Feature request: better night mode

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Markku Tikkanen

• February 28, 2020 07:15

While commuting on dark Nordic mornings and evenings two things became obvious:

- the lowest brightness setting is still too bright, even with the "dark" mode

- the map view is too bright and doesn't implement "dark" mode too well.

After looking into Karoo visibility of surroundings was temporarily reduced even when using good headlights.

Karoo needs way lower brightness level when in the lowest setting. A red light theme could maintain night vision even better in low light environments. Map colors when in the "dark" mode could be tweaked towards darker colors.

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  Hari Krishnan

  • February 28, 2020 13:34

  Thank you for sharing your feedback and experience with the recommended solutions. This is something we will bring up in the Product meeting.

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  Richard Eustace

  • February 28, 2020 18:10

  I agree completely and I have actually mentioned this before.  The screen is much too bright in gloomy England.  Surely having the screen brightness span even wider so that we can go dimmer would only help with battery life and therefore it is a selling point.  I know it can go dimmer because the bug,that still exists in 117 has it very dim after coming back from power saving mode. 

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  Stefan Schmid

  • February 29, 2020 11:01

  Same in Switzerland!

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  Rui Rodrigues

  • February 29, 2020 15:04

  Agree. I think my bike lights in standby mode are less bright than the Karoo in the lowest setting. It hurts my eyes. 

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  Pan Pawel

  • March 03, 2020 15:35
  • Edited

  I agree completely! When I'm riding in dark conditions, even a minimal backlit screen hits my eyes. What's worse, when I turn on sleep mode and turn the screen back on, the screen is completely dark and you have to intuitively find the brightness bar and set it.

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  Justin Chapman

  • February 06, 2021 23:31

  I just did my first night ride with a K2 and agree:

  - at lowest screen brightness the screen is too bright

  - map doesn’t even seem to be trying to do a night mode, is way too bright and affects night vision after viewing.

  it seems like the issue has been there for a while. Is it a hardware limitation, a “feature”, or pending improvements?

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  Ali

  • February 08, 2021 07:19

  Hi Justin, it is pending improvement and requires investigation. It is also a matter of priority as there are other competing priorities that draws our attention and needs, to catch up with our backlog of features and reliability of the device in use.

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  Markku Tikkanen

  • February 08, 2021 07:34

  I'm very happy to notice my request is being investigated very thoroughly, over 1 years already.

   

  Please consider this feature request a safety issue. Riding in the dark safely requires excellent low-light vision and bright lights disturb this greatly. Due to the excellent mapping features of Karoo it would make it an excellent device for night time driving but the current brightness is simply dangerous.

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  Justin Chapman

  • February 08, 2021 07:41

  Thanks Ali for confirming it is being addressed as a matter of priority. As Markku has confirmed it really is a safety issue and the description of it as a feature request doesn't quite do it justice. I am presuming it is not a hardware limitation as it has been identified for over a year and the new Karoo2 has been around much more recently than this. My mobile phone, Garmin's, etc all have straightforward ability to set brightness to a lower level so hopefully it isn't too onerous.

  The mapping issue is a software thing; the colours/tone need to be inverted just like the text fields are currently.

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  Steve

  • February 08, 2021 10:45

  I made a similar observation in my First Impressions post a few weeks ago:

  Screen

  Screen is nice and sharp but not especially bright, even at 100% brightness. Still some way off my iPhone X screen resolution and brightness (but I appreciate it's not a phone). Also the differential between 0% brightness (should it actually be completely off at 0% brightness?) and 100% is not that great which makes the 1% brightness increments kind of pointless. That said, I imagine it's probably quite bright when riding at night.

   

  There's no point in providing 1% brightness increments if the differential between 0% and 100% brightness is so minimal.

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  David Quick

  • October 26, 2023 19:57

  Did this ever get resolved?

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  Markku Tikkanen

  • October 30, 2023 16:59
  • Edited

  I haven't noticed any change on minimum brightness. Perhaps it's a hardware limitation with the backlight. A better dark mode map is there though. 
  
  Nope, correcting myself, the map in dark mode is exactly same as in light mode, so nothing better there.

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  David Quick

  • November 02, 2023 08:17

  Have Hammerhead commented on how to use the Karoo at night? there's nothing in the user guide that I can see. Seems a pretty big oversight assuming all cyclists go out during the day!!!

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