How often do we hear that the dark mode on smartphones it helps to keep the consumption of our device low. And we, as "ignorant" (but only because we are not technicians, do not be offended) we believe it. But is it really so? Dark mode really helps smartphones with OLED screen to save battery and therefore to consume less? One American University of Purdue study he answers us ... and we won't like what he says very much.
Does dark mode or dark mode on smartphones work? Do dark AMOLED screens really save energy? Let's find out together
A team of researchers fromAmerican University of Purdue studied the effect (here the studio) of the dark mode on power saving in smartphones. As it turned out, the real indicators strongly depend on the use case and in some cases it is extremely difficult to tell the difference. Many smartphone manufacturers promise greater energy savings by switching the interface to dark mode. This is because the displays OLEDs can turn off individual pixels to show black. However, the experiment carried out shows that this does not significantly affect the autonomy of the device.
A team of researchers studied how the so-called dark mode affects the performance of the Google Pixel 2, Pixel 4, Pixel 5 and Moto Z3 smartphones. The result showed that i real savings are achieved only by enabling this feature when the screen brightness is set to 100%. In this case, it really is possible save from 39% to 47% of energy compared to light mode. If we talk about the scenario of using a smartphone indoors, when the brightness is at the level of 30-50%, in this case the dark mode saves only the 3-9% of energy.
Read also: They invented a smartphone glass that repairs itself
Scientists observe that the operating system Android does not take dark mode into account when calculating energy consumption of applications. To solve this problem, a specialized tool has been developed Android Battery+. In the near future, it will be made public and will allow everyone to assess the real energy consumption of smartphones.
