there is a built in widget - Power Management - that allows you to, with the press of a widget button, adjust brightness for 3 settings quick. It can also turn on/off BT, GPS, WiFi, Sync all in 1 cool easy strip. I use it all the time to control brightness and power hungry settings.

you could also search the Market and see if there is even a stand alone widget that only does that

 

Beautiful Widget has it's own Brightness, GPS, Wifi, etc widgets to use. They are quite handy

 

There are more than a few brightness widgets in the market place.

 

check out brighterrific, which is pretty nice. or if you want a widget that can handle a LOT more then switchpro widget is freakin awesome. i am using it now to control brightness, ringer modes, bt, gps, wifi, led flashlight, and battery meter. it has several other options as well. HIGHLY recommend it.

edit: SwitchPro widget pictured at the top here - http://i45.tinypic.com/157kfie.jpg. It also has options for widget backgrounds if thats your thing.

 

kinda like the stock Power Management widget on steroids

BUT it costs. and for cost, I would expect to be able to reorder, remove those not of interest, and have the GPS actually not just take you to the Settings area, but turn GPS on/off like the stock one does

 

Ummm, it does ALL of that, its totally customizable. you did a whole lot of assuming there, man.

UPDATE: Most recent version has a proper GPS toggle!

 

Auto brightness =)

 

wrong. you assumed I assumed, but I assumed nothing, I read a selection of the comments - they made the pitfalls clear so I did not buy.

BTW, I see no "Tasker" in the market?

 

I love quick settings.

 

Don't know what that's all about. I can do all of the things you claim are not possible. Besides...its a buck we are talking about i think? Buy and return if you dont like. Its the best widget of its kind IMO.

I think tasker is something I got off the web. Will post a link.

 

Tasker: Tasker for Android

 

Download Button Shortcut and Backlight! from the market. You can bind Backlight! to the camera button or a long-press of the search button and toggle the screen brightness this way. I found this useful because sometimes you can't see the screen well enough to hit a widget.

 

like I said, I was reporting what others clearly wrote in the ranking section, so I did not buy it.

but anyway.... thanks for the tasker link, I also like Timeriffic

 

The default Auto Brightness setting hasnt let me down yet. It Automatically adjusts your screen to the environment.

 

...Another vote for Quick Settings.

 

Quick settings has been mentioned a couple times already but with no explanations.

I like it because you can set it as the default when you long press on the search button so you don't have to go back to the home screen to get to it. I don't use voice search much at all which is what the long press on the search button normally brings up so it works great for me.

 

I dont think these will be as useful. they are more about creating profiles or having the phone do something based on time. it is hard for the phone to know you stepped into bright daylight, so that is why I like the Power Management as that is just 1 press bright, 2 press max bright, 3 press dim right from home screen.

I use Timeriffic to do things like turn off BT at night and restart in the am, turn off ringer at certain times when at church, etc. events based on time of day.

 

seems like a lot of work, and big app, to just do that 1 thing as compared to a simple widget? both require the phone to be on, but with Tasker you click up the camera button and brightness goes up. Well, a widget the phone still needs to be on and you just tap it to increase brightness. Point is, unless you plan to use Tasker for more then just adjusting brightness, as it is way more powerful than that, it seems like overkill as a widget can do same thing in a much smaller package and app size.

but anyway, hey, if it works for you.. nice

 

The built in power strip widget does all I need.

 

that is my fav also.. does it all for me, all the key items in 1 strip

 

I wish you could set what was on it. i.e. Take out bluetooth and add in vibrate/silent/loud option.

What is good though, in Froyo the brightness in the power setting widget can set it to Auto.

 

check out brighterrific mentioned by sublimnl above.. he claims you can set some of these things. but it is a cost app.