Saving battery on AMOLED devices
AMOLED Wallpapers HD is a free application for Android that provides you with specially crafted wallpapers for AMOLED displays.
AMOLED, Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode, is a display technology that uses self-illuminating diodes. This is different from LCD displays, which use a backlight instead.
AMOLED displays are integrated into most Samsung devices, Google devices, as well as devices by manufacturers such as BlackBerry, Motorola and OnePlus.
One advantage that AMOLED devices have is that battery can be saved depending on the colors on the screen. Senk9 published an analysis of the power efficiency of AMOLED devices back in 2015, and concluded that the power consumption of an AMOLED screen displaying black, was less than half of the power consumption of an AMOLED screen displaying white.
This finding has been confirmed in other studies, for instance one on GreenBot in 2014, and Anandtech in 2014.
Black is good in regards to battery savings, as diodes don't have to light up at all to display black (in contrast to LED displays).
While you can go ahead and set the wallpaper and lockscreen image of an AMOLED device to black, most users probably prefer better looking wallpapers. This is where apps like AMOLED Wallpapers HD come into play, as they provide plenty of those.
AMOLED Wallpapers HD
AMOLED Wallpapers HD is a wallpaper application for Android. It provides you with a large collection of wallpaper images optimized for AMOLED displays.
You will notice that most wallpapers feature lots of black and not a lot of white. Not all wallpapers are designed with battery savings in mind, but picking a predominantly black wallpaper image will have that effect.
The application lists several wallpaper categories that you can filter wallpapers by. This includes, among others editor's picks, anime and cartoon, nature, videogames, and a special Samsung Galaxy S8 category. Depending on what you select, wallpapers may be more or less on the black side of the color spectrum.
A tap on a wallpaper opens it in a preview. The two options that you have at this point are to download it, and to set it as the wallpaper.
One usability issue that you may encounter on the wallpaper profile page is that there is no clear option to return to the wallpaper listing. You have to tap on the back button of the mobile device to go back.
Verdict
If you want to save battery on your AMOLED device but don't want to set the wallpaper and lockscreen to black, you may find candidates that you find more suitable when you run AMOLED Wallpapers HD. Some of the wallpapers are very bright and not designed for power savings however, so keep that in mind when you are selecting one.
Now You: Which power saving tricks or apps do you use?
Thanks for the tip Martin.
It is for these kinds of posts that I follow GHacks.
What’s up with the generic comment, are you a bot?
2G?
Where on the planet is that still in use? I was forced to give up using my RAZRV3 years ago because 2G was phased out by AT&T.
Everywhere 3G has been turned off and you don’t have LTE coverage, and believe me there are many developed countries where this is the case and if it weren’t for 2G you wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe tha term “2G” is in the article. Perhaps you are referring to “AGM G2”??
@Martin
Your website has gone insane.
When I the post button I then saw my comment posted on a different article page. When I opened this article again, it is here.
@Tachy @Martin Brinkmann
” Your website has gone insane. ”
Same here. Has happened several times.
@Tachy,
@Martin P.,
For over two weeks now,
I’ve been seeing “Comments” posted by subscribers appearing in different, unrelated articles.
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572991
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572951
For the time being,
it would be better to specify the “article name and URL” at the beginning of the post.
@tachy a lot of non-phone devices with a sim in them rely on 2G, at least here in europe.
Usually things reporting usage or errors/alarms on something remote that does not get day to day inspection in person. They are out there in vast numbers doing important work. Reliable, good range. The low datarate is no problem at all in those cases.
3G is gone or on its last legs everywhere, but this stuff still has too much use to cancel.
Anyhow, interesting that they would put that in. I can see the point if you suspect a hostile 2G environment (amateur eavesdroppers with laptop, ranging up to professional grade MITM fake towers while “strangely” not getting the stronger crypto voip 4G because it is being jammed, and back down to something as old ‘stingray’ devices fallen into the wrong hands).
But does this also mean that they have handled and rolled out a fix for that nasty 4G ‘pwn by broadcast’ problem you reported earlier this year? I had 4G disabled due to that, on the off chance that some of the local criminals would buy some cheap chinese gear, download a working exploit and probe every phone in range all over town in the hope of getting into phones of the police.
>”While most may never be attacked in stingrays, it is still recommended to disable 2G cellular connections, especially since it does not have any downsides.”
The downside would be losing connectivity. I spend a lot of time way out in the countryside where there’s often no service or almost none. My network allows 2G, and I need it sometimes. I have an option on the phone to disable 2G, I may do that when I’m in the city and I have good 5G connectivity, but not out in the country.
I would imagine that the stingray exploits, like most of the bad things in this world, are probably things you will run into in the crowded big cities.
I stopped using it in a mobile (Wi-Fi line) environment, so I’m almost ignorant of the actual situation,
But the recent reality in Japan makes me realize that “the infrastructure of the web is nothing more than a papier-mâché fiction”.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/17/google-chrome-to-enable-https-first-by-default-for-all-users/#comment-4572402
It is already beyond the scope of what an individual can do.
What we should be aware of is the reality that “governments and those in power want to control the world through the Web”, and efforts to counter (resist and prevent) such ambitions are necessary.
Why do you want people to disable the privacy features? Hmmmmm?
Now You: do you plan to keep the Ads privacy features enabled?
I’d like to tell you, but apparently if you make a post critical of Google, you get censored. * [Editor: removed, just try to bring your opinion across without attacking anyone]
@Martin
You website is still psychotic. Comments attach to random stories.
@Martin please do fix the comments, it’s completely insane commenting here! :[
@Martin
The comments are seriously messed up on gHacks now. These comments are mixed with the article at the below URL.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/18/android-how-to-disable-2g-cellular-connections-to-improve-security/
And comments on other articles are from as far back as 2010.
What does this article has anything to do with all the comments on this article? LOL I think this Websuite is ran by ChatGPT. every article is messed up. Some older comments from 2015 shown up in recant articles, LOL
The picture captioned “Clearing the Android Auto’s cache might resolve the issue” is from Apple Carplay ;)
How about other things that matter:
Drop survival?
Screen toughness?
Degree of water and dust protection?