No it's not. Oh, right, I actually realize preferences matter, so I'll put it this way: I do not find it to be better, let alone _far_ better.

You see, I actually like automatic brightness adjustments on Maemo 5. What I don't like is being unable to set a brightness range within which to adjust brightness. Android lets you either manually set a level, at which point the brightness will always be pegged to that level, or you can press the automatic lighting checkbox and deal with whatever levels it feels are appropriate for the current lighting. That way you get no control with auto-brightness, and I don't care for fine control if it requires me to make 5 clicks just to adjust brightness to the environment-appropriate level. (At least with Simple Brightness Applet it's only 3 on any app that doesn't hide the status menu on Maemo 5).

The stock Maemo 5 way at the very least gives me four preset brightness ranges to choose from (I don't count the fifth because then the display is always at max brightness).