Hi,

On its lowest brightness setting, the screen gets even dimmer when the machine is idle for some time. Is there a way to force that dimmed state to be permanent for night-time use?

I've had my N770 since it came out in Xmas 2005! and it's been a real trooper.
The N800 nearly replaced it, but the 2007 H.E. gave it a new lease of life.
These days I tend to use the N770 in bed at night, when my wife is asleep.
The machine is light weight, silent, and despite the occasional crash(!) perfect for catching up on some rss feeds (I'm browsing the newsgator mobile version which the N770 seems to handle quite happily).

Thanks for any ideas/suggestions,
Luis.

No. Sean Luke already reported on the brain-deadness of having a brightness setting that is not user-acessible. Let's call it one more notch for the idiot designers at Nokia.

Thanks for the quick reply.
Do you know/think that an application could be written to access this dim setting?

Who knows?

The point is that it shouldn't have to be written in the first place: The idiocy of having a brightness backlight setting that the user cannot access is probably not quantifiable.

I don't doubt that a gifted programmer couldn't dive in the O/S and configuration files and come up with a workaround; but he then has essentially wasted his time in fixing something so utterly *****ic that words fail to describe (actually, if you read my posts, words don't really fail me, civilized words however do).

BTW, if you want to know what Sean Luke has to say about the N800, go here:

http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/n800/

It's quite interesting, mainly because he knows what he's talking about.

Luis,

This probably isn't the answer that you want, but it's the only one I'm aware of ("Extended backlight level control for N770/N800 kernel", about a quarter of the way down the page):

http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/

Sorry I can't explain in further detail, I just remembered stumbling upon this earlier. Also, please don't disregard the warnings, no one takes any responsibility for what you may or may not do to your device following this advice.

Perhaps someone else can help if you need a more detailed "how-to".

Etaoin

Wow, and I thought I new all of the N770/N800 shortcomings...

I realize that not every product can please every user for every purpose, but it still pains me that companies are releasing products that just aren't quite right - be it in specs, functionality, UI, or price... It doesn't seem too complicated a formula to get right, and knowledgeable people like Sean Luke are surely not hard to find in the day of the internet. Don't these companies want to have a successful product? Can't they do some real world research and contact the experts before launching their products? It seems that if I were to launch a new product, I'd pay a couple of writers @ Engadget/Gizmodo or any other tech news site or forum, and get their opinion. Every day stuff comes out with a missing killer feature, poor execution, or an uninformed price point...

Anyway - enough ranting - I've got work to do. Thanks for the insight Karel.

Etaoin - thanks, that looks about right.

Welcome to the club :-)

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ead.php?t=9608
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=375
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=965

Feel free to vote for those bugs or add a comment.

Incidentally, the issue of lowest brightness setting not low enough isn't unique to the IT.. it's a regular on Palm forums. And people have made 3party applications to fix it. I have a hunch that is it's easier to fix this for the IT than for the Palm devices, if true then someone will probably jump in with a fix soon..

I'm confused.

Brightness control is certainly accessible... do you mean to say that the range is ridiculously limited? I'd agree with that. I wouldn't call the designers idiots, though.

EDIT: several comments here, and in bug 965-- yet only 1 vote on each bug until I added mine. ???

Come on guys. A ***** without a vote is kinda wasted, isn't it?