More endurance for the smartphone: study reveals practical battery trick

For many smartphone users, battery life is a decisive factor when buying a new model. A large battery, like the one most expensive cell phones have, is needed. A practical tip will help you to get more stamina out of cheaper equipment.

This trick gets more out of your smartphone

The battery trick, which American researchers have now proven in a study, is very simple - at least once you have figured it out: With some smartphones, you can save quite a bit of energy by using the dark mode. But the trick doesn't work with all cell phones.

According to the researchers, you have a good chance of being able to use the trick if your smartphone is no older than it was in 2017 (source: ACM Digital Library via Purdue University). Because newer cell phones rely more on OLED displays and only with these the experts at Purdue University could prove that the "dark mode" saves the battery under certain circumstances. Because the light intensity of the individual light points can be individually controlled in OLED displays, a mostly dark or black screen requires less energy.

And this is how it works: You can find the dark mode under Android in the settings under the menu item "Display & Brightness". Incidentally, you will achieve the greatest savings by switching to higher display brightness. At 100 percent luminosity, the energy consumption of the display in the apps tested, such as YouTube and Google News, decreased by 39 to 47 percent. If you let your smartphone regulate the brightness yourself as required, the effect should be significantly lower and be in the single-digit percentage range. You can also use other tricks to save your cell phone battery.

You can find common battery myths in our video :

Whether Android or iOS: Dark mode throttles power consumption

For the study, the researchers only used Android smartphones. The result can still be transferred to iPhones, they say. In the future, the team wants to make it easier for app developers and smartphone manufacturers to calculate more realistic energy consumption for apps. This should include the display usage of individual applications. A corresponding program is currently being patented and should be ready for the market in the coming year.