When Auto Brightness is turned off, the phone screen dims in the sun. In the shade, it does not return to normal over time. To restore the original colors, you need to turn Auto Brightness on and off or reboot the phone.
Happens mostly when the phone's brightness is turned to maximum when there is no Auto Brightness turned on. Black colors seem to turn gray.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iPhone 13 Pro Max, iOS 16
None of these are factors. It's a bug in the software somewhere. And it's very annoying. Auto brightness off, night shift off, and true tone off, and it still dims to like 50% brightness when I am in the sun.
Why won't you guys believe us that this is a bug in the software? We know how to work the phone. We know not to leave it in a hot car. No one said, hey, my phone is blazing hot and the screen dims. No... we go outside or get out of our cars, and the screen dims for no apparent reason.
I am facing this type of issue.
This is the bug in the software.
None of this helps. This is so annoying. My friends cheap phone can adjust all these settings with no problems, but I can not use my iPhone on the beach cuz the screen turns almost black….
My I phone dims 50% levels
Screen dim when bright out. Have tried everything
I tried doing switch off everything and it becomes like an old Nokia phone setting. How can I see if the internal temperature has gone up? Holding the phone in hand and physically it shows no heat. Instead of cranking the brightness up it takes it down so much that I can’t see anything in Sun!
Has anyone tried taping over the ambient light sensor to prevent this? It must be using some brightness input to adjust the screen brightness. Why not blind the sensor if we're already disabling true tone and auto brightness?
After trying every step mentioned in this discussion thread, I continued to have the same issue. On a whim, I turned off the Zoom feature <Settings>, <Accessibility>, <Zoom>, <Off>. The screen immediately flashed and went to full brightness. Apple - what does Zoom have to do with screen brightness? Sounds like Apple has a software glitch! Hope this simple setting change works for some of you out there experiencing the same frustration.
I think this is the correct answer - the screen dimms because of the heat.
Now I don’t agree with the solution. I have dark theme turned on, and dimming the screen will render the phone unusable. It might be a solution to lower the temperature for light theme though.
Apple should warn users that the phone might become too hot and will eventually stop itself.
The can even suggest lowering the brightness, stopping the game or video they watch, but let them decide if they still want to continue using the phone with full brightness or not.
The issue seems to be related to the ambient brightness tracking sensor, usually the selfie camera. It can sometimes get stuck in a narrow sensing angle mode and will lower brightness to match the brightness of your shadowed face as you look down into your screen. I don’t have a solution other than deactivating auto brightness. Apple should adjust the auto brightness algorithm to average over the entire visual field of the selfie camera instead of just one single point.
THANK YOU so much for that. I've been so frustrated for ages. I can't believe that all it took was turning off True Tone. Who would think of that?! And I agree - it's a bug. They should be able to fix it. I'm not buying another phone. (sorry for the mini-rant)
Yes, have the same issue and this is always related to the iPhone getting hot. There are some 3d printed solutions to make screens fore visible under strong sunlight, like special visors/cased. Some of them here:
Hey relsson, so I dunno if you’re still active on this thread. I’ve done a lot of research on this and it’s fairly conclusive that it’s a bug in the software. I’ve got a brand spankin’ new iPhone 15 Pro Max 500 GB. And I absolutely hate it in some instances. This being one of them. My Mom has the same phone, but has no problems whatsoever with her. Which makes my blood boil ever-so-slightly, because I have literally the worst luck with every electronic I’ve ever bought or laid my hands on and I’m in love with them. And she can’t even work electronics!
But in one spot I read that if you do your iOS update through your computer (phone connected through usb and all that old-school good way) that it installs a *slightly* different version of iOS than if you do the software update through your phone. And supposedly, the bug/glitch/downfall of iPhone itself is not present in this version. I haven’t had a chance to test this because like a dummy, I clicked update on my software update before I even had a chance to think about doing it through my computer ‘cause I was in a hurry to have my phone updated for an app.
Plus my computer is a 2015 MBP, so it won’t run the latest OSX, therefore it won’t run the latest iTunes update (I presumed) and then it probably wouldn’t give me the latest phone iOS Software update either (also presumed based on the hierarchy of how Apple unplugs devices from updates)? Unsure. I’ve yet to pull out my computer and see about that.
But this bug about drives me crazy since I go out on my balcony every day before sunset. And my phone basically turns into an almost black screen that I can’t use while I’m out there. And using the camera? Hah, well as long as I don’t care if I can’t see what I’m aiming at, it’s good! Like I said, it certainly couldn’t hurt testing it to see if it fixes it. Next software update, I’m gonna try to. Best of luck.
But it isn’t connected to my topic.
Turning off the auto brightness in two places and restarting didn’t fix my phone dimming in the Sun. It also isn’t hot because it has only been in sunlight a minute or two before it happens.
100% Agreed
iPhone screen dims in sunlight
