I am working on a better red night mode for rooted Samsung phones. The usual way to do red mode for rooted Android devices is to use ChainFire3D. However, ChainFire3D does red mode simply by dropping the green and blue components, and as psonice once pointed out to me, that's not the best way. After all, then, green and blue stuff on the screen is invisible.
The right way to do it is to combine the color components, using an RGB to grayscale conversion, and then use the red component.
I just managed to do it on my rooted Android 2.3 Epic 4G Touch using Samsung's MDNIE profiles (see screenshot) and some simple shell scripts. But I don't know if this will work on other Samsung phones, though I assume all Galaxy S2 family phones will work with my method.
A good rule of thumb is that a version of this hack should work on all rooted Samsung phones that have the Dynamic/Standard/Movie color mode switcher under Settings | Display | Screen mode.
If you want to help me with this project and have a rooted Samsung phone, there are some things you can do:
- (Easy, and you can do it even if your phone isn't rooted.) Go to Settings | Display | Screen mode and see if you have Dynamic/Standard/Movie switch. Tell me (either by email or by commenting) which phone and OS version you have, whether it has the switch, and whether it has these three or some other modes there.
- (A little more advanced and needs root.) Email me your /system/etc/mdnie_tune_movie_mode and /system/etc/mdnie_tune_ui_standard_mode files , also telling me which phone and OS version you have.
You can email me at arpruss at gmail dot com, with subject line "red".
The resulting switcher will be free and open source.
