Google confirms that dark mode is a valuable help for Android battery life

We have long known that dark-night applications can extend the battery life of smartphones with an OLED display. It's true on Android and it's true with the iPhone. Indeed, individual pixels have to work less on dark areas of the screen and hardly use any juice when displaying real black. As SlashGear Google picked it up at its Android top this week, showing several slides comparing the drawdown of several colors. (The company used its original Pixel smartphone for these data points.)

You can see that white consumes by far the most power. This has led Google to recognize that the preponderance of white in its own applications and in Android style guidelines was far from ideal. His all overand that does not change with Google's improved hardware design.

Fortunately, the company seems to recognize the value of the dark mode. YouTube and Android messages already have them, and Google is also adding the feature to its Phone app and testing it in the Google mobile feed. Android can also be set to a dark theme for the Quick Settings drop-down menu and the application drawer, but Google has not gone as far as adding a night mode at the system scale. (This is something that Samsung is planning to do with its new, unique UI.)

As an example of dark mode coming to the rescue of your battery, just look at the huge difference below, where Pixel is set to a brightness of 100%. The energy savings of the dark mode are obvious. I tend to stick to the traditional look of these apps because I find the white text on black background a bit harsh, but it's nice to see that Google recognizes the interest of reducing the white . Make it a choice wherever it makes sense.