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iOS 13's Dark Mode Extends OLED iPhone Battery Life, Test Confirms
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Since my phone spends most of its time with the display off and is mostly used indoors, I’ll get some small fraction of 5% additional battery life... That’s not going to drive any decisions on my part.
Something funny I noticed. When the iPhone X first came out, Apple said apps that hide the notch were against guidelines. But with dark mode, that seems to have flown out the window, lol, all these dark mode apps hide the notch including Apple’s stock apps.
I assume that dark mode may help to prevent screen burn-in as well. Although, I haven't seen any reports of this being a problem on an iPhone w/ OLED screen (lots for other devices tho).
Strangely enough, my iPhone 11 is supposed to have an extra 4 hours of battery life compared to my iPhone XS, and I'm also running it in dark mode which I did not on my XS (obviously), and I'm actually finding that I have worse battery life on average. Right now I'm sitting at 5% and just put it on the charger. I can only think of a couple times my XS ever got below 20%, much less 10%, in my typical use. I have not been impressed with the battery life at all and just hope it's because iOS 13 sucks and will hopefully be fixed soon. Otherwise I got a lemon—perhaps literally as lemons can be used as batteries but they aren't very good ones.
This is not always true for regular LCD screen.
LCD doesn't emit light by itself, so there must be a light source in the back. Turning partial screen dark doesn't help in lowing power consuming because the light source is still on. On large screens like TV, the light source can be divided into sections for better power control, but it is not a viable option for small screens like smartphone.
OLED does emit light by itself so when a pixel is dark, it's consuming less power.
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Dark Mode was "invented" by the Android guys featuring OLED screen to just do that: be able to boost their public specifications on battery duration.OMG Really? Who would've imagined that.
/s
And BTW: I already spend 1000's hour on the original DARK mode screens and I know it just sucks, a there was a good reason to abandon this!
I think it really depends on what you're watching on your phone. Think about emails. If you receive a standard text email you have a black background, but if you receive a fancy HTML email you'll have white background and images, so dark mode is almost useless. Same for web pages, a few are optimised for dark mode, but the vast majority still have a white background, so nothing changes.
Twitter supports dark mode, so does Instagram but you're mostly watching pictures so you don't save a lot by having a black toolbar instead of a light one.
An LED is a diode which emits light. Thus it's named a Light Emitting Diode.
So yes, LEDs emit light. Kinda by definition.
You've described LED-backlit LCD displays. The display is a typical LCD panel -- the LEDs provide the backlight instead of the fluorescent light sources in earlier LCD televisions. Marketers have confused things by labeling them as LED displays when really they're an LCD display using LEDs for the backlight.
Very different animal from OLED or a true LED display. And AFAIK there aren't any consumer "true LED" displays -- mostly those are digital billboards, signage, and stadium displays.
For more info see https://www.lifewire.com/truth-about-so-called-led-televisions-1847935
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Pretty sure he said that he was using the XS Max at the 1:28 marker. Maybe you should go back and listen before speaking.
My understanding is that our eyes have a harder time focusing on white text with a black background, having to do with the overall amount of light hitting our eyes. Because it really does save a lot of battery life (and in lower light enviros, is more a pleasant experience for me), I generally use dark mode. My solution to the readability problem is to increase the text size. I just bump it up one size overall and this compensates for the reduced light in terms of legibility, at least for me. Also, before dark mode, I just used the Accessibility feature to invert colors. Which performed to about 80% of what dark mode does. In some cases it was better (like news apps which still offer only a white background even when in dark mode—in Accessibility invert-color mode, my news apps would have black backgrounds).
In particular, when I am out and know I'll be out for a full day, I always enable dark mode or the accessibility invert-color mode (which you can set up to activate/deactivate with a triple click on the side button). My experience has been that it does offer at least 30% better battery life.
An LED is a diode which emits light. Thus it's named a Light Emitting Diode.
So yes, LEDs emit light. Kinda by definition.
Thanks. Typo. fixed.
Interesting suggestions. I was thinking that with the XS Max and much more so with the 11 Pro Max I've become somewhat insensitive to battery usage because for my uses there's huge amounts of excess capacity, but a 30% improvement is something even I would notice. Thanks for writing that up.
For me, Dark Mode would be more useful if I could toggle individual apps on or off, rather than making it a single system-wide setting. (Or am I missing something in Settings?)
I find it easily on my eyes and it tends to stand out on in dark mode than on plan white background..
I can still see, just not as sharp as dark mode
There may be a way to do that, but if so, I don't know it.
But if you set up the side button 3-click method to switch it on and off, that could work for you if you were planning to stay in an app for a while. Not worth it to switch back and forth for short periods (at least for me).