iPhone brightness fluctuating on its own?

[e93to]

I often stream videos in bed before falling asleep. Since I have the lights turned off, I manually turn down the phone's brightness to the lowest setting. And time to time, I notice the phone dims a little for a second (I don't know how the phone can dim even more since I have the brightness setting to the lowest possible...), and then comes back to set brightness. This is annoying at times since sometimes images on the the videos become so dark I can't even recognize what's being displayed. I can't say how often this happens, but I would say it happens 2-4 times during 30-minute duration.

It happens on all streaming apps I use - YouTube, Mubi and Shomi. What I am not sure about is whether this happens on other apps (not just video streaming), whether this is iOS or hardware, whether these specific apps are causing this, or whether this happens only when videos are being played.

Anyone else experience this? I have a 5S with 8.4.1.

 

[Chatter]

This may be very basic but do you have "auto brightness" turned on? Maybe that is the culprit?

 

[ZEEN0j]

I don't know about other apps. But I've noticed when watching videos in the photos app and then going back to the library view that everything is very bright and slowly turns back to "normal". Best guess is that Apple is using some kind of auto contrast/brightness for video. This might be what you're experiencing. Can't say I've noticed it during a video though as it's very subtle.

 

[e93to]

This may be very basic but do you have "auto brightness" turned on? Maybe that is the culprit?

I have auto brightness off. What's even weirder is that I have the brightness at the lowest setting, and the display becomes even dimmer!

 

[e93to]

I don't know about other apps. But I've noticed when watching videos in the photos app and then going back to the library view that everything is very bright and slowly turns back to "normal". Best guess is that Apple is using some kind of auto contrast/brightness for video. This might be what you're experiencing. Can't say I've noticed it during a video though as it's very subtle.

The only instance of this specific issue occurring on my phone, so far, is during video streaming in my dark room. However, I can't say I experienced brightness changing on its own under normal lighting (even if it does, it would be very hard to tell...)

 

[Chatter]

I have auto brightness off. What's even weirder is that I have the brightness at the lowest setting, and the display becomes even dimmer!

Huh. Sorry then. I assume this is either a bug or a "feature" I know nothing about. Hope someone else can chime in.

 

[joec1101]

I have seen this happen occasionally on all my iPhones since iPhone 5. I think it has something to do with a light sensor on the phone. Apple has exchanged at least 3 or 4 phones for me over the past few years because of this issue. I don't think there's any fix for it - it appears to be hardware related.

 

[HEK]

Removed as deemed of no use.

 

[e93to]

Did you not read my post?

Does it exhibit this behavior when hard set to any other brightness setting or only when set to lowest.

"I can't say I experienced brightness changing on its own under normal lighting"

Does this happen once when you go to use a movie, you tube film?

"I would say it happens 2-4 times during 30-minute duration." "It happens on all streaming apps I use - YouTube, Mubi and Shomi."

if it happens once as the movie is being set up to play, i can't see it being any kind of issue at all.

It'd still be an issue since it does things the user did not intend.

Less than a second screen brightness adjustment, that's' just plane ridiculously picky.

It's not a brightness adjustment. Like I said, the display is set to lowest setting possible, and the screen becomes even darker. How does the display dim even more than what's allowed in the brightness setting?

Set the brightness just a hair above lowest setting, does it still do it then? Did you try leaving auto adjustment on and setting to lowest. Does it still do it themselves?

No end user should adjust the way he/she uses the device to avoid an issue. On a side note, it does the same thing even with auto brightness turned on and brightness turned down to the lowest.

Let's see, I want to complain about how when I click on a video it doesn't play right away, but has to load first. And why doesn't my phone know I want to use it when I pick it up, makes me push a button, how annoying for me to suffer through. My car is cold when I first start it up, this annoys me. And when I leave my suburb street, traffic makes me stop before I can cross the road, simply unacceptable.

These comparisons don't really relate to the issue. Appliances should work the way the user tell them to, and in case of my phone it does some other thing that user did not intend.

It would be like video but pausing for a bit in the middle of streaming. Or phone not waking up when pressing the home button the first time. Or car air vents blowing cold air for a couple of seconds when heater is supposed to be on.

If you want to look for things to complain about you will find them, that's part of being a princess.

I guess this also applies to people who switched from "Windoze" to Mac, and Androids to iOS? Don't people on this forum like to complain about Windoze and Androids?

 

[HEK]

removed as deemed of no use.

 

[e93to]

Nothing works the way you wish it to, that's plain none sense and princess syndrome. This work how they are design, including flaws that may appear now and then. If the flaw effects enough people, often enough, it gets corrected over time. No device or appliance will fit everyone's needs all the time. Never gonna happen.

I own a company, and I wish I could say that about my products to customers. Furthermore does that logic apply to complaints about "Windoze" being clunky and Android being laggy? And what does that make of majority of Mac users who switched from PC, HP, Dell, etc? Do they suffer from severe case of "princess syndrome" since they resorted to spending quite a lot of money by switching to Mac instead of living with "flaws that may appear now and then"?

you will never get everyone agreeing that your or my pet peeve should also be their's.

Again, did you read my post? I didn't say everyone else should be experiencing this issue. I made this thread to find out whether anyone else has experienced this, and hopefully to find out what is causing it (primarily whether it is hardware-related).

With that said I offered everything I could think of to help rectify the OPs issue.

No. You only complained about me having "princess syndrome." BTW, I am the OP.

It appears it is something that happens, it is momentary so I can't see it being a severe impact.

Again, did you not read my post? "sometimes images on the the videos become so dark I can't even recognize what's being displayed." Furthermore, you just cannot tell others how they should perceive an issue. You haven't even seen it yourself.

One thing I didn't see reported, if you come off the lowest setting just a bit does it still do it?

I don't know.

Really starting to sound like it's not anything to do with screen setting at all. More like a rebalance of incoming video stream. Like a periodic reset to a known low point and then back to what is set. Thing is if the brightness is set to high, it is less noticeable. And if it really goes to lowestest for a second you would notice that jump even more.

Doesn't that mean everyone, including you, should be experiencing this since it happens to majority of videos? I don't experience this on any other devices in my dark room - MBP, iMac, iPhone 4 and my tablet.

Please, stop posting if you are not experiencing the issue.