
The software is simply far too aggressive as it stands, and refuses to defer to the user’s wishes. I tried to lead it in the right direction by manually adjusting the slider every time it made a change I didn’t want, but that didn’t help either. Upon turning Adaptive Brightness on, the device raised and lowered the brightness seven times in the space of a minute, even though I didn’t move the phone at all. It worked excellently for me on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 4, but it’s an indecisive mess on the Pixel 4a. Google introduced AI-aided Adaptive Brightness in Android 9 Pie, and unlike standard auto brightness, it’s built to learn your preferences and remember how bright you prefer your screen to be in certain lighting conditions. There’s a bit of red and blue polarization that creeps in when viewing the panel from steep angles, though it’s nonexistent if you’re looking at the screen in a natural way, so it’s not a significant issue by any means.Ī more aggravating albeit fixable complaint concerns the Pixel 4a’s Adaptive Brightness tuning. First, given that this phone is relatively low-priced compared to others that employ OLED technology, I’m not surprised that the viewing angles on the 4a pale slightly next to more premium OLED-toting models, like Google’s own flagship Pixel 4. Overall I’m hugely impressed with the Pixel 4a’s panel, save for two nitpicks.
PIXEL 3 F1 2019 BACKGROUNDS MANUAL
By comparison, the iPhone SE can hit 653 nits no matter whether you use auto or manual brightness.


The maximum manual setting tops out at 433 nits outdoors in sunlight, with the adaptive setting enabled, the Pixel 4a’s panel can reach 681 nits. When it comes to brightness, the Pixel 4a follows the precedent established by most Android phones, in that you can only access its true peak full-screen brightness setting when Adaptive Brightness is turned on.
