To save a few dollars, Samsung doesn’t include an ambient light sensor in some of its budget handsets.
Samsung is adding a feature that will allow the front-facing camera to take a photo every time the phone is unlocked to adjust the screen brightness automatically.
To help grow its market share in regions such as India, Samsung produces budget smartphones that are more affordable to the ever-growing population. But to save money on the production side of the business, Samsung has to leave out certain hardware items such as the ambient light sensor.
The lack of this sensor means that customers lose the automatic screen brightness feature that so many of us have grown accustomed to. But that might be changing soon.
As you can see from the screenshot below that was acquired by SamMobile, a firmware update that’s currently rolling out to Galaxy J8 owners is introducing a new auto brightness mode. But as the attention card brings to the user’s attention, the phone will judge the ambient light around the phone by taking a photo with the front-facing camera.
The good news is that even though the phone will capture a photo using the front-facing camera every time it’s unlocked, the handset will not store the image at all. As soon as the device is done analyzing the environment (which should only take milliseconds), the photo will be erased permanently.
While Samsung hasn’t officially announced this new feature, it’s something we could see the South Korean company add to its other budget smartphones in the near future. The option to turn on the new auto brightness feature should be found in the phone’s display brightness settings menu when it makes its way to your phones.