Thanks for sharing. Beware they this only holds for OLED screens, which are a minority of the smartphone market (about half of sales, meaning much less “active” devices: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/1...).
The majority of smartphones are still LCD. Eg I have an iPhone 6s and that’s got an LCD screen. An LCD screen is essentially a constant-brightness light panel (the backlight) behind a panel of liquid crystals. A dark LCD screen uses the same power as a light one because the backlight doesn’t change, only the crystals get “turned” in a way that lets a variable amount of light through.
In fact, dark screens in a bright environment might make you want to turn up the brightness to better see the details, meaning a bigger consumption in that case! Oops.
So this advice might unfortunately be counter-productive for most smartphone users. :(
Also, if you’ve got an LCD screen smartphone, do not use that as an excuse for buying a new OLED smartphone. Over 90% of environmental footprint of smartphones comes from manufacturing! You’d be doing far worse.
The best environment action you can take for your smartphone or any digital device really is to avoid manufacturing at all costs — make devices last longer, but second hand or refurbished, etc.
Cheers!
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Thanks for sharing. Beware they this only holds for OLED screens, which are a minority of the smartphone market (about half of sales, meaning much less “active” devices: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/1...).
The majority of smartphones are still LCD. Eg I have an iPhone 6s and that’s got an LCD screen. An LCD screen is essentially a constant-brightness light panel (the backlight) behind a panel of liquid crystals. A dark LCD screen uses the same power as a light one because the backlight doesn’t change, only the crystals get “turned” in a way that lets a variable amount of light through.
In fact, dark screens in a bright environment might make you want to turn up the brightness to better see the details, meaning a bigger consumption in that case! Oops.
So this advice might unfortunately be counter-productive for most smartphone users. :(
Also, if you’ve got an LCD screen smartphone, do not use that as an excuse for buying a new OLED smartphone. Over 90% of environmental footprint of smartphones comes from manufacturing! You’d be doing far worse.
The best environment action you can take for your smartphone or any digital device really is to avoid manufacturing at all costs — make devices last longer, but second hand or refurbished, etc.
Cheers!