Screen Cleaning Mode - Does it stay on indefinitely?

[Nate977p]

Hello all,
This may seem strange but I love being able to drive with as few lights inside the car as possible, ideally none at all. Only 1 car have I ever been able to do this in, ironically a rental Nissan Rogue.

This is one of the things that excites me on the 3 is lack of other lights, but there is no way to turn the screen off. Obviously that makes sense since everything is on it. That being said, in normal driving I dont really need anything on it. I.E. I can feel speed and judge it well by traffic, or set AP, thus can live without speedo. I've rented them and 3 at night is not too bright, but still would love no light.

So that being said, I am loaning a S and just realized I can keep the car in Screen Cleaning Mode indefinitely. This seems to do what I want Granted its day time and I can't tell if there is a backlight on screen cleaning, but it seems almost pitch black.

Thus my question, does the 3's screen cleaning mode stay on indefinitely and is it pretty much pitch black at night?

Thanks all!
-Nate

 

[BOBEDIGITL]

If I remember correctly, you can only enable the Screen Cleaning Mode while the car is in park. I've left it on while cleaning other parts of my car and it doesn't turn the screen back on. By the time I move it back to drive, I've already disabled it. So this probably doesn't answer your question but at least while it's parked, Screen Cleaning mode will stay on until disabled. I would guess and say I'm sure it will automatically switch the screen on while back in drive for safety concerns...but if you're saying the S does...I wouldn't see why the 3 wouldn't either.

 

[Krugerrand]

Just turn screen brightness way down?

 

[Nate977p]

My thought on the 3 vs S is the S has the instrument cluster and you can live without the touch screen for driving, thus it may not turn of, but they force it to stay on on the 3. After about 30 minutes the screen actually freaked out and started flickering rapidly between regular and screen clean mode. But to confirm, the S doea stay on for at least 30 min while driving.

As for brightness, yes I can turn it way down. But after having driven cars with absolutely no lights, it's a much more pleasant driving experience. Saab actually use to do this as a feature. It was called Night Panel; everything was dark except when you needed to know some piece of info, which it would illuminate.

 

[fseir]

Hello all,
This may seem strange but I love being able to drive with as few lights inside the car as possible, ideally none at all. Only 1 car have I ever been able to do this in, ironically a rental Nissan Rogue.

This is one of the things that excites me on the 3 is lack of other lights, but there is no way to turn the screen off. Obviously that makes sense since everything is on it. That being said, in normal driving I dont really need anything on it. I.E. I can feel speed and judge it well by traffic, or set AP, thus can live without speedo. I've rented them and 3 at night is not too bright, but still would love no light.

So that being said, I am loaning a S and just realized I can keep the car in Screen Cleaning Mode indefinitely. This seems to do what I want Granted its day time and I can't tell if there is a backlight on screen cleaning, but it seems almost pitch black.

Thus my question, does the 3's screen cleaning mode stay on indefinitely and is it pretty much pitch black at night?

Thanks all!
-Nate

Screen cleaning mode does not turn off the backlight. It just turns the lcd elements to their on (black) position, so you can still see light bleeding through if it’s dark enough in the cabin.

Moot point, though, as you can’t drive with cleaning mode turned on. As soon as you shift out of park, it disables itself, and the button to turn it back on is grayed out.

 

[Nate977p]

Yeah that's what I realized with the LED backlight...

As for the turning off, not in the S I borrowed....

 

[jkirkwood001]

But why not drape a towel over it for long drives?

I used to cover my add-in stereo with a flap which wouldn't dim. I know this isn't an elegant solution, but an option.

It might be a safety measure, that you wouldn't see alerts if the screen was off.