{Disarmed} Do you think you save more battery with automatic brightness? This is the reality on your mobile screen

"Using a sensor to adjust brightness in every situation must necessarily be more resource intensive than simply setting a static brightness level." This is a general belief , one that has been spreading over the years and that actually has a lot of mythology .

Automatic brightness has been opening debates for years. It is normal, it has never been clearly demonstrated if this functionality helps us save battery . On the other hand, there are hundreds of studies showing the clear relationship between exposure to excess light and melanin production —even, indirectly, in its link with certain addictions— . Dream and light .

We can conjecture, therefore, that a movement in favor of promoting automatic brightness also has a health intention, on our eye health and our sensory perception. But what about the battery, do you save or not ? Let's check it out.

The truth about auto brightness

Not everything is black or white, nor is everything reduced to not-saving or saving. The first key to take into account lies in the type of screen: does your mobile mount an LCD panel (LED, QLED, etc) or an OLED panel (AMOLED, Super or Dynamic AMOLED, etc)?

Long criticized, its operability is far from efficient in LCD panels, where light is projected and let in from behind , while in an OLED screen it will always be the logical choice, since the self-emissive pixels know how much light they should emit.

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On LED LCD panels, regardless of the brightness level, the entire screen always lights up. In an AMOLED and OLED panel no, only those that need to be used are activated , while all those that have to show black remain off. In summary, if you have a mobile phone with an OLED screen in your hands, we do recommend activating the automatic brightness. If not... at least enabledark mode .

If you have a mobile phone with an OLED screen in your hands, we do recommend activating the automatic brightness.

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The second key is that, after all, it all comes down to static brightness levels. We must remember a maxim based on the experience of the manufacturers themselves: statistically, the average user manually sets brightness levels above 50% , which leads to unnecessary expense.

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Another of the widespread complaints points to the malfunction of the sensor: in a dark room, the screen can turn on too much and in a lit room it cannot reach that required 100%. In addition, the backlight capacity degrades over time. In 24 months a smartphone loses 80% of its maximum brightness capacity .

How the ambient light sensor works

The less incident or direct light there is in our environment, the higher the brightness level. And the value will be reversed in the opposite situation. This could be, to summarize, the basic principle of a light sensor.

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Over the years, OLED and AMOLED screens have become more efficient in their interpretation of ambient light , absorbing more and reflecting less—avoiding color washout from overexposure. Not surprisingly, the latest research revolves around 3D pixel arrays with much higher quantum efficiency, capable of better light control.

The amount of energy consumed by the ambient light sensor is negligible on a day-to-day basis, and even more so when we talk about organic diodes (OLED), whose job of reading and recognizing ambient light indices is done almost automatically.

These get the data from the light reflected on the entire screen . That is why it is very important to keep the screen clean , to prevent the oily excess of our interactions from covering part of that light emission.

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All in all, dynamic dimming—also known as "ramps" in technical parlance—is more effective than manual adjustment. And this is so, in part, because any interaction that requires touching the screen and modifying brightness levels will always result in greater energy consumption , since touch receptors and other additional sensors are involved.

How to check the actual expense of the screen

In addition to if you are curious to know the total cost you make daily on your mobile just by keeping the screen on, between charging and charging, the route to follow is as follows:

• Go into the ' Settings ' of the system.
• Scroll down to the ' Battery and Performance ' option.
• Look for the ' Display ' app. There you will have the key information: total hours of use, percentage of drained battery and the value in milliamps that has been consumed.

As you can see, the screen is one of the elements that demands the most energy. The reason is, ironically, because we are increasingly using mobile phones with larger screens , and keeping them on penalizes us. In just five years we have gone from 4.1 inches to about 6.4 inches on average . An increase that has an obvious cost.

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However, we must highlight the important innovations in this section, where the LTPO screens stand out , with technology capable of dynamically adapting the refresh rate to save when necessary.

And the result is evident, judging by the additional consumption caused by jumping from a refresh rate of 60Hz to one of 120Hz. We already said it : under normal conditions we can save up to 15% of daily battery consumption. It is one of the most attractive features of the latest mobile launches for a reason.

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The news Do you think you save more battery with automatic brightness? This is the reality on the screen of your mobile was originally published in xiaomist by Isra Fdez .