Google Says Adding Dark Mode To Apps Saves Battery (betanews.com)
Dark Mode is not just more aesthetically pleasing to many people, there are real battery-life boosts to be had -- and Google has the numbers to prove it. From a report: Touting the benefits of Dark Mode, Google showed that with screen brightness set to 50 percent, using YouTube with Dark Mode enabled resulted in 14 percent less battery usage. With screen brightness set to 100 percent, the saving jumps to 60 percent. These are not numbers to be sniffed at, but the biggest savings are to be seen on phones with AMOLED screens as anything that is black does not require pixels to be powered. Slides from the event show Google comparing the power usage of its own Pixel phone with an LCD iPhone 7. It shows a 63 percent battery saving when displaying a screenshot of Google Maps in normal and night mode.
Aren't normal screens backlit by an LED array and they're on constantly and black pixels just blocks and absorb or reflect the light? So making an app all black would simply make your phone warmer and the only solution is dimming it?
Google comparing its $799 phone with $449 iPhone. WOW.
Duh.. it is 2018. Why is it so tough to catch up with how LED works?
Not dark mode. Take the glaring blinding white of Google's home page makes it impossible to use inside a moviehouse or place of worship. Then ask us to preview Dark mode, after we've seenwhat 10% gray loks like while driving.
Of course, I was kidding about the driving part; I was really texting.
Then why in the heck do you keep releasing all-white themes ala the new Google News? Maybe they should take their own advice.
> Touting the benefits of Dark Mode
Neither google or slashdot used to render correctly with the white on dark grey desktop theme that my browser followed. The W3C were specific - setting either background or text colors means you must set them both.
I'm so sick of developers of all kinds making everything bright white, it's like staring into a flashlight sometimes it's so bright.
Behold, the lack of power of the dark mode.
This is not an illusion, a rip-off, or a ninja technique!
Didn't Google just make their entire UI white?
Now why has Google been burning my eyes and draining my batteries for years with their excessive use of all-white UXs?
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Thanks for admitting your design team is being run by retards.
Whether or not black pixels save energy is the technological equivalent of the "are eggs healthy" debate:
CRT screen? Black saves energy over white by not firing the beam at the dark pixels.
LCD screen? White saves energy over black by not diffusing the backlight.
OLED/AMOLED screen? Black saves energy by not lighting the pixel.
So will the next revolution in display technology swing the pendulum back?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Google finally realises what Samsung users have known about for over 8 years thanks to a long history of using OLED displays.
Seriously the energy saving benefits on not lighting the screen up actually made it into Samsung's variant of Eclair back in the day which gave you the option to use a dark mode or invert the display.
...are good with me. I've always hated white backgrounds and dark text/objects, on any screen, small or large. More eyestrain, less distinct objects/letters/whatever. So fine, make all the blank areas black. BTW, how do I get Slashdot to use a grey background???
And yet their homepage is still white. A blog post some years ago calculated that a black Google homepage would save 750 megawatt-hours a year. http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/20...
Big friggin' deal. All the QNX-based BB10 OS models had a black UI on OLED screens and thius was pointed out in reviews and sales literature at the time. This was one of the reasons I switched from Android and purchased my Z30, (Still happily running along too.)
Ye gods people have short memories - or is it all this corporate newspeak constantly re-writing history and reality?
Does anyone remember http://www.blackle.com/ ?
Some apps and Android custom firmware distinguish between a dark (grey) mode and a true black mode, where the text and graphic free areas are black-hole black and not just some dark shade of grey? Which is which?
Why is this news? We've known this for years:
https://www.greenbot.com/artic...
What next? We need Google to announce that water is wet so that people can finally go jump in a lake?
I find it funny that people have only just discovered all this like it's some sort of new thing. People always seem to accept the defautl themes on their desktops and devices, as if the default was the only choice and they should never befoul the designer's vision of the desktop.
Since Windows98 I've been tweaking my themes to use far darker colours and tones as the bright white tones always hurt my eyes and gave me headaches. People always found it very odd that my Outlook windows where always dark grey backgrounds with light grey text but staring at a screen for 10+ hours a day I cannot sit staring at black text on white for hours without it giving me severe headaches. The fact that it also reduced burn on the old CRTs and now saves power on LCDs is nice fringe benefit. My terminals were always soft green on black, something I liked back on the old 1980's IBM terminals I first cut my teeth on, all my command lines and IDE windows are always softer light tones on black backgrounds, coders tend to perfer it as they can sit and stare for hours without straining their eyes. Now general users are learning that darker themes are better for their health with less eye strain and less headaches and better for the environment with less power required. I can imagine the huge boost to the environment if all the millions and millions of screens around the world simply toned down their screens by 30%.