Android 16 QPR1 may stop HDR ‘flashbangs’ with enhanced brightness controls

When you’re using your smartphone at night, you probably prefer to keep its brightness low to avoid blinding yourself or disturbing your partner. However, if you come across HDR media at night, your phone may automatically boost its brightness to display the content properly. This sudden brightness shift can be jarring, which is why some apps offer options for disabling HDR media support. Google now aims to address this problem at the system level in an upcoming Android 16 release.

Google is currently testing an “Enhanced HDR brightness” setting that will allow you to control how much HDR content brightens your Pixel phone’s screen. This setting, expected in an upcoming release under Settings > Display & touch > Enhanced HDR brightness, will include both a toggle to disable HDR support entirely as well as a slider to adjust the HDR effect’s intensity.

Demonstrating this feature on camera is challenging, but it’s easy to describe what it does. Basically, with the feature disabled, a “standard” (SDR) image and a HDR image will look the same on screen. When it’s enabled, adjusting the slider will dynamically alter the brightness of specific elements within an HDR image, such as the sky or water. This control is possible because the HDR display mode enhances supported images and videos by boosting their brightness and expanding their color range and clarity.

If you’ve ever been bothered by social media apps like Instagram flash banging you upon encountering an HDR image, you’ll likely appreciate this new feature when it rolls out. The “Enhanced HDR brightness” setting isn’t available in Android 16 QPR1 Beta 1, but it could arrive in a future beta or the stable release. Samsung phone users, however, won’t have to wait; the Korean tech giant has already implemented a similar feature in its One UI 7 release.