Screen Filter Widget for Android Review
Screen Filter as the name of the widget itself suggests is a special widget that reduces the brightness of your android device, something which was previously only possible if you dove deep into your device’s options. What Screen Filter essentially does is to save you the trouble of diving into sub menus and then figuring out how bright you want your screen to be. You can adjust the brightness of your screen with a single tap so that it adapts to night time viewing, battery saving or eBook reading or you can program it to automatically adjust.
How it works?
In order to create a new Screen Filter Widget you just need to ‘long press’ your device’s home screen. You are then prompted with a customization popup, from where you use the slider to adjust your device’s brightness. The widget sets the default at 48.6% which offers a good compromise between visibility and functionality. The sample text displayed by the Widget is what will help you determine the right brightness.
Screen Filter also has an option that allows users to toggle their backlighting using the soft keys on their phone. However, according to the developer this feature does not work on every Android device out there and one of those being the Samsung Galaxy S and probably even the SII. There is also a plug-in that comes with this widget that allows for people adjust the brightness of their screens automatically based on their time, and their location so for instance you can set the phone to 30% brightness when its 2.pm in the afternoon and then set it to 50% brightness at 9pm at night.
Drawbacks of the Screen Filter widget
One of the biggest drawbacks of the widget is that it is not 100% compatible with all Android devices out there. What’s more even the developers do not have an exact list of which cell phones and tablet devices the widget has problems with. The widget could also have been made more dynamic by allowing for people to make adjustments directly via their home screen.
Conclusions
While there are a few drawbacks to the Screen Filter widget it is still a useful app to have around. Since many people often find themselves figuring out how to adjust their screen’s brightness depending on what they want to do this widget certainly makes life easier. What’s more this is a free tool which means that you can download and use it for free so if you do not like what you see you can simply uninstall it. However, most people will eventually stick with using the app since it saves them time each time they want to adjust their screen’s brightness.