Like the 2017 and 2018 Pixels, the 2019 Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL have different display manufacturers, display resolutions, and display sizes. While the displays on both Pixel smartphones are certainly high-quality, their maximum brightness levels leave a lot to be desired. In our preliminary testing, the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL reach a maximum luminance of ~450 nits at 100% screen brightness. This is far below what other competing flagship smartphone displays are capable of. Fortunately, there’s a way to improve the maximum brightness using the hidden High Brightness Mode, but you’ll need root access to enable it.
If you’ve used the Pixel 4 while under direct sunlight, you probably struggled to see the screen because the display simply couldn’t get bright enough. Pixel smartphones have always suffered from dim displays while outdoors, so this isn’t a new problem for Google. Nowadays, though, smartphones that cost hundreds of dollars less have much brighter displays, so there’s little excuse for Google to fall short of the competition here.
Display Brightness Reference Chart. Credits: Dylan Raga/XDA.
Using the hidden High Brightness Mode, however, you can bump the peak luminance of the Google Pixel 4’s display from about ~450 nits to about ~610 nits. This is a major bump in display brightness, and in my experience, actually makes the Google Pixel 4 readable outdoors. For whatever reason, Google decided not to use High Brightness Mode in normal use. You can’t trigger it manually anywhere in Settings nor can you trigger it with Adaptive Brightness enabled while you’re outside. We don’t know why Google isn’t using this hidden display mode, and we’ve been asking ourselves this question since we reviewed the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL displays.
In any case, we’re glad that Google left access to High Brightness Mode in the kernel since it’s easy to manually toggle it with root access. After rooting your Google Pixel 4 or Pixel 4 XL, all you have to do is enter the following shell commands:
su
echo on >> /sys/class/backlight/panel0-backlight/hbm_modeIf you’re wondering whether it’s safe to leave this on, you probably don’t have to worry. In our testing, it looks like High Brightness Mode only kicks in when the screen is basically at maximum UI brightness levels. The only thing you’ll really have to worry about is the effect on battery life. Since the display is already the largest contributor to battery drain on a smartphone and the display is drawing more power to run at a higher brightness level, the battery life of your Pixel 4 will suffer the longer High Brightness Mode is active.
If you want to disable it just to be safe, just replace “on” with “off” in the above echo command. With an app like Tasker, you can even automate toggling High Brightness Mode so it’ll only turn on when the ambient or UI brightness level is above a certain point.
Note: After enabling High Brightness Mode, we recommend resetting Adaptive Brightness by going to Settings > Apps & notifications > All apps > Device Health Services > Storage & cache > Clear storage. Adaptive Brightness uses machine learning to learn your brightness changing habits, and with the addition of High Brightness Mode, your brightness changing habits will probably adjust.
The post Google Pixel 4’s Hidden High Brightness Mode fixes the awful Screen Brightness appeared first on xda-developers.
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