Dark mode on the phone is not only selected for visual reasons. Many people think that they save the battery. Theoretically, on phones with screens Oled This should give a lot of savings – after all, black pixels just turn off. But are you sure?
Disappointing results
A group of scientists from the American Purdue University decided to check it carefully on several smartphone models – pixels and motorols. They tested various popular Google applications. Using a specially created PFOP (Per-Frame OLED Power Profiler) tool, they checked how dark mode affects energy consumption. The results turned out to be surprising. With standard, daily use of the phone in rooms, where the screen brightness is usually 30-40%, Energy saving ranges only between 3 and 9%. It is so small that most users will not even notice it.
Significant savings appear only in specific conditions. When we go into full sun and the brightness of the screen will jump to the maximum, switching to a dark interface can save up to 47% of energy. It is already impressive! The problem is that we use such high brightness only outside on sunny days.
The conclusion is that the higher the screen brightness we set on the phone, the more the difference we will see between light and dark mode. With typical brightness in the room, the savings are small, but when we strongly turn up the backlight (for example on a sunny day), switching to dark mode can save us a lot of batteries.
What about various models?
Interesting tests were also carried out in 2019 YouTuber Phone Buff. According to his measurements iPhone Xs Max was able to get up to 30% of savings from the dark mode, while phones from Android They barely reached a dozen or so percent. However, it is worth approaching these results with a grain of salt. Such a test, however, shows us that manufacturers can approach the issue of optimization of dark mode in their devices differently, and There is one conclusion – battery saving in dark mode is different in each phone model.