Hello Everyone.

I've recently purchased a "Lenovo S5000" and am generally very pleased with it, but there are aspects, to do with its display, that I'm disappointed with: when its screen is black it still casts quite a lot of light; and the three navigation icons seem impossible to remove or darken.  I'm hoping that there may be fixes, or apps, or some workarounds which will remedy these drawbacks.

I use my tablet mainly for reading books, and the best reading app I have used is "Moonreader+ Pro".  So I read all my books using this app.  However, I've been dismayed to find that when I switch to the night-time setting in "Moonreader+ Pro" on the "Lenovo S5000", it doesn't matter how dark I make the screen using the brightness-slider, or even if I make the background of my pages jet black, the screen of the "Lenovo S5000" still throws out a considerable amount of light.  In other words, I've not been able to make the screen of the S5000 truly pitch black.  The maximum darkness I've been able to achieve is only a dark shade of grey - which throws quite a lot of light at the eyes.

I'm used to the "Nook HD".  Using "Moonreader+ Pro" on the "Nook HD" one can slide the darkness of a black-background screen so far to the left that the screen becomes truly pitch black - so that it casts out no light whatsoever (apart from the text), and you are truly reading only coloured text in the dark.  (Push the slider too far to the left and the "Nook HD" screen turns completely black, as if the machine were switched off, with not even the text visible!)

In addition to the above drawback, on the Lenovo S5000 I've not been able to locate any way of removing the three icons at the bottom of the screen ("return to previous screen", "go to home screen", and "view recently-used apps").  These too are annoying when reading at night in a completely darkened room, as, being white, they too throw out quite a lot of light.   When using "Moonreader+ Pro" on the "Nook HD", the Nook's equivalents of these icons can be made to disappear while reading - so you see only the text of the book.

Can the screen of the S5000 be made truly pitch black?  And can the 3 icons at the bottom of screen be temporarily removed?

Many thanks.

No answers, so far?

OK, here's an update.

I've discovered there are quite a few apps designed to dim, or darken, the Android screen.  I purchased one that stated that it had the power to dim "the backlight" of Android devices beyond their zero point (their extreme darkness point).  It's called "Lux Auto Brightness".  But despite my fiddling with all its various controls, I have found that this app cannot, and does not, modify "the backlight" of my Lenovo S5000.

It seems that all these dimmer apps can do is add a semi-transparent layer of grey over the image on the screen.  The further you drag their slides to the left, the more these apps increase the amount of grey in the overlay!  This means that a colour image on the screen will eventually lose all its colour and become a vague image almost lost behind a veil of grey.  But, and this is the important point, the deepest shade of grey these apps throw over your screen is NOT darker than the least bright setting that you can achieve with the Lenovo's own brightness slider!  In other words, you are still left with a lot of light being transmitted by the Lenovo's screen even when the layer of grey is at its extreme and nothing is distinguishable on the screen.

If anyone knows a trick to get the "Lux Auto Brightness" app to actually reduce the Lenovo's backlighting, please let me know!

The app, and its writers claims, can be seen here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux&hl=de

As things stand, unless I find a solution, I will be returning my Lenovo S5000 to the store, and sticking with my "Nook HD".  It, at least, allows me to read text upon an almost entirely jet-black screen in my jet-black bedroom in the middle of the jet-black night!

However, I will install the app on the Nook HD regardless, because its degrees of grey can be helpful in dimming those websites that have much bright white background on them, like news-sites usually do, but which, for some reason the "Nook HD"s own brightness controller has no power over!  Such sites are a shock for the eyes when reading in bed in the middle of the night.  The "Lux" app's veil of grey will help tone them down a bit.

If you've found this reply interesting, please give me some kudos!

Today I discovered that the darkest brightness setting of the "Lenovo S5000" tablet is significantly darker than the darkest brightness setting of the "Motorola Zoom" tablet.  The test was done in a pitch black room.

However, the "Nook HD" allows a far darker brightness setting than the "Lenovo S5000".

Further research has revealed that there is no way to tone down the lights which illuminate the screen of the "Lenovo S5000" (or any other Android tablet), unless you are an expert coder who knows how to dig into the kernel of the Android operating system.

So if a pitch-black screen is important to you, this is a feature that needs testing in a dark-room BEFORE you buy a tablet (or decide to stick with a tablet you've bought).

It sounds like what you're really looking for are TV-style screen controls (Brightness, Contrast, Backlight Level, etc).  You are right in saying you won't find an Android tablet with that level of control.  A good idea, though.

Have just heard that the "Lumen" settings in the "Lux Auto Brightness" app, DOES allow one to control the level of lighting in the screen, BUT only if your tablet has been "rooted".

Apparently, once a tablet or smartphone has been rooted, getting at the controls is easy, and the "Lux" app is designed for this.

The trouble is that rooting a tablet invalidates the warranty, and sometimes rooting can cause a machine to die.  So it's a risk, but 1000s of people have successfully rooted their machines.

Hi Dancedar.  As my Lenovo S5000 isn't rooted, any changes I make to the Lumen settings in the "Lux Auto Brightness" app don't make any difference to the brightness of the screen. Have you experience of using the Lumen settings in "Lux" to control screen brightness in a rooted machine? 

I'm a bit encouraged by your suggesting that if rooting goes wrong all can be returned to normal by "just flashing the original firmware".  Unfortunately, I don't have the vaguest idea what that means!  How does one "flash" the "original firmware"?  Please.

I dropped a line to the guy who created "Lux Auto Brightness" and he said the "Lumen" settings inside his program will darken the lighting, but the Lumen settings only take effect on a machine which has been rooted.

I saw the Screen Filter app the other day and I think I even installed it, but, as you say, it only greys the screen (including the text), which is all that "Lux" can achieve at the moment.

Thanks for telling me about the existence of "vroot".  Have just downloaded and checked the list of machines it can root and the Lenovo S5000-F isn't listed, unfortunately.  Not even just "Lenovo S5000".  Although the "S6000-F" is listed.

If I used "vroot", I see it installs a program called "Super Su".  What does this do?  Would all the work I've put into the Lenovo S5000 so far remain, i.e. the wallpaper, the apps I've installed, the books?

But as I use my tablet for reading, more than anything else, and as my object is to darken that screen in the dead of night, I need confirmation that the "Lumen" settings in "Lux Auto Brightness" actually can make the screen darker.

By the way, there's quite a lot of us who have found that reading legible text (but not too bright) on a very dark, if not almost black screen, actually encourages sleep.  It triggers something in the brain.  This is why I'm trying to get my Lenovo to do what the "Nook HD" allows.  Having used the Lenovo now for 7 days I can see its advantages to the "Nook HD", but all those advantages, even the wonderful lightness (lack of weight) of the machine, don't equal the effect of the nearly jet-black screen of the "Nook HD" when using "Moonreader Pro".