Dark Mode can provide better battery life!

October 23, 2019 Off By Naveen Victor

If you thought that Dark Mode, a feature on iOS13 and Android, was only useful for alleviating eye strain, then you would be sadly mistaken. The feature, which turns smartphones’ jarringly white background menus, black, serves more than just one function. According to the Youtube Channel PhoneBuff, it can also help with battery life. Check out the video below:

The team conducted a thorough test by placing two identical iPhones side by side – one with dark mode enabled and the other with the feature turned off. The test results concluded that the phone with Dark Mode enabled, used less power compared to the other one. This is astonishing considering that something as trivial as reversing a screen’s contrast, can provide such an impact on battery life.

Dark Mode is beneficial to iPhones with OLED displays like the 11 Pro, but not the 11. The latter, uses the screen’s backlight to illuminate pixels, while the former’s pixels produce their own light. Also, OLED displays’ pixels can be turned on or off, individually. This negates the need for unnecessary pixels to be illuminated when the screen is in use.

That is where the power savings come from. And, since the advent of OLED screens, manufacturers have boldly introduced features like “Always On Display”. If enabled, when a display is left idle, said smartphone/smartwatch screen will still display the time or other basic info for prolonged periods without much detriment to battery life. This is an impossible feat for an LCD panel to accomplish.

That said, there are both pros and cons to having an OLED panel as apposed to an LCD one. For a more detailed analysis of the varying differences between these two types of technology, check out this article by trustedreviews.com.