iPhone screen dims in sunlight

I have been using iPhone since 2007 and this problem still bugs me. My wife has the same cellphone and she doesn’t have this problem. I totally concur with Tom.

100% Agreed

Yes

This is beyond irritating. Nothing works. It is clearly a bug FIX IT APPLE.

My True Tone has been off from day one, but my phone still goes dim on the car dash and no my phone is not hot.

iPhone 16 Pro Max with current IOS 18.1 here, this still remains an issue. Apple please fix this

I just tried something!: go to Settings: Display and Text size: then reduce White Point to 0%.

it worked! Try it out!

I tried doing switch off everything and it becomes like an old Nokia phone setting. How can I see if the internal temperature has gone up? Holding the phone in hand and physically it shows no heat. Instead of cranking the brightness up it takes it down so much that I can’t see anything in Sun!

Has anyone tried taping over the ambient light sensor to prevent this? It must be using some brightness input to adjust the screen brightness. Why not blind the sensor if we're already disabling true tone and auto brightness?

I think this is the correct answer - the screen dimms because of the heat.

Now I don’t agree with the solution. I have dark theme turned on, and dimming the screen will render the phone unusable. It might be a solution to lower the temperature for light theme though.

Apple should warn users that the phone might become too hot and will eventually stop itself.

The can even suggest lowering the brightness, stopping the game or video they watch, but let them decide if they still want to continue using the phone with full brightness or not.

The issue seems to be related to the ambient brightness tracking sensor, usually the selfie camera. It can sometimes get stuck in a narrow sensing angle mode and will lower brightness to match the brightness of your shadowed face as you look down into your screen. I don’t have a solution other than deactivating auto brightness. Apple should adjust the auto brightness algorithm to average over the entire visual field of the selfie camera instead of just one single point.

Yes, have the same issue and this is always related to the iPhone getting hot. There are some 3d printed solutions to make screens fore visible under strong sunlight, like special visors/cased. Some of them here:

https://makerworld.com/en/models/498227#profileId-412777

https://makerworld.com/en/models/487189#profileId-399997

Hey relsson, so I dunno if you’re still active on this thread. I’ve done a lot of research on this and it’s fairly conclusive that it’s a bug in the software. I’ve got a brand spankin’ new iPhone 15 Pro Max 500 GB. And I absolutely hate it in some instances. This being one of them. My Mom has the same phone, but has no problems whatsoever with her. Which makes my blood boil ever-so-slightly, because I have literally the worst luck with every electronic I’ve ever bought or laid my hands on and I’m in love with them. And she can’t even work electronics!

But in one spot I read that if you do your iOS update through your computer (phone connected through usb and all that old-school good way) that it installs a *slightly* different version of iOS than if you do the software update through your phone. And supposedly, the bug/glitch/downfall of iPhone itself is not present in this version. I haven’t had a chance to test this because like a dummy, I clicked update on my software update before I even had a chance to think about doing it through my computer ‘cause I was in a hurry to have my phone updated for an app.

Plus my computer is a 2015 MBP, so it won’t run the latest OSX, therefore it won’t run the latest iTunes update (I presumed) and then it probably wouldn’t give me the latest phone iOS Software update either (also presumed based on the hierarchy of how Apple unplugs devices from updates)? Unsure. I’ve yet to pull out my computer and see about that.

But this bug about drives me crazy since I go out on my balcony every day before sunset. And my phone basically turns into an almost black screen that I can’t use while I’m out there. And using the camera? Hah, well as long as I don’t care if I can’t see what I’m aiming at, it’s good! Like I said, it certainly couldn’t hurt testing it to see if it fixes it. Next software update, I’m gonna try to. Best of luck.

I have tried everything on this list and it still does it. I believe it maybe because the phone is getting hot. If I put it in the cooler for a few minutes it gets better, but it doesn't last but a few minutes. Not sure if the battery is going bad, I have already replaced it once and it is back down to 87% now. My old iPhone 8 never did this and it is very frustrating as I live in Florida and go the beach and pool quite a bit and I can't see anything on the darn phone when I'm there. I'm due for a new phone soon but not going to dish out more money for the same results.

I still think its a heat issue. Bright screens put off a lot of heat and you may not realize, but it might be too much for the internals of the phone or it may just be trying to prevent too much heat from occurring in the first place. I deal with this issue all the time.

Ill be sitting outside, and suddenly my screen is almost too dark to see. And if I try to turn it up, it does nothing. Sometimes I can slide the brightness bar from 50% to 100% and back and forth with 0 difference in brightness. So yes, I think its a heat thing given the iPhone does not have an active cooling device inside of it. Would you rather the phone dim the screen a little bit or would you rather it come up and say, "iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it."

Annoying? Yes. Necessary? Also yes.