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?
It’s a nice idea but I really don’t spend that much time looking at my wallpaper (even though I still change it every few days, I used to be active on Zedge so I’m really OCD about wallpapers). Only until I’ve switched to the app that I want to use, and the apps use the colors they use, not much to do about that. I did switch the Lithium layout (ebook reader) to white on black, as well as some other apps that allow it, and disabled apps and services that I don’t use.
China just built an AMOLED factory that outputs more screens than Samsung, and building a second one. It means Samsung and LG won’t be the only suppliers of AMOLED displays. In the past Japan was the leading edge of display technology before South Korea overtook them. Now it seems it’s China’s turn to be the largest player in new screen technology.
I hate downloading apps when I can use my browser to do exactly the same thing. I would much rather just do a search for AMOLED-friendly wallpapers, download my favorite, and set it from there.
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I’ve always look at battery efficiency in mobile devices as the use of multiple techniques to achieve a result greater than the sum of its parts. A darker wallpaper will help to a small degree as will using a system wide dark theme if available on devices with amoled screens.
Some even better ideas are to not use free apps that include ads. Get the paid/donate version if you can. If you spend a lot of time in a free game w/ads or use a browser that displays ads it will have an impact on battery life. Also, the weaker your network signal the bigger that impact will be. If you see ads on a mobile device you are paying for it with battery life aka SOT (screen on time).
How about weather apps? How often does it update and when it does is gps being used to find your location? For the most part I set a static location (home zip code) except when traveling and I use a 30 minute update interval, no updates while screen is off.
Google Now/Assistant needs to be configured. I don’t use it enough to justify having it listen for me to say “OK Google” when the screen is off. I also don’t need it to work when I’m using any and every app. I have it set to only work when I’m on a home screen. If you don’t use it disable it and I don’t use Google Now cards.
Wi-Fi. Is it enabled 24/7 even when not connected? I leave mine on because I’m connected to wi-fi the vast majority of the time. What not everyone knows is that the wi-fi is scanning for open and/or known networks every 15 seconds. We need data and we need it now! If I know I’m not going to be using wi-fi for multiple hours or days, I will turn it off and I don’t use public wi-fi, ever, never ever. My devices have always been rooted so I changed the entry in the build.prop “wifi.supplicant_scan_interval” from 15 to 30. I always end up with some wifi connection weirdness when trying to use a longer interval than 30. Also, another important consideration and maybe the most important one is that your MAC address is being broadcast with the scanning. Anyone that wants to see it can, retailers, the government, the boogey man, whoever.
Above are some of the more important tips in my opinion, there are many more. I don’t use social media apps so that is a huge battery saver right off the bat. I’m currently using a one year old Nexus 5x with an overclocked kernel and even though it only has a 2700mAh battery which is relatively small nowadays I generally see 4.5 hrs of sot, easily. Right now screen on time is at 3 hrs 34 min with 41% battery left. It’s all the little things, they add up!