This is definitely one of those things that seems extremely easy and straight-forward, but the technical details are anything but.
On the most basic level, you might think this is nothing special, you just don't turn off the screen.
A slightly more technical person might know something about OLED displays being required for this kind of stuff.
Here I just want to draw attention to another level of technical detail you might not have known, OLED screen is just one factor that plays into AOD, it's not even a required factor, there have been mobile devices with LCD AOD, and yes, backlit LCD. The other perhaps more important factor is what are you using to show the contents of the AOD.
Cuz if you think about this, there's a 2k display in full color, that needs to be supplied with graphical content, which may seem trivial today but what if you have to be doing this WITHOUT using the main SOC?
Ever wondered why those Android phones with AOD always have this tiny window? They always cram everything into this window, nothing can go outside, no graphics, no text, almost like a small virtual screen living on the large screen? Well that's because that's exactly what it is. To save power by not using the main SOC for the AOD, there's some kind of a sub-system which takes over the display when the main system goes to sleep. You can see this happening because the AOD can't show up until the Lock Screen have completely faded. You can also see this in action when you try to change or customize the AOD, see how it always takes a while for you to "apply" changes why? Cuz it has to upload those information into the sub-system that actually runs the AOD. This system has limited memory, storage and performance so it's incapable of driving the entire main display, that's right the small windows, they're a performance limitation, and have nothing to do with burn-in mitigation.
Here's the S22 Ultra's AOD, for people making false claims
On the iPhone, well you can hardly tell there's another system running the AOD because it's so perfectly integrated and working exactly how you'd expect an AOD to work (without prior exposure to the technically limited Android devices), it just doesn't turn off, it's that simple really. But if you think about what has to happen in the background, obviously the wallpaper in full resolution has to be uploaded to the AOD system, but it also has to handle the notifications, it has to render the notification cards, which are as big as the entire AOD Android phones display, but there's this blur effect behind the notification cards, no idea how that's done. Maybe the AOD system just has insane graphics performance or maybe they just re-draw the Lock Screen with the notifications as part of the background with the main SOC?
On the most basic level, you might think this is nothing special, you just don't turn off the screen.
A slightly more technical person might know something about OLED displays being required for this kind of stuff.
Here I just want to draw attention to another level of technical detail you might not have known, OLED screen is just one factor that plays into AOD, it's not even a required factor, there have been mobile devices with LCD AOD, and yes, backlit LCD. The other perhaps more important factor is what are you using to show the contents of the AOD.
Cuz if you think about this, there's a 2k display in full color, that needs to be supplied with graphical content, which may seem trivial today but what if you have to be doing this WITHOUT using the main SOC?
Ever wondered why those Android phones with AOD always have this tiny window? They always cram everything into this window, nothing can go outside, no graphics, no text, almost like a small virtual screen living on the large screen? Well that's because that's exactly what it is. To save power by not using the main SOC for the AOD, there's some kind of a sub-system which takes over the display when the main system goes to sleep. You can see this happening because the AOD can't show up until the Lock Screen have completely faded. You can also see this in action when you try to change or customize the AOD, see how it always takes a while for you to "apply" changes why? Cuz it has to upload those information into the sub-system that actually runs the AOD. This system has limited memory, storage and performance so it's incapable of driving the entire main display, that's right the small windows, they're a performance limitation, and have nothing to do with burn-in mitigation.

Here's the S22 Ultra's AOD, for people making false claims
On the iPhone, well you can hardly tell there's another system running the AOD because it's so perfectly integrated and working exactly how you'd expect an AOD to work (without prior exposure to the technically limited Android devices), it just doesn't turn off, it's that simple really. But if you think about what has to happen in the background, obviously the wallpaper in full resolution has to be uploaded to the AOD system, but it also has to handle the notifications, it has to render the notification cards, which are as big as the entire AOD Android phones display, but there's this blur effect behind the notification cards, no idea how that's done. Maybe the AOD system just has insane graphics performance or maybe they just re-draw the Lock Screen with the notifications as part of the background with the main SOC?
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