Google just confirmed something you may or may not have suspected already: using dark mode in apps is a huge battery life saver.
At its Android Dev Summit this week, the California tech giant gave a detailed presentation to developers about how they can better optimize their apps for battery life, which Slashgear reported on. The big takeaway was an obvious one -- the more brightness and color an app has, the more power it draws from a phone.
That said, the differences in power Google discovered between using an app normally and using its "night mode" (or dark mode) were striking, particularly for OLED-based phones. For example, when testing an AMOLED-based Google Pixel, Google found that Google Maps uses 63 percent less power when it Night Mode compared to normal mode. By contrast, an LCD-based iPhone 7 saw no change in power consumption.
Google showed off similar results when using Dark Mode in YouTube on an OLED screen, with the video app consuming 60 percent less power with things blacked out.
So, if you have an OLED phone and are looking to save battery, use dark mode in apps whenever possible. Popular applications such as YouTube, Twitter, and Twitch already have dark mode options. Android Pie users can also enable dark mode at the OS level, and while there's no official iOS dark mode, iPhone owners can enable greyscale in their display settings to save a bit of battery (and make their phone easier on the eyes).
