Autobrightness not avaliable anymore

[Robert Brus]

My tablet was acting funny so I shut it down and noticed that the screen was really bright. I went to the notification panel and instead of an autobrightness checkmark, there is an outdoor mode checkmark. Even when I go into display settings it still isn't there. What can I do?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Rukbat]

Try Velis Auto Brightness - it's better than the stock Android brightness control anyway. (My stock brightness works, but I still use Velis.)

 

[Mat 905]

I'm writing this post, because I ran into the same problem and it really took me some time to figure out, what had happened.
So, the annoying problem was: Checkbox for auto-brightness was gone, instead there was a checkbox for an outdoor-mode (15 minutes max. brightness). The auto-brightness didn't work at all.
In the end I understood, my device's light sensor went dead and this is a fall-back mode in Samsung's software for devices that have no light sensor. In fact, not only the light sensor was gone but all sensors. CPU-Z or similar apps didn't show any available sensors: no gyroscope, no mangetic sensors, etc. So, automatic rotation also didn't work. And of course, all those auto-brightness apps wouldn't work, because they need a light sensor.
I've tried a lot: Reboot, reset, factory reset, even an update to Android 6, which was rolled out just when I worked on this problem. No luck. Finally, I've drained the battery completely and waited some time before recharging, and bang: the sensors were back again. And auto-brightness was again available
It seems the firmware or the sensor-IC went dead and Samsung's software just doesn't reset it, even on a reboot.