Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone 13 Pro Max Brightness
- Thread starter dan_s
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Isn't it the other way around? If you have auto brightness set to on and you go to a well-lit environment (outside, daylight), the phone can achieve a nit level that you cannot manually set it to.
I don't believe that's how it works.
Auto brightness is merely the automatic control of the brightness slider.
You can observe this and it's a clear difference. Go outside during daylight and set the brightness slider to max, you'll get the max brightness that can be manually set to. Then turn on auto brightness and you'll see the display immediately go even brighter. This is the reason I actually have a shortcut to auto brightness set as the action button on my 15 Pro, to quickly increase brightness when I go outside as the difference is very noticeable.
This article mentions the 14 and 15, but I believe it's the same for the 13 series, though I'm not sure.
Screen Brightness Test: iPhone 15 Pro Max vs iPhone 14 Pro Max [Video]
A screen brightness test comparing the iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
www.iclarified.com
So since the OP asked about brightness going brighter than the settings allow him, this is the only way AFAIK to achieve peak brightness (as opposed to max brightness).
How do you setup the shortcut? I wasn't able to find set auto brightness in the list of actions..You can observe this and it's a clear difference. Go outside during daylight and set the brightness slider to max, you'll get the max brightness that can be manually set to. Then turn on auto brightness and you'll see the display immediately go even brighter. This is the reason I actually have a shortcut to auto brightness set as the action button on my 15 Pro, to quickly increase brightness when I go outside as the difference is very noticeable.
This article mentions the 14 and 15, but I believe it's the same for the 13 series, though I'm not sure.
Screen Brightness Test: iPhone 15 Pro Max vs iPhone 14 Pro Max [Video]
A screen brightness test comparing the iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Pro Max.www.iclarified.com
So since the OP asked about brightness going brighter than the settings allow him, this is the only way AFAIK to achieve peak brightness (as opposed to max brightness).
Found it online, I think this is it.
Takes you to the Settings page where the option is. This seems to be the fastest way as Apple has of course not added this as a quick toggle.
That works. So you have to manually enable auto-brightness, the shortcut just takes you to display/text in settings. I wonder if there's a way to make it enable auto-brightness for you without having to turn it on and off
Yeah, it just takes you to that page in the settings. I googled this a while ago when setting it up and so far it seems this is the best we can get. Apple has not enabled a quicker way because that would be useful and would make sense.
Nah, putting it on max brightness when auto-brightness is off is the brightest the phone can go. The max brightness when auto-brightness is off is capped and then when the sun hits it, it then goes even brighter (the same brightness as max brightness with auto-brightness off).
If you get 2 iPhone 15 Pros next to each other and have one with auto-brightness turned on and one without, and then max it out, the one with auto-brightness turned off is brighter than the one with it turned on.
If you watch the video in post #7 it shows that with auto brightness on and the slider set to max brightness, the phone can get even brighter when direct light or direct sunlight is hitting the ambient light sensor.
Auto-brightness reduces the brightness level in every setting except when you're outside in a brighter environment. I think this is to preserve battery life, because when you have auto brightness set to off, this will appear in the battery page in Settings as a suggestion to turn auto brightness on. I usually have auto brightness off on my OLED iPhones as I always like the screen to be brighter than what it would be on an auto setting.
However, this changes when you go outside, as the sunlight will trigger the phone to reach a nit level you cannot move the slider to. I believe the user is cut-off from controling this brightness level manually not just to preserve battery life, but also to limit the risk of image retention or even burn in, as Apple doesn't want the user to be able to manually crank up the brightness to the absolute highest level the phone can achieve and just leave it there. I think the phone would also get very hot quickly and it wouldn't be able to sustain that brightness level for too long so this is why it can only be achieved automatically, when iOS has control over it.
About your last sentence, do the same experiment but outside in sunlight.
High Brightness Mode kicks in for several minutes only in auto-brightness mode in very bright environment. This mode works only in auto because prolonged use of it can cause damage to display panel and it needs “cooldown”. So that’s why user can’t set max brightness value themself.