I hope you are right on both accounts.
I have the auto brightness issue as well. On medium it dims nearly all the way down and it's impossible to see during the evenings. You either need to turn auto bright off, or pump up the brightness to 60% or so to counter act and leave auto bright on (like someone else mentioned). It's annoying. I am not sure if that was done on purpose to boost battery or if it's a real fluke.
I've never quite understood the brightness controls. How can you turn up the screen's brightness and still leave auto-on, won't it auto adjust to whatever you didn't like before if auto-bright is on? Regarding the screen color issue, I do notice my iPhone 3GS's screen being warmer then my original 2G. The 2G has a much more blue-ish hue to it. But at least mine is uniformly warmer unlike some others I've been seeing.