I notice that everyonce in a while, the backlight on my pearl gets brighter than normal and then fades out. The screen is still lit, just not as bright. It looks better when its brighter and I don't know how to keep it like that....is this a regular thing with the Pearl?

It is light sensitive. There is a sensor near the led at the top right corner.

hmm..I have a case on the phone....one of the otterbox cases....so if the case was covering up the sensor, wouldn't it be full bright all the time?

It would be dim all the time. It's likely just partially covering it. It's in the same spot as the LED.

Go to Options >Screen/Keyboard and disable the automatic backlight. You won't get the extra bright in sunlight but it won't dim either.

To understand the functionality just cover the LED with your finger. It brightens to be viewable when it's light out (imagine being in the sun) and dims when it is dark so that you are not blinded. It will also light of the keypad when it's dark or covered so that you can see what you are typing.

E-

Ok, gotcha...I appreciate the info guys...i'm still trying to learn all the lil features of this sucker.

The backlight, at least on the 8130 Pearls, doesn't really work properly. Even if I turn off the Auto Dim feature, the backlight will still dim/brighten if lighting changes. Was using it in the car today (someone else was driving!) and I could make the backlight change by moving the Pearl from shadow to sunlight...

That means they actually fixed the backlight. There is a 100% setting which you can force in screen/keyboard. However, historically that disabled the "extra" bright mode for sunlight viewing. So, you should be able to have it set to what you want for indoors but still have it do the extra bright setting when needed. You can't set the extra bright mode manually...I'm sure this is for battery issues.

The problem I have, and didn't state clearly, was that it dimmed even though I hadn't shifted it from light to dark.

Then, when I held it in the sunlight it came back to "normal."

I've had the same thing happen at home...even if the ambient light doesn't change, the display will dim.

from my understanding is the screen gets brighter in the LIGHT, and dimmer in the dark.

I guess the reasoning behind it is that it's harder to read a dim screen in the direct light, and it's really blinding to read a bright screen in the dark.