Does lowering screen resolution increase battery life, or does doing so even save battery? Today, we’ll talk about this topic try to answer this question.

When it concerns mobile devices, battery life is always a visible concern. Some people may care a bit less while some people consider it fundamental. However, no matter who the user is, battery life is always an essential element. modern technologies have allowed some essential steps towards the future, opening the roads for new horizons.

New features are continuously included in the newest products, while some old ones are abandoned. At the same time, internal components are getting much more power efficient, especially when talking about the processors. Unfortunately, there’s still that one component that ends up consuming many of our battery: the display. There are numerous ways to decrease power consumption, but how much does the screen resolution impact our batteries?

LCD vs OLED

First of all, before getting into the focal aspects of the article, let’s talk about one essential element: the display technology. many of us already know that nowadays, LCD and OLED screens are the most popular ones. While their function is exactly the same, they work in very different ways. Moreover, they have some distinct properties, which make them much more suitable for certain applications. The thing we’re gonna talk about is the light source. In fact, the way these displays illuminate can make a huge difference in the battery life of your device.

LCD panels are composed of liquid crystals, which get polarized by the controller circuits to show certain images and colors. These crystals are illuminated from behind by a dedicated light source, called backlight. This light is always active and the brightness can vary depending on the settings, but it’s not affected by the displayed image. The advantage is that the power consumption is much much more predictable, while the downside is the lack of good power-saving options.

OLED panels are composed by individual groups of RGB LEDs that form pixels. Some panels use the pen-tile technology to share certain LEDs among two pixels, thus decreasing costs and power consumption, but also lowering the image quality. based on the technology, we can easily understand that a red pixel consumes less power than a white one. For the same reason, a black pixel won’t use any power at all.

Screen Resolution or Size

Yes, screen size matters. You ought to always keep in mind that screen sizes are measured diagonally, for that reason the increase in size is not linear. When calculating the total overall screen surface, you’ll notice that there’s not much difference between a 2″ diagonal and a 2.5″ one. However, the difference becomes much more considerable when comparing a 5.5″ display to a 6″ one. Usually, when a producer releases a device in two different screen sizes, the bigger device has a bigger battery to cover the power consumption difference – and in some cases adds a little extra. For this reason, screen size is not something you ought to worry about. just in case, make sure the battery size is sufficient for the display when you’re purchasing a new device.

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Brightness

As already discussed previously, brightness is the uppermost element when it concerns power consumption. different panels act differently, with the OLED ones typically being the much more efficient option. The reason for this is that the user can set the preferred brightness with both, but OLED displays can vary the brightness across the panel based on the displayed image. We have also acknowledged that some colors consume less power than others, especially the primary ones. While lowering the brightness would be the supreme power-saving solution, it’s not a really appealing option for everyday usage. Now, we have excluded this one as a permanent solution, but what else could we do?

Native screen Resolution

Now we can finally speak about the focal point, the screen resolution. This subject will be divided into two sections, and you’ll soon understand why. lowering the resolution can be an effective way to decrease the power consumption, but it’s probably not for the reasons you’re thinking about. fewer pixels implies less power, right? Not necessarily.

Let’s compare one single LED pixel to 4 smaller ones that cover the same area. If we set the amount of emitted light to the same level, it’s possible that the 4 smaller pixels do their job much more efficiently. When it concerns LCD screens, the amount of pixels doesn’t affect the brightness output due to the backlight panel. In both cases, it seems that the lower pixel count doesn’t really make a significant difference on the power consumption. So why exactly ought to we even consider using a lower screen resolution?

The reason is the required processing power. much more pixelsnull