search

advancingu / XPS13Linux

Public collection of issues with running Linux on a Dell XPS 13 (2015 edition)
131 stars 3 forks source link

Screen contrast is controlled by firmware #2

Open advancingu opened 9 years ago

advancingu commented 9 years ago

The screen brightness is controlled by firmware and correlates with the brightness of content on screen.

This means the screen automatically dims when dark content is shown and brightens when bright content is shown.

There is no known method to turn this mechanism off.

tmadhavan commented 9 years ago

I'm sad to report that my refurb (but new) XPS has this issue - and so does my friend's, but only if you put the browser into full screen mode beforehand (which it does clearly state to do on the test page).

Sorry for the misinformation.

What a great machine, though. Now I need to decide whether to risk keeping it in the hope that the flaw gets resolved and I can do photo work on the go with it.

cboettig commented 9 years ago

just did the test at http://tylerwatt12.com/dc/ and it appears that my dev-edition XPS 13 touchscreen isn't affected by this. (A04 bios, Ubuntu 15.04 on 4.1.3 kernel; w/ broadcom card replaced for an intel one)

rgb1337 commented 9 years ago

The test at http://tylerwatt12.com/dc/ is a little deceiving. My computer definitely has the adaptive backlight problem, but the logo always shows up immediately after switching to the brighter screen. But the backlight is still changing. For me, the "feature" is most visible when the display brightness is all the way down to the lowest settings. Then you can easily see the backlight getting brighter and dimmer when you switch between pages. Another place I notice this is when using a full screen terminal window, if I'm outside and the sun is out it is very difficult to read text even with the brightness turned all the way up. Then if I change pages to Google (or something bright) and leave it there for a few seconds and switch back, all the text is much brighter and then slowly starts to fade.

I have also spoke to Dell customer support about it and they actually sent me a replacement computer, which also had the same problem. They told me that they were sending all of my ticket information/details to their engineering team and would open a new ticket for me to track the progress. I will post an update as soon as I get some information.

advancingu commented 9 years ago

I checked with my support representative again last week for a status update and the message was that Dell had not received any update from the display vendor who is responsible for managing the display firmware. It didn't sound like they would have a solution any time soon.

rgb1337 commented 9 years ago

Based on the iFixit teardown, it looks like it is a Sharp display. Is that where I should be directing my emails?

Here's a picture of the back of the panel

https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/hussf5akAOBKFx1U.huge

soren121 commented 9 years ago

@shootzalot You could try, but I think it's unlikely that Sharp would talk to you since their customer is Dell, not you.

jkempson commented 9 years ago

Just been trying to calibrate my screen and this thread explains why I have been hitting a brick wall!

I have to agree that this is a bug, it is doing the complete opposite of what I'd expect from an adaptive control such as this.

shootzalot, you heard anything back from Dell? You seem to be on to a good thing here!

rgb1337 commented 9 years ago

@jkempson Unfortunately my support ticket has been "escalated" three times so far and still no real progress. I usually receive an email every 4-5 days saying that they apologize for the inconvenience but they are still waiting for an update from another department.

I tried contacting Sharp and they gave me the run-around as well. I first tried emailing the "Professional LCD Monitor" department and they told me they couldn't help me, and I'd have to call the "Home Entertainment" department. So I called and they then told me that they couldn't help me and it would be a specialist that I would need, but wasn't able to give me any information on who I should contact since I already tried the LCD department.

If I don't get a solid response from Dell soon I'm going to start nagging Sharp a bit more again, maybe if I call enough they'll give me an email or phone number to someone who can talk to the people who deal with the firmware. So frustrating because this is such a small little thing, but annoys the crap out of me. I hate things changing without me telling it to. Especially brightness.

jkempson commented 9 years ago

@shootzalot thanks for the update. I've read A06 bios update is coming soon. Maybe a glimmer of hope but FWIW no mention of anything here http://bartongeorge.net/2015/08/28/recent-fixes-for-xps-13-developer-edition/

andrewcharnley commented 8 years ago

I wish Dell would resolve this.

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

@shootzalot just a few minutes ago, I contacted some of my support contacts so they would engage with you to try to resolve this. Feel free to ping me if you don't hear from anyone in a couple of days.

jkempson commented 8 years ago

Wow, thanks @jared-dominguez . Sounds really promising!

advancingu commented 8 years ago

@jared-dominguez This is the single biggest issue I have with the device. Any movement to fix it would be greatly appreciated.

andrewcharnley commented 8 years ago

I wouldn't bank on it, it's taken 9 months to fix the keyboard issue... and they still haven't fixed it!

rgb1337 commented 8 years ago

@jared-dominguez Sounds great, thank you! Here's the latest response I got from my ticket with Dell:

"I apologize for the delay, we have received an update from our concern team stating that they are unable to duplicate the issue in the lab and they want a video from you which shows the issue. I request you to please take a video of the issue, try to changing the brightness or adaptive brightness settings while taking the video. So that our concern team can understand the issue clearly and resolve the same."

Unfortunately the only cameras I have don't have full manual settings and will adjust the brightness and the problem wouldn't show up in a video. One of my friends does have an LG G4 which I believe lets you adjust everything manually, so I'm going to go over and use it to record the video this weekend.

I'll be sure to keep everyone updated!

jkempson commented 8 years ago

I've got a DSLR camera I could use if you don't have any luck with the G4. I could shoot a video tomorrow if needs be. Let me know!

smhg commented 8 years ago

Isn't this what you see when switching between a light window and a dark window (more likely to occur when fullscreen)? Open a maximized terminal (black) and a maximized chrome window (white) and alt-tab between them every 5-10 seconds. You'll see the screen adapt to the current window's "brightness". Especially when going from black to white.

jkempson commented 8 years ago

@smhg yeah thats exactly the issue. And we should be able to turn it off.

andrewcharnley commented 8 years ago

Guys, you are speaking to low level support who won't be able to give you a solution. The problem lies in the 'bios' for the sharp LCD driver, past the Intel display chip. Is writing to the EDID channel even possible? If it is, then perhaps there's a chance.

rgb1337 commented 8 years ago

@jkempson If you could record it that would be awesome! I have a DSLR but unfortunately it can't record videos.

soren121 commented 8 years ago

@shootzalot Here's a video of the issue that I shot with my NEX-5R on manual settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDdnKCXGjU

Feel free to share it with Dell or whoever else needs it. I can make more videos if needed.

Also, on the topic of that test, I noticed that if you use Redshift (or a similar color-temp adjuster), the adaptive contrast is mostly negated. The logo shows up immediately, although I do notice a slight color shift from greenish to gray. I thought I was imagining things at first until I realized it was Redshift.

jkempson commented 8 years ago

@soren121. Nice work, that captures exactly what I'm seeing.

jkempson commented 8 years ago

@shootzalot have you had a chance to give Dell support the youtube link?

rgb1337 commented 8 years ago

@jkempson Yes I forwarded that video along with a video I took showing the Intel graphics panel and power settings for adaptive brightness. No response yet, I will update here when I get one. Thanks for all the help guys.

abogdanov-synergetica commented 8 years ago

@soren121 Thanks for the vid, but imho I think that it's not fully prominant. Could you record a video where you switch between terminal and browser. This is especially noticible when terminal got some colored text. The colors of the text on the black background slowly looses contrast in 3-5 seconds after the switch from the white browser page.

rgb1337 commented 8 years ago

The latest:

"We have received an update from our support team stating that they are still trying to duplicate the issue and working on the same. We would be following up with you again once we get an update from the support team."

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

@shootzalot What's your case number?

rgb1337 commented 8 years ago

@jared-dominguez Service Request Number : 914969416

They contacted me a couple days ago saying they are still unable to duplicate the issue even after providing the videos, and they want to issue me a refund and recommend I buy a different system. I responded back and am waiting for a supervisor to contact me to discuss further options.

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

Oh. :(

I've passed along your last message to our liaison to the ProSupport High Complexity Resolution team. At the very least I hope we can resolve this for everyone else.

-----Original Message----- From: johnny hanson [notifications@github.commailto:notifications@github.com] Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:37 PM Central Standard Time To: advancingu/XPS13Linux Cc: Dominguez, Jared Subject: Re: [XPS13Linux] Screen brightness is controlled by firmware (#2)

@jared-dominguezhttps://github.com/jared-dominguez Service Request Number : 914969416

They contacted me a couple days ago saying they are still unable to duplicate the issue even after providing the videos, and they want to issue me a refund and recommend I buy a different system. I responded back and am waiting for a supervisor to contact me to discuss further options.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2#issuecomment-144867640.

soren121 commented 8 years ago

I feel like either the support team doesn't understand what the issue is or Engineering doesn't want to put effort into shipping a new UEFI feature post-launch.

It's disappointing because this is a great laptop with a beautiful display, but with adaptive contrast, I can't watch movies with dimly-lit scenes or play zombie games and such because the firmware reduces the contrast to the point that you can barely see anything, even at full brightness.

I'm glad someone at Dell is trying to help us, though. There's at least some hope.

hanikesn commented 8 years ago

Yeah, this makes using the builtin screen really hard. I'm using the Intellij darcula theme and each time I alt-tab the contrast is messed up.

AndrewBogdanovTSS commented 8 years ago

@hanikesn yup, I have the same issue. I'm using webstorm/phpStorm, constantly switching between browser and text editor and it gets really annoying, cos my IDE colors gets washed out and when I switch to the white page of the browser it feels like I was sitting in the cave for half of my life and then decided to take a walk in the snowy sunny day.

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

@shootzalot my contact said your case never reached his team since you bought your system with Windows and without ProSupport. So it sounds like you spoke to our consumer support people. Unfortunately since you didn't have ProSupport, the team that helps us with customer Linux issues isn't able to help. If someone else having this issue did buy ProSupport at least, please report the issue to our support channels.

AndrewBogdanovTSS commented 8 years ago

@jared-dominguez I bought a system with pro support. I spoke with support team and they said that I will need to return my system for motherboard replacement. But I don't see this as proper solution. I think this issue should be addressed differently or at least I should should understand why I need to replace my motherboard and will it actually help? I felt that "replace motherboard" is just a solution coming out of the lack of understanding the problem.

advancingu commented 8 years ago

I'll make a video tonight and will provide all the details for support to be able to reproduce the behavior. Hopefully this will speed up development of a solution.

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

@advancingu thank you!

@AndrewBogdanovTSS yeah, replacing the motherboard doesn't sound quite right to me given the history of the issue. Can you give me your service request number so I can check with our support guy on this?

AndrewBogdanovTSS commented 8 years ago

@jared-dominguez I can't find request number right now, but I can tell you the nick name of the support guy I was talking with and an ID of the chat session.

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

That might work.

On Fri, Oct 02, 2015 at 11:21:17AM -0500, AndrewBogdanovTSS wrote:

@jared-dominguez I can't find request number right now, but I can tell you the nick name of the support guy I was talking with and an ID of the chat session.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.*

AndrewBogdanovTSS commented 8 years ago

Agent name: _HYDAamear_255339 session ID: 70223949 Time of communication: 07/29/2015 12:40:19PM

advancingu commented 8 years ago

Here is my video showing the XPS 13 connected via DisplayPort to a Dell U2515H with screen mirroring mode (both displays at 1920x1080). The camera was set to fixed aperture / exposure for accurate capturing.

You can clearly see that the XPS's screen activates some kind of contrast modification when the display shows dark content for more than a few seconds.

In the video I switch between these two files, using the stock Ubuntu image viewer: black delllogo-light

AndrewBogdanovTSS commented 8 years ago

@advancingu awesome vid! It's depicting problem perfectly.

advancingu commented 8 years ago

@jared-dominguez Do you have any new information? I hope the issue is now clearly reproducible for your support teams, using the images and video I posted.

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

I need someone who bought their system with ProSupport to open a a case with Dell (preferably in the US because those are the support people more willing to talk to my team). Until that happens, there's nothing I nor my support contacts can do to move this along because the relevant teams we need to engage with require following our support structure paths. This is one of the reasons we so strongly encourage people to purchase their systems with Linux and with ProSupport.

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

FYI I asked my ProSupport contact about the case @AndrewBogdanovTSS mentioned. His system was bought with Windows 8 and without ProSupport.

advancingu commented 8 years ago

@jared-dominguez We bought two XPS13 (2015) with Ubuntu in Germany. How can I determine if we have pro support?

soren121 commented 8 years ago

You have ProSupport if you did one of the following: you purchased the Developer Edition, or you purchased your XPS through Dell's business website. I think the Dell support site should tell you what warranty you have if you type in your XPS's Service Tag.

Sent from my Windows Phone

-----Original Message----- From: "Markus Weiland" notifications@github.com Sent: ‎10/‎7/‎2015 2:46 PM To: "advancingu/XPS13Linux" XPS13Linux@noreply.github.com Cc: "Nicholas Narsing" soren121@sorenstudios.com Subject: Re: [XPS13Linux] Screen brightness is controlled by firmware (#2)

@jared-dominguez We bought two XPS13 (2015) with Ubuntu in Germany. How can I determine if we have pro support? — Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

advancingu commented 8 years ago

@jared-dominguez So apparently we have Pro Support (Service Tag 5CGPP32). I emailed with customer service rep Uwe Franke in Germany (DE_LEJ_DTY_TS_BS) several times regarding this issue. The reference number is 910901591. He said a technical team was trying to figure out a solution with the display panel manufacturer. As far as I am concerned the ticket is still open.

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

On Wed, Oct 07, 2015 at 01:53:00PM -0500, Markus Weiland wrote:

@jared-dominguez So apparently we have Pro Support (Service Tag 5CGPP32). I emailed with customer service rep Uwe Franke in Germany (DE_LEJ_DTY_TS_BS) several times regarding this issue. The reference number is 910901591. He said a technical team was trying to figure out a solution with the display panel manufacturer. As far as I am concerned the ticket is still open.

Okay, thank you! I will try to see what I can do with this.

Jared Domínguez OS Architect Linux Engineering Dell | Client Software Group

jared-dominguez commented 8 years ago

Okay, I contacted our support contact.

If there's anyone (again, especially in the US since that makes it easier for my team to have visibility on this) having this issue who has the Developer Edition and ProSupport, please by all means utilize your support contract and report this issue to us. The more people who report it through official channels, the easier it'll be to get anything done about it.

cerealcable commented 8 years ago

Is there an email I can use to open a support case? I don't want to wait through hours and not be able to easily tell people about the exact issue that is at hand. I'd like to just link to this page and get a case opened with my relevant info. I am in the US so that might help.