen issues down the road
 
I had a major brightness issue when first using my iPhone 12 Pro vs iPhone X - After restoring from iCloud backup iPhone 12 Pro was dramatically dimmer. The bug appeared to only allow the brightness to go up to around 40% and then sliding the brightness slider higher would not affect the display at all. I tried turning off all the accessibility features mentioned and there was no difference.
A simple shut down, then power back on and the phone brightness controls worked perfectly and as expected (brighter than X).

So if anyone has trouble with the brightness being really off and the slider not operating properly past a certain range, try rebooting the phone.
 
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I've got two identical spec 12 Pros (other than one being silver and the other blue), and with exact same screen settings one is noticeably dimmer than the other. The dimmer one arrived 10 days after the brighter one. By turning down the screen on the brighter one until they match, then examining the increments of the brightness slider, it looks about 14% brighter.

EDIT: Thanks to this thread this problem has now been solved by the disabling the buried auto brightness setting in accessibility>display & text size!
 

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Definitely agree. I searched Google to see if it was just me. Coming from an XR, which is supposed to be inferior. Color reproduction on the 12 Pro is excellent and much improved, as is usually the case with OLED vs LCD. But the brightness on the XR was better.

Still, it’s a great screen, especially in sunlight, and not enough to make me regret the purchase.
 
I came across this thread b/c my new iPhone 12 Pro Max had the same issue: wasn't as bright as my 11 Pro Max. It wasn't subtle, either - they weren't even close. I walked through a few of the recommendations in here. I also walked through the age old suggestion of turning OFF auto-brightness and then from a dark room turn brightness all the way down and while still in the dark room re-enable auto-brightness, then move to bright area. That didn't work.

Here's what finally worked: I toggled Reduce White Point in Accessibility > Display & Text Size (located just above the Auto-Brightness toggle). No idea why that worked, but now the 12 Pro is as bright (possibly brighter) as the 11 was. I should point out that I did this AFTER the dark room trick, which shouldn't have mattered but hey, those are the steps I took and I'm good to go now.
 
Yep, same exact behavior on my 12 Pro. I'm 100% sure that this is working as intended and there is nothing wrong.
I think the auto brightness is a little bit different on the OLED screens in order to prevent burn in/degradation.
Yep, same exact behavior on my 12 Pro. I'm 100% sure that this is working as intended and there is nothing wrong.
I think the auto brightness is a little bit different on the OLED screens in order to prevent burn in/degradation.
I had the same experience- but I fixed it when I went into color filter and activated it which allows for control of intensity- turn on and off and now it is much brighter with auto dimming disabled!
 
Your iPhone is defective. Replacing it should solve your issue.

Read more here:

 
I came across this thread b/c my new iPhone 12 Pro Max had the same issue: wasn't as bright as my 11 Pro Max. It wasn't subtle, either - they weren't even close. I walked through a few of the recommendations in here. I also walked through the age old suggestion of turning OFF auto-brightness and then from a dark room turn brightness all the way down and while still in the dark room re-enable auto-brightness, then move to bright area. That didn't work.

Here's what finally worked: I toggled Reduce White Point in Accessibility > Display & Text Size (located just above the Auto-Brightness toggle). No idea why that worked, but now the 12 Pro is as bright (possibly brighter) as the 11 was. I should point out that I did this AFTER the dark room trick, which shouldn't have mattered but hey, those are the steps I took and I'm good to go now.

12 Pro should be night and day brighter than an 11. Read the thread linked above.
I tried it but wasn’t able to discern a noticeable difference. Do I need to wait ten seconds after toggling the auto brightness on?

I did notice something while testing though which was disappointing. I always have Apple’s all black wallpaper for my Lock Screen to save the AMOLED panel over time and battery life when I get notifications. When I picked up my 12 Pro I saw this at about 30% brightness. My Xs Max was pitch black throughout its entire brightness range.

If there is no difference in brightness, your phone is normal. He’s giving you incorrect advice.

Don’t believe either of us. Visit an Apple Store and check out 5+ OLED iPhones for yourself.
 
Just to confirm to everyone, expected behaviour is as follows:

With the screen set manually to maximum brightness, you should see the screen go brighter after a few seconds when you then *disable* Auto-brightness within Accessibility/Display & Text Size. This is expected behaviour with an OLED screen.
 
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Just to confirm to everyone, expected behaviour is as follows:

With the screen set manually to maximum brightness, you should see the screen go brighter after a few seconds when you then *disable* Auto-brightness within Accessibility/Display & Text Size. This is expected behaviour with an OLED screen.
Yes. This is normal behaviour.

But when you set brightness to less than 100% on the slider, disabling AB will NOT increase the level of brightness. I have verified this across 15-20 samples. And the Apple genius has once replaced my iPhone for the exact same reason.
 
this thread is about the pro not the mini lol, you linked.
Mute point. It’s a common issue on some Apple OLEDs since iPhone X.

Fuel is fuel. It doesn’t matter whether you drive a Mercedes or Toyota, the basic principles of fuel driven cars don’t change. An OLED designed by Apple is just that.
 
Mute point. It’s a common issue on some Apple OLEDs since iPhone X.

Fuel is fuel. It doesn’t matter whether you drive a Mercedes or Toyota, the basic principles of fuel driven cars don’t change. An OLED designed by Apple is just that.
Enjoy your Se then
 
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