Screen brightness
Living in Denmark a substancial part of my rides takes place after dark and the screen is simply put... too bright. I've used Garmin for years and never had this problem. The only fix that I currently rely on, is turning off the screen while I ride, but that sort of defeats the purpose of using a GPS unit. What to do...??
UPDATE!
First of all thanks to everyone who took the time to respond to my post... just goes to underline the value of a community.
@Joen - Your suggestion on sideloading a Screen Filter app was spot on. I installed the app a few days ago and it works perfectly. I've not noticed any negative impact on battery life so far, so I guess it's a perfect solution - Link to app: https://m.apkpure.com/screen-filter/com.haxor
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I agree with this, and it's not the first time this has come up on here.
The differential in brightness between 0% and 100% is not sufficient; 0% should be almost off and 100% should, obviously, be the brightest the hardware will support.
The only thing I can think of, Jakob, is to find some kind of tinted screen protector that reduces the glare when cycling in the dark.
Hammerhead, is it possible to recalibrate the screen in some way and fix this via a software update? I would also really like to see 0% much darker than it is currently.
I'm also not especially bothered by the 1% increments; you could also change the brightness slider to use 5% or 10% increments instead which would make it much easier to select my preferred brightness.
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Just to be certain, Jakob - are you aware you can turn down the brightness? If not, you can pull down a drawer with settings that includes screen brightness and try lowering that (also helps with batter life). If however you are aware of this option, and it's still too bright at lower levels, then what Steve mentioned is probably your best bet, until Hammerhead can recalibrate the screen brightness. I also find that there's not a lot of difference between the lower levels and full on. I think Steve's suggestion of 5% or 10% increments makes a ton of sense, especially given the current delta between near-0 and 100%.
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I assume it's the map that's the issue? Since everything else is dark.
If you sideload stuff and install "hidden settings" you can invert colors (without inverting hue, so parks stay green and water blue etc) to darken the map a lot. Then just turn on light mode for your data fields and they'll be dark again.I don't really think the device is that bright at 0% brightness (and I'm usually annoyed by such things) so it's not why I do this. I just prefer the look :)
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Best you guys can do for now if not willing to invert screen is install an app such as Overlays which can artificially dim the screen further by putting a floating semi-transparent fullscreen overlay.
I've used the same technique in the past when I found my desktop screen wouldn't dim far enough.It's unlikely the screen can physically be dimmed further than is the case right now, so if you're waiting for a software fix from HH it'll probably be in vain.
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It's not just the map screen, no.
I believe the problem is more related to the stark contrast ratio between the black background and the bright white text (in dark mode). The amount of white light emitted from the data field values is surprisingly high, when riding at night. The map could potentially be dimmed by applying an opacity mask to it.
One other possible solution to this - if the screen cannot be dimmed any further - is for Hammerhead to develop a "night mode" theme which would use lower contrast colours for the data fields and their labels. Certain colours are easier to read when the eyes are more accustomed to the dark. Red values on a black background, for example, would be easier on the eyes than the stark, high contrast, white.
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