How does the colors on-screen affect power drain?

[JohnDroid]

Have you ever wondered if your cell phone's screen eats up different amounts of power based on how many pixels of which colors it's displaying? I haven't really either... I mean beside the obvious brightness. But Jeff Sharkey has done just that and has put together a great write-up of just which colors use the most amount of power.

His testing was done on OLED screens but it might apply to other types of screens as well, perhaps we can convince him to do additional testing with other devices.

Either way, the short of the story is that red seems to use the least amount of power. You can click this link for the full story: Jeff Sharkey Android SurfaceFlinger tricks for fun and profit

 

[tiggerxplur]

funny cause there are so many blue themes

 

[smokiedabong]

Actually the OLED power consumption doesn't apply to LCD , an OLED screen has the lowest power consumption with a black screen , and the LED has low consumption with a full white screen and high on black . Displaying any of the primary RED , Blue or Green colors should have an equal power consumption on a LCD . Anyway the biggest power drain on a LCD comes from the backlight , not so much from the liquid crystals . It won't have that big of a variation by the color it's displaying .

 

[Yakuzagang5]

Well, anyone who's been in Astronomy knows that red has is the least powerful color, and blue is the strongest (without a better way to describe it), so that would make sense in terms of power drain. So this test has scientific evidence and hard evidence to back it up lol

 

[Mule65]

What about black?

 

[Darkseider]

Well see black on a LCD and OLED are totally different if that helps. On a LCD black still needs to be a "lit" pixel that requires power whereas on an OLED black is an off pixel which requires no power. So if you have ALOT of black in the theme on your OLED handset you will actually be saving power.

 

[Beardface]

Well see black on a LCD and OLED are totally different if that helps. On a LCD black still needs to be a "lit" pixel that requires power whereas on an OLED black is an off pixel which requires no power. So if you have ALOT of black in the theme on your OLED handset you will actually be saving power.

So what you're sayin is that if I have a wallpaper and home setup that is basically all black with blue highlights, I'm basically pissing away battery life when I have the phone on?

Or do I have that backwards?

 

[brando56894]

Depends on what type of screen you have, if LCD then yes (kind of, like stated before its the backlight not the colors that takes the most battery life) and if (AM)OLED then no

 

[Beardface]

Depends on what type of screen you have, if LCD then yes (kind of, like stated before its the backlight not the colors that takes the most battery life) and if (AM)OLED then no

Moto Droid

 

[brando56894]

Well then Dr. Beardface a black theme on a moto droid will (theoretically) use more power than a black theme on a nexus one, but its like comparing apples and oranges: they're both fruits but are totally different.

 

[smokiedabong]

The OLED is made from thousands of small LED dots , small light bulbs if you will . to create a color pixel , one of the bulbs needs to be on , and to create a white pixel three bulbs needs to be on Red , Blue , Green . So if you have a black image the bulbs are off . The LCD works by having a backlight that is constantly on and a filter of liquid crystals in front of it to filter the white light , for an LCD to display a white image , on most LCDs the crystals are into a relaxed state so it needs less power , but for black they need to be fully twisted , which needs more power , but still if you breakdown the power consumption of an LCD the backlight is biggest consumer , and the energy needed to twist the crystals is insignificant compared to that . So on an LCD it matters most what brightens level it has , and on OLED is brightens combined with color .