iPhone 6s inherited dim screen from back-up of iPhone 5s

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iPhone 6s inherited dim screen from back-up of iPhone 5s

Hi all.

My neighbour recently bought himself a used iPhone 6s, having previously had an iPhone 5s. He isn't very well up on tech, and so I do most of his set-up work etc.

I backed-up his old iPhone 5s to iCloud, and then restored his 'new' iPhone 6s to that iCloud back-up. I have done this a few times before without any problems, but on this occasion we could see that the 6s was very much dimmer than his wife's 6s. (To the extent that it was dimmer even when set to full bright in Settings than hers was when set to only half bright.) It was definitely way dimmer that hers.)

So he returned the iPhone 6s as a faulty item, and acquired another.

I went through the same procedure of back-up and restore, and afterwards the second iPhone 6s was just as dim as the first!

So had he managed to get two defective phones?

I had a moment of inspiration and wondered whether it was something in the back-up of the 5s that was affecting the screen brightness of the 6ss. It seemed like a long shot, but I erased the 6s and then set it up again, but this time choosing the 'As a new iPhone' option instead of restoring from a back up. Bingo! Unbelievably, the display of the 6s was now just as bright as his wife's. It clearly had been something from the 5s.

The downside is that he has lost some apps and content, so ideally we would like to restore it again but without transferring the screen-dimming 'feature'.

Has anyone any idea what it might be on his 5s that is causing his 6s to have a dim display, please. If I find what it is I might be able to delete/reset it and try again.

Thanks.

Posted on Jul 28, 2018 9:14 AM

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Answer 1

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Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Jul 29, 2018 5:40 AM in response to Steve Zodiac

Well, I have solved it!

Just in case the same thing happens to anyone else setting up a new iPhone from an iCloud back-up of a previous one, here is what I discovered had been going wrong.

I did a lot of investigation and I eventually found that in Settings>General>Accessibility>Display Accommodations on the iPhone 5s there was something enabled that shouldn't have been.

This was called 'Reduce White Point', and a slider in that section was over about two thirds to the right. I think the value showing was about 75%.

As soon as I disabled this Reduce White Point setting the display on the 5s itself suddenly became much brighter, even though under Settings>Display & Brightness it had already been showing as 100%.

It was now obvious that this was the 'rogue' setting that had been carried over to the 6s that had caused the problem.

(Not having a second 5s to compare it with, my neighbour had just assumed that his 5s screen was as bright as a 5s would go, because it was turned up to 100%. It was only when he compared his 6s with his wife's identical phone that the relative dimness became apparent.)

He has no idea how that particular setting on his 5s came to be enabled.

And so we were then able to back-up the 5s again, and then restore the 6s from the new back-up; he has all his apps back, and the 6s's display is no longer dimmed. So he is happy again.

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Answer 2

Aug 20, 2018 2:42 PM in response to Steve Zodiac

Thank you, Steve Z. I have been trying to solve this problem for a year at least. I thought I had looked at all the possible settings.

This is my original 5s. I have made changes in accessibility to suite my getting older. Thought I had an eye problem when the screen first appeared dimmer. Then realized my IPad was unchanged. I suspect that something I changed in accessibility automatically adjusted the white point setting. I will be sure to check it in the future whenever I make changes. Thanks again for sharing the info, it made my day.

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iPhone 6s inherited dim screen from back-up of iPhone 5s

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