Apple Watch Ultra 2 VERY dim inside and dark enviroments..

ckmic wrote:

I guess if everyone makes a call to support and logs a complaint - that is what the lady I spoke with told me .. not sure if this was to get me off the phone :-)

let's all call her - maybe thats what she wanted 😅

seriously: i was told by my support lady that the more people complain to support (not here or else) the more likely it is they fix it and also the sooner (if at all) they fix it.

media coverage will accelerate as well i suppose...

You can email Tim, according to google he reads all his email. If he is not reading it is very possible someone else at an Executive level will receive it as I saw some users were getting replies back from an executive team about their issues.

horrible dim in dark environments! almost looks like it’s turned off. Apple provide an option for brightness auto brightness or at least let people raise it to whatever level they want . i have the ultra . total mess on the dim settings

it’s crazy that apple has an accessibility option . might as well remove it all together since you can hardly see the screen in dark environments no matter what. apple just fix it . simple fix. what’s the use of having accessibility options if you can’t enable high brightness in dark environments

I went from a series 3 to the Ultra 2 and I can barely see the watch face at night even in the brightess setting. I never had this problem with my previous Apple watch, but if this can't be addressed either now or with a software update, I will have no choice but to return the watch.

My last post was deleted, Thankyou mods for trying to silence us and providing no support.

Apple rep has told me initially this was going to be fixed. Now they are saying it’s by design. I tried to return my watch and they are refusing to take the return now because it’s out of return window. I was initially mislead by Apple that this was a known issue to be addressed. Now this is not the case. 

This would be equivalent of a electric car being sold for buyers only to find out after sale is finalized that the car can only go max 30mph and the lights don’t work at night to save battery life and maximize MPG, all limited by software designed by the manufacturer. 

I reported after they tried to side step by sending instructions how to brighten, I called, got same response and called again. Finally got a link to report the aggravation. Everyone, please note, you really need to push to get the point across other than operator error…lol!

(Disclaimer - I'm using Apple Watch Series 9, and the Ultra may have slightly different behavior).

What I have seen so far is (reported) very similar behaviour between Ultra 2 and Series 9. In an evenly illuminated environment (whether bright light or total darkness with eyes adapted to the dark) my S9 behaves well, and the display levels seem about right.

The problems seem to appear when the ambient light levels are not even. For example taking the case where I raise the watch in front of my face with the display vertical. The dimming sensor is in the watch face display. If I have bright light behind me and low light as I look past the raised watch (the dim sensor sees bright) the display is near full brightness. If I turn 180˚ so the dark area is behind me and the bright area is visible in the background behind the watch (watch sees darkness) my eyes adjust to the bright background and the dimming is too low.

Now the real test. I stood in my dark hallway, facing into the kitchen (also dark) and let my eyes adjust to the dark conditions. Raising my arm the dimming level was low, which seemed correct for the almost zero ambient light. Now the test... I kept the watch raised, and turned on the light in the kitchen ahead of me. The watch display did not seem to change, but my eyes adjusted to the now bright light ahead (beyond the watch) and the watch suddenly appeared very dim and almost unreadable against the bright background.

After this kind of testing I'm not sure of the best practical solution. The watch would ideally be able to include background illumination in the dimming calculation. but for many cases that would need a sensor looking through the wearer's arm, or embedded in the underside of the watch band. Neither is exactly practical. Otherwise it might need a tweak to the dimming curve which sets the relationship between ambient light and dimming, but there is no 'one size fits all' for different user preferences. Fortunately we are not the product architects and we don't have to find the solution!

I also contacted Support after becoming part of this thread. Sent the diagnostic logs and did all of the remote analysis the rep instructed. She was very helpful and escalated my case as probably with most. Set a call back time 3 days later with me and indicated that the engineers weren’t pleased with the logs because they claimed the problem wasn’t happening at the time the log was taken. I was indoors and in fact it was occurring. Engineers instructed her to request new logs from the device, but she ran into trouble on her end generating another link to me for what reason, I don’t know. She apologized and said she would reach back out after she spoke with them again. Haven’t heard back yet. This was three days ago. Rep did indicate that engineering was NOT aware of this issue we all have. Thought I would share because it’s seems we are all getting conflicting information and experiences from Apple

A quick update on my scenario. I noticed about two or three days after I had my watch that it was less dim in the evening. In fact, it's bright enough now that I can use it all the time. The only change that I made was under display and brightness, I turned "always on" off. Other than that I have not changed anything. I have not updated any software. The odd thing is that even after changing the setting, I did not see any more brightness until about 2 to 3 days later. Seems odd, and hopefully some of you will also experience that maybe after time it just starts to work? It's good to see that everyone is keeping the pressure on Apple to release a formal fix that we can all depend on sustainably.

So Apple engineers haven't themselves been wearing Apple watches for the past decade, and haven't noticed the unreadably dim night display on the Ultra 2? Really? It’s disheartening to hear so many stories like this.

Yesterday I received 2 new bands for the Ultra 2. I ordered them the same day I ordered my new Ultra 2 (3-ish weeks ago). That watch was returned because it was unusable in low-light/no-light situations. I'm sitting here waiting for a fix so I can repurchase the watch. But we keep hearing that Apple isn't aware of the issue. 

I've never seen Apple respond like this. It's a known issue, and Apple Engineers and employees must know about it from personal experience and from all these reports. Unless they're not wearing their own personal Ultra 2s.......or unless every single one of them lives their lives in full sun, never seeing darkness with their watch on.

PS: When I returned the Ultra 2 to the Apple store, they issued the refund right away after hearing my reason for returning it. They didn't even open the box to check the condition of the watch. It felt like they didn't want to discuss the issue with the watch in front of shoppers. They didn't make the slightest attempt to solve the problem. I was expecting them to have me sit at the Genius Bar to hash this out with a support person, but thinking back, they probably knew that this bug wasn't going to be resolved at the Genius Bar.

The vibe was "yeah, we know about the issue. We'd rather not talk about it. Now get out."

My Apple Watch Ultra 2 is terrible, I run in the morning and I cannot see it at all when I am running at dusk. It’s actually the worst device I ever purchased.

I’ve been telling and demonstrating to everyone who will listen how lousy this watch is.

[Edited by Moderator] 

sure, they could say that… But that’s true on every single device that they claim battery life on. The stated claim for battery life is always… I repeat… Always… Dependent upon usage and settings. They absolutely could simply warn you when you crank up brightness, or perhaps turn off auto brightness… Or perhaps offer a means of setting a minimum brightness. Phones do this… Computer screens do this… iPads do this. They warn you that you may impact battery life, and at that point on diminished battery life is on the user. That’s fine. All we are asking is that they give us the ability to decide how we use our batteries and prioritize usefulness over uselessly long battery life.