The front camera will be used to automatically take a picture every time you unlock the phone. Samsung also assures that the photo will only be used to measure the lighting around your face and will not be stored anywhere.
Automatic brightness adjustment is something that we have taken for granted. Hardly anybody tweaks the brightness slider manually except for maybe while playing games or watching a movie. But budget Samsung phones have always lacked the ambient light sensor which is the tech behind automatic brightness control. However, despite lacking the sensor, Samsung may have a solution to bring the feature to budget phones.
While Samsung is not interested in increasing the bill of materials for its budget phones, the existing set of sensors, particularly the front camera sensor will be used to provide automatic brightness to phones, according to a report by XDA Developers. A software update that is currently rolling out to the Samsung J8 has a toggle to turn on automatic brightness. When you tap on it, a pop up comes up explaining how the feature works on the phone.
The pop-up explains that the front camera will be used to automatically take a picture every time you unlock the phone. Samsung also assures that the photo will only be used to measure the lighting around your face and will not be stored anywhere.
By studying the light levels in your selfies, the phone will be able to determine the optimum brightness level for the screen.
While it would have been great to see an ambient light sensor on budget Samsung phones, it is indeed a clever way to implement the feature without adding extra hardware and increasing the cost of production. However, almost every other budget device has the ambient light sensor installed.
The ambient light sensor detects the light levels around you and adjusts the screen brightness at an optimum point where you can see clearly. The screen brightness shoots up when you’re outdoors in the day with the sun high in the sky while the brightness comes down when you’re about to go to bed and all the lights in your room are off. It’s an effiicent way to measure brightness levels. Using selfies to determine brightness means the camera has to be used every time you unlock a phone (and that’s a lot of times) leading not only to faster battery drain but also faster degradation of the camera sensor after being used way more than it’s designed for.
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