Android’s Adaptive Brightness Uses Machine Learning

Right now our smartphones use ambient light sensors placed on the front of the phone to detect light which can then be used to adjust our display’s brightness accordingly. For the most part this works just fine, but in Android Pie, Google has detailed how they are using machine learning to help make this experience better.

Right now when users want to adjust the brightness of their phones to suit their tastes and preferences, they have to move the slider manually. However with adaptive brightness and machine learning, Android will be able to “learn” your personal preferences. According to Google, “This means that Android will learn what screen brightness is comfortable for a user in a given lighting environment. The user teaches it by manually adjusting the slider, and, as the software trains over time, the user should need to make fewer manual adjustments.”

Now it might seem a bit over the top to use machine learning to make adjustments to one’s display, but according to Google, “We believe that screen brightness is one of those things that should just work, and these changes in Android Pie are a step towards realizing that.” We have to say it is a pretty clever idea and if it means that in the end there is less fiddling that we’ll need to do with our phones, and focus more on what’s at hand, then why not?

As it stands the Adaptive Brightness feature is part of the Android Pie update and is available on Pixel devices, but Google is working with their OEM partners to bring the feature to non-Pixel devices as well.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), Android, Google