Dim lighting or in the head?

n0m0n

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Nov 8, 2009
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Hello,
I was forced to return my Droid because it stopped allowing me to dial out.
Support did not know what he problem was other than to tell me to return it since I'm in the first 30 days of ownership.

The replacement was received and I found that the lights for the back,menu, home, search are a lot dimmer than the returned device.
I would actually say the second device is a lite purplish in color.
Also I had an issue on Saturday where in the dark the buttons and keyboard didn't light at all. Once I turned my dome light on (in my vehicle) the button bar came on that dull purplish light.

Has this been reports of 2 different lite units?
Is this a problem or is this normal?

I think that the second unit is also a bit slower and, or laggy...
This could just be me worried that I received a defective unit I'm not sure.

Other than that all works as far as I can tell.

Thanks
 

Jeremy

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Oct 24, 2008
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If you are not happy with the device, take it back and exchange it until you are happy. Why pay good money for something that you are iffy about?
 

Kaus

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If you are not happy with the device, take it back and exchange it until you are happy. Why pay good money for something that you are iffy about?

What he said, the one you returned with the lights not coming back on after a call is a known software issue that VZW has in the works for a fix in the future.
 

dagostin

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I've had the issue of the menu button lights not lighting up even though I was in the dark. This only happened once and appeared to be a bug with the light sensor. I believe if you have auto-brightness on the light sensor also controls the menu lights and it appears that when this bug manifests itself, it doesn't correctly light them up. What I did was to go to settings -> display and toggle the brightness setting for auto-brightness to off and back on again, and it continued along working again (note: i first tried restarting and that didn't fix) I haven't seen this since that one time, and suspect it might have been caused by some app conflicts/bugs such as Toggle Settings app or google goggles, as I recently installed both and was messing with both prior to the issue. If your problem is continuous then I would probably bring it in for inspection.

Since the update, I've only seen this one issue and also one time the phone just randomly restarted on its own (while i was in a call too :( ), but otherwise things have been stable. I've been installing and running lots of apps and at this point just chalk it up to bugs or incompatibilities in one or more programs.
 

dagostin

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one more thing on this. I just powered down and removed battery in efforts to look at the build date of the phone (just for curiosity purposes). Upon reloading battery and powering back on, the same thing happened again.... The screen looked like it was in full brightness and the menu lights were off... This is a clear indication that the light sensor was "under the impression" that there was a lot of light and thus turns that stuff off and brightens up the phone (since i'm using auto-brightness). I put my hands over the light sensor (which under normal working circumstances), makes the screen darker and turns on the menu lights, but this had no effect and it didn't work. Teh only way I could fix it was to edit the screen brightness settings and toggle auto brightness off and on.

I'm starting to think this has something to do with the Toggle Settings application which I use OR just some annoying bug from the update. Anyways, it's not really any major inconvenience, just sharing my findings.
 

dagostin

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I am wondering if anyone has the same issue. I set droid screen settings for auto-brightness. On further analysis, everytime I power my phone off and power on, the screen comes on as if automatic brightness setting is OFF and instead the brightness setting is all the way up. Also, the menu icons do not light up - as i said in previous post, this seems to indicate that possibly the light sensor is not working correctly and it thinks there is a lot of light. When there is a lot of ambient light, the droid will max out the brightness setting on screen and turn off the menu icon lights as it doesnt deem them necessary in those conditions.

This happens on most power off/on cycle for me and the only way to get it back to normal is to go to settings and toggle the setting from auto brightness to off and back on and everythign starts working correctly. I'm just wondering if anyone that uses auto-brightness setting can replicate this as well. Sucks that it doesnt happen all the time from a debugging perspective cause it's always eaiser to diagnose an issue when it's constant. Oh well.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Dec 15, 2009
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I have the same issue with the auto-brightness. It seems very random the brightness the phone picks, sometimes it is not enough to see the screen, and other times too bright. I also noticed after the update, the auto-brightness does not light up the screen enough and I have to manually change the brightness to see the screen clearly. Not sure if it is a software or hardware issue, trying to see if I should exchange my phone?
 

dagostin

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correction on my previous post. what i find is on ALL power off/power on cycles it comes back and auto-brightness initially doesnt seem to work (its at full brightness and the menu lights are not lit). If i simply turn off the screen and back on, it all restores and stays working until next power off/on. (or more annoyingly if i toggle the auto-brightness setting, but turning screen off is easier).

I'm guessing that others have this and it's not a hardware defect, maybe just a bug, its cause still unknown. For me, since it's as easy as turning the screen off/on I really dont care about it. But i can replicate it every time. If anyone else has auto-brightness setting, please try a power off/on. Make sure youre in a dark room. When lock screen comes on, look if the menu butotns are lit. If not, then thats the issue i'm having. Then turn screen off/on and it should work.
 

tvBilly#AC

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dagostin - same exact thing happens on my week old droid. same easy fix as well.

sounds like a software bug to me (but I don't much care about it).
 

dagostin

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dagostin - same exact thing happens on my week old droid. same easy fix as well.

sounds like a software bug to me (but I don't much care about it).

thanks for the response! i was pretty sure this was affecting at least some other droids, if not a lot of them. It's something that is not easy to even realize since as soon as the screen shuts off the first time and you turn it back on its good to go.