XCover Pro Adaptive Brightness (CameraLightSensor) Battery Drain

[Zakalwe]

Since the system update from 30 October my XCover Pro has excessive battery drain. The top ranking app in the battery usage listing is the CameraLightSensor system app, responsible for using the front camera as a light sensor for the Adaptive Brightness functionality. If I let it do its thing it will consume up to 20% of the power per day, even when the phone sees little active use.

I have followed the usual recommendations for battery drain, to no avail. There are clear indications this is a bug introduced by the update:

• the drain started right after the update, there was none before
• disabling adaptive brightness in the settings stops the drain, but of course, it also stops the adaptive brightness feature
• I have configured Tasker to disable/enable adaptive brightness whenever the screen turns off/on. This greatly reduces the drain to less than 5% per day, which indicates that otherwise the adaptive brightness/CameraLightSensor is uselessly busy and draining the battery even when the screen is off.

While I can live with the Tasker "solution," this looks like a clear bug to me and there may be more wrong with this (5%/day still seems a bit excessive for what this does, so I suspect the CameraLightSensor is in some kind of "overdrive" whenever it is on). Also, Tasker is a paid app and users should not be expected to buy this as a workaround to manufacturer bugs.

I have sent error reports to Samsung support using the Members app, but never received any response.

Any suggestions?

[Muhammad1981]

I'm seeing the same problem 😕

[Helge Nicholson]

Hello.

I have the same issue described here. Did you get any feedback from Samsung eventually?

[Mihai Octavian]

Hello everybody,

As Helge Nicholson stated above, I same the same issue with adaptive brightness since the last update, when Bixby was replaced with Free. Does anybody knows of a solution to this problem? 

[Ko van Z]

Same problem (CamearaLightSensor) here. Battery drains even at night, with phone in Airplane mode.

[Ko van Z]

Softwareupdate june, 2, 2021 fixed the problem. The battery usage of the CameraLightSensor is about 2% per day, now. Very acceptable for me.  

[Zakalwe]

Over the months I have been getting this intermittently. The monthly software update would fix this, but it has reoccurred later. The most recent one happened for me after a Zoom session on battery, which makes me suspect that maybe some apps can mess up something in the power control, and the software update just resets things? Eh, too little data to tell.

Either way, I have not been too happy with the effectiveness of the adaptive brightness feature, regardless of the power consumption. I know it is supposed to learn, but a year in I still found myself turning down the brightness when it is dark, or worse, struggling to turn it up when out in the sun. For the past week I have turned the adaptive brightness off and instead used a button remapper app to make the combination xcover-button + volume-buttons control the brightness. That way I can quickly adjust the brightness, even out in the sun when I cannot see the screen - and it will not pick weird brightness levels on its own, and no power issues.  Should have done this months ago.

[Ko van Z]

Thanks for your advice. I downloaded a button-mapper and it works very well. Just two key combinations and it's all in my own hands now. Never a too bright screen anymore. 

[LightGuy48]

I just upgraded to the XCoverPro from Samsung Active unit and I cannot get the Adaptive Brightness to work at all! I get blinded at night and can't see the screen during the day.  The feature is turned on in settings but it's not working.

I'm on Kernel 4.14.113 dated Jul 13, 2021 and checking for system updates shows no newer updates. 

How can Samsung break a feature that worked perfectly on previous models! 

[Ko van Z]

You are right. I finally bought button remapper in play store and remapped the top key in combination with volume up and  down. This works for me, from complete darkness to full-bright light conditions. Not the way it should be, I know...... I punish Samsung with a new phone next year from another manufacturer.