samsung galaxy s3 help

[maddog04]

I've got the S2 and sometimes I find it very hard to read the screen in strong sunshine, is this something that only occurs with touch screen phones as I never had issues with me older normal phone or is it just my phone and what can I do about it?
also, sometimes the screen brightness dims to nothing .......when I look at the screen brightness (as recommended above) my auto brightness is off and the bar will have moved right over to the left, why is this happening and how do I stop it?
cheers