Android Nexus One - Can I save energy with color scheme?

Question

I'm wondering what color-scheme is more energy-saving for AMOLED display?

I've already decided to manage c-scheme according to ambient light, thanks to this post:

Somewhat-proof, the link posted by nickf: Ironic Sans: Ow My Eyes. If you read that in a well lit room, the black-on-white will be the most pleasant to read. If you read it in a dark room, the white-on-black will be nicer.

But if I want to save battery power, should I use bright content with dark background or vice versa?

Is it possible anyway (they say it's not working for simple LCD)?

Durance

Answer 1

Yes, you can. The best you can do is use a red on black color scheme. Blue is more expensive than green, green more than red. White is the worst :)

To give you an idea, a static blue wallpaper (for instance a jellyfish in an aquarium) consumes more battery than the 3D galaxy live wallpaper.

Postmillennialism

interesting, can you supply prove link about RGB pixel expensiveness? – Durance

This sounds dubious, given that RGB are primary light colours, however I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt if you can provide some evidence... – Bleeder

thats fine, "...using only the red pixels dropped the current use down to 35% of what the full color display was pulling." here's link hackaday.com/2010/07/02/oled-hack-saves-juice-on-nexus-one – Durance

@ck: informal evidence is that blue light has higher frequency than green and then than red, and so requires more energy to generate. – Philender

Answer 2

Well, that wikipedia article you linked to says:

For example, our measurement shows that a commercial QVGA OLED display consumes 3 and 0.7 Watts showing black text on a white background and white text on a black background, respectively.

So according to that, a white-on-black scheme would use less power than a black-on-white scheme.

The AnandTech article you linked to is talking about regular LCD monitors, which is quite different technology to AMOLED.

I guess the best thing to do is give it a try: try on one colour scheme and see how long you can go between charges, then try on a different scheme.

Wearisome

Answer 3

Black!! I Google in black on my phone at http://bGoog.com to make my battery last longer. Since using black backgrounds I recharge my phone a lot less! There's info on it at bGoog.com/about

Bacillus

Answer 4

The more black on your screen, the better. Black on black would save a whole lot of power on OLED screens, but is not too readable. So you find a balance between readability and power saving, with as much black as possible.

In order from least to most power:

1. All black
2. Single colour (eg red) text on black
3. Compound colour (eg yellow, cyan, white) text on black
4. Any background colour other than black

Note that none of this applies to LCD screens, only OLED. For LCD, the difference is negligible to the point you can forget about it. Sometimes, all-white even uses slightly less power, but it is nowhere near as much difference as with OLED.

Ipecac