Droid Turbo LED (well, sorta...)

[FoxKat]

I've discovered that the Turbo has a Red LED located on the motherboard, which is somehow tied to the motion sensor. It is barely visible in complete darkness, peeking out of the bottom left corner of the phone in the capacitive button area. It glows dim Red sometimes while the phone is motionless, but gets brighter when you move the phone slightly. If you move the phone to much, then Active Display comes on.

It seems to be there as an indicator for troubleshooting or confirmation of the motion sensors being functional. I'll try to get some pics of it later.

Had anyone else seen this?

 

[kmf1]

I have also noticed the red light. I assumed that it was a sensor of some sort.

 

[FoxKat]

Well, I've discovered it also has one on the opposite corner (bottom left and right), AND on the top right corner, so a total of 3 of them. I believe what they are is near Infrared Emitters designed to assist the phone in detecting hand motion, i.e. the wave feature (must use infrared detector rather than the camera which until now I previously believed it used). They are lit dimly when the screen is off, and when the Active display is not active. They go out the moment it detects hand motion and activates the Active Display.

Now, for even more interesting news...

I accidentally forgot to plug in my Turbo the other night after a long day's hard running. It was very low when I went to bed, under 15%. I sat it on the nightstand and fell asleep. In the morning it was unresponsive. SOOO, I plugged it into the charging cable and what did I see??? How about a Green LED to the left of the front facing camera! Yep, another LED. This was obviously not an infrared emitter since it was green light. Furthermore it was clearly designed to be seen being rather bright although tiny. The red emitters are all rather hard to see except in total darkness, which makes sense since our eyes can't see Infrared.

Now, wonder if that LED is only tied to the battery charging and monitoring circuit. It did eventually go out once the phone reached sufficient charge to power up on its own, so it is in a way similar to the white LED that is commonly referred to when Motorola phones are deep discharged and will not take a charge, as "the white light of death".

Anyway, thought I'd mention it. Anyone else see it?

 

[jplemt]

I've seen them. I assumed the green one was just to let you know it was charging, but had insufficient power to run the display. I've seen the infrared ones on various phones before. Oddly if you point a digital camera in live view at the infrared ones, they will light up brought white. Same for tv remotes.

 

[FoxKat]

I've seen them. I assumed the green one was just to let you know it was charging, but had insufficient power to run the display. I've seen the infrared ones on various phones before. Oddly if you point a digital camera in live view at the infrared ones, they will light up brought white. Same for tv remotes.

Exactly. The digital cameras see infrared light as white. You are also correct about the green one, however that was the first time I've seen it.

 

[CaptainSS]

Someone Turn OFF the Lights!!! AH!

 

[cr6]

I wonder if the app LightFlow would work in utilizing one of the LED options on this device?

S5 tap'n

 

[FoxKat]

I wonder if the app LightFlow would work in utilizing one of the LED options on this device?

S5 tap'n

My thoughts exactly.

 

[Yeti35]

I tried it and it did nothing for me. I have not seen the green light but did see the red ones in as FoxKat said a very dark room. Lightflow did nothing but put a new notification icon on the screen. So appears no way to control the green LED at all or at least with that program.

 

[FoxKat]

And we probably won't see any form of light control for that LED even if the LED itself can be controlled via software or firmware manipulation. The main reason being that the Droid turbo cannot be rooted as it is so far clear.

Sent from my Droid Turbo on Tapatalk.

 

[obxsalvo]

I have seen the 2 red dots on the bottom corners ( and a bunch of other color dots that has nothing to do with the phone ) no green yet ( on the phone ).

 

[TDL1068]

I've seen the red dots as well. Only in complete darkness like you mentioned. Surprised me to see it at first, but figured it was motion sensing related as my lock screen illuminated almost immediately thereafter.