Screen Randomly Dims

[dawnice]

Hi,

I noticed that the screen on my Treo would dim by itself every once in a while. It's not the result of any keys pressed. The only way to get the screen to turn back onto a readable brightness is to keep turning it on and off.

Has anyone encountered this problem? If so, do you know what's causing it and how to fix it?

Thanks!

[forgot]

Does it not brighten back up when you press any key or on the screen? There is an adjustable auto-dim feature in the preferences menu, and most default to 30 seconds.

[dawnice]

No it doesn't, and just as it seems to randomly dim, it randomly gets lit back up.

[forgot]

Hmmm...any third party software added? The phone is so new its hard to tell if its a common thing or not.

[bigred]

I am a newbie here, I found this place searching for answers because my 755p is doing this exact same thing.

I hope we can find a fix soon.

[bigred]

I got mine to come back up bright, by pressing the "function" button + P*, then pressing the multi function to the right.
this is just the basic "brightness" adjustment, but it seems on my phone, it is just randomly turning the brightness all the way down.

It did it before I ever had installed any apps.
Hopefully a patch or something similar will fix this bug.

[mouseglider]

yes, i have had the same thing happen while watching sprint tv - i had to turn it off and on again to get it to brighten back up.

happened to me twice in about 3 weeks as that is how long i've had it - i thought it was a thermal shut down problem because it happened after about 35 min. of play time (after the 3rd time when you have to hit a button to continue)

i called sprint and they did not know anything about it and asked where i had my auto screen dim set at.

i have not watched tv for more than 15 min at a time now, fearing i might screw the screen up - i'm glad i am not the only one with this problem, but am disappointed that this is a potential problem

[comiken205]

Posts like this will allow Palm to see that the 755 has problems. It may need a rom update to fix this issue. Is your screen brightness turned up all the way now?

[mouseglider]

I decided to throw caution to the wind and simply play with different combinations and try and see if the screen dimming was being caused by a thermal overload shut down that bascially drops the screen brightness to the next level down before going "very dark" and then possibly shutting down all together - which by the way has also happened to me.

Well, originally my screen brightness (factory default?) was set to about 50% where the screen brightness slider was in the middle. Of course I was impressed with how nice and bright my screen was - but after watching Sprint TV for about 40min, it would drop down in brightness by just a little as if you moved the slider down to about the 40% to 45% from 50% - just ever so slighly dimmer. if I watched it alot it went "really dim" - that only happened to me once though - it has also gone totaly dark "see end" below.

So what I did was simply set the "slider" level to approximately 45%. Of course the screen is slightly dimmer but still easy to read, the battery doesn't get as warm, and 45min of TV and about another 60min of web surfing didn't make the screen go dimmer.

Basically I think if you stay a little below the 50% mark it might be the "sweet spot" for no dimming and longer longevity of the screen and Treo stays a lot cooler.

My .02 cents worth - works for me - I use to work with board level components and took measurements of part failures on some components and at what degree componets would thermally shut down or become less efficient in output - components would thermally shut down, but when cooled below a certain tempature would come alive again and work perfect - basically the same that I was experiencing with my Treo - I was afraid that was the cause and wishing that that wasn't so, because at the factory default 50% brightness level, how could Sprint advertise to watch a 1 hour show of say "Lost" without it dimming the screen??

I really don't mind to have the screen a little dimmer to save the equipment - because when you come to think about it, you have no air flow or convection for heat escape.

BTW, when my screen went totaly dark (that also happened to me) my battery was really hot and no matter what I did the system would't come back on again - so I sat there looking like an idiot with the battery cover off and had a fan blowing on it for about 5min, and finally the battery cooled down enough and "bang!" it is a live again!

Anyways, that is what works for me and in my findings overheating was the cause. So crank the brightness down a hair and hopefully this will work for you.

mouseglider

[comiken205]

Good post, could possibly explain an issue with over heating.