Display always the highest source of battery drain?

[DroidXcon]

Hmmmmm.... I not sure about that one but I could be wrong. Whether the screen is white or black its still using the same brightness for the screens display.

Let me explain this one,,,,,LCD requires a backlight, so there are tiny lights bulbs that increase or decrease with respect with brightness.... On an OLED when something is black the pixel is off.. in an OLED the material itself raises its intensity in respect to its setting... therefor they are controlled individually whereas LCD the light bulbs are always on in order to control brightness

LCD and OLED technology are completely different in the way they are build and constructed. comparison between them is not as simple as saying well the brightness level is set to the same.

 

[Chris Kerrigan]

Let me explain this one,,,,,LCD requires a backlight, so there are tiny lights bulbs that increase or decrease with respect with brightness.... On an OLED when something is black the pixel is off.. in an OLED the material itself raises its intensity in respect to its setting... therefor they are controlled individually whereas LCD the light bulbs are always on in order to control brightness

LCD and OLED technology are completely different in the way they are build and constructed. comparison between them is not as simple as saying well the brightness level is set to the same.

Bingo. And even on LCD, it's been proven that darker colors do consume less energy. One of the main reasons behind the UI changes in Gingerbread

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

Part of that is because while SAMOLED does save battery life while displaying dark colors, it actually uses more battery life when displaying pure white, up to 3x the consumption of traditional LCDs. Most web pages are white, and thus take much more battery power to display.

^this....I remember seeing this somewhere else. So SAMOLED's claims about battery saving are pretty pointless then right? Is that why they put a browser brightness setting in the browser options?

Also, this is off subject, but has anyone noticed that when you hit the volume buttons repeatedly while the screen is off that it powers the screen back on?

 

[Cyber Warrior]

Let me explain this one,,,,,LCD requires a backlight, so there are tiny lights bulbs that increase or decrease with respect with brightness.... On an OLED when something is black the pixel is off.. in an OLED the material itself raises its intensity in respect to its setting... therefor they are controlled individually whereas LCD the light bulbs are always on in order to control brightness

LCD and OLED technology are completely different in the way they are build and constructed. comparison between them is not as simple as saying well the brightness level is set to the same.

Okay I'm sold ... I know lighting plays a role in the way we see color in real life but didn't think it would effect the bulbs intensity in a LCD screen. Good thing I keep my phone mostly with a blacked out theme. Thanks for the details.

 

[imekul]

I, too, am surprised by how big of a drain the super AMOLED display takes. Back in my Evo days, the Evo's display would be a much lower percentage (20-30%) of the entire battery consumption, even when on for a few hours.

Knowing that darker equals better, and being disappointed at how bright the minimum darkness is on the Epic, I use Privacy Filter (in the Market), which allows me to basically have a semitransparent black screen covering my display, thus darkening the screen further, saving battery and my eyesight.

I am a bit confused by how big of a battery hog the display is on the Epic as compared with the Evo...

 

[Since9600]

you're saying you can browse the web and play with apps for 9-12 hours straight? I was talking about keep the screen on for entire 3 hours using 3G

No way I will keep my screen on for 9 hours straight.. I have to work lol.. I meant normal usage to me, which is like 100-150+ texts, emails, facebook, foursquare, light web browsing, about 30 mins playing a game, about 2 dozen 1-2 minute phone calls... Which just about sums up my personal usage... I almost always keep my brightness at 1-10% as that works for me and my screen power usage is 76-90+% of battery. I Have always used dark wallpapers also..

 

[Skunkape60]

If you leave your screen on continuously your battery will be close to drained in around 4 hours. This is normal and almost expected. I don't think that would be normal usage for most of us.

 

[Atlienzz]

I downloaded a couple of cool apps from the market called "Rare Black Wallpapers". These are mostly dark in color and are pretty cool.

My display has always been the highest battery drain since I've owned the epic....by far.

 

[DroidXcon]

I, too, am surprised by how big of a drain the super AMOLED display takes. Back in my Evo days, the Evo's display would be a much lower percentage (20-30%) of the entire battery consumption, even when on for a few hours.

Knowing that darker equals better, and being disappointed at how bright the minimum darkness is on the Epic, I use Privacy Filter (in the Market), which allows me to basically have a semitransparent black screen covering my display, thus darkening the screen further, saving battery and my eyesight.

I am a bit confused by how big of a battery hog the display is on the Epic as compared with the Evo...

Ok so here are my theorys on the battery drain of SAMOLED.... if you are not aware OLED's emitting materials vary, there are 2 different materials that are popularly used. fluorescent and phosphorescent. Fluorescent is not as efficient but has a longer lifetime at this point. Phosphorescent (what i dev) is alot more efficient but we are still working on the lifetime and we are def reaching new points daily.

Samsung uses 2 colors that are Fluorescent and 1 phosphorescent. i wont tell you which because i can't ......

Now theoretically you should have huge power savings either way.... but lets examine this for a moment.. Higher Efficiency means that more electrons are used to produce light instead of being lost as heat, which LCD does...So the OLED screen is utilizing the electrons vs wasting them BUT how many of you notice that even at the lowest setting the screen is blinding.

So here is my theory, since Samsung was able to get more efficiency out in order to get a more dramatic contrast ratio they turned up the power on the screen with in acceptable range of industry standard in battery consumption. Trading off lifetime for dramatic contrast.

Also backing up my theory is the "burn in" matter. which is not really "burn in" but Degradation of the materials. OLED's at this point have a very long life time so to get degradation so quickly leads me to believe that they are being overdrive forcing them to die out at a faster rate.

As OLED technology matures you will see lifetime improve,,but they will still exploit the power savings... but dont blame this on Samsung. this will be everyone, any company using OLED's will exploit the battery saving, meaning they will get more powerful processors or other internal hardware to pick up what the screen is not taking in.

they already discuss how since OLED's are so thin they can put more stuff into the phone.. And this is other companys that are as of now using "Other" screen technologies boasting better battery life, which is a smoke screen since they are not ready to start producing OLED's and need a way to compete with SAMOLED's for now.

these are just my thoughts, Samsung doesnt share info on how they use the OLED materials , we supply the technology to companys and they way they impliment them is their business