How to make Android look sexy on a black handset!

[Stetson]

You're all are crazy, people :) No matter the technology, lower voltage usage always going to be on the side of displaying darker colors.

Displaying lighter pixels (bright colors), is more draining on the battery than to display darker pixels (dark colors). It's like if you light two fires and will want to make the second one brighter than the other one, you'll have to feed it more wood. No other way around it.

You don't understand how an LCD display works. The pixels on an LCD display do not light up, they just let light through. On a phone LCD display there's a single backlight unit behind the LCD that provides all the light. This is the part of the display that uses almost all of the power.

There's one backlight for all of the pixels.

If all the pixels are white, the backlight is on and is using power.

If half the pixels are black and half are white, the backlight is on and using power. The LCD layer is blocking out that light for half the pixels, but the light is still on.

If all the pixels are black, the backlight is on and using power. The LCD layer is blocking out all of that light.

Just because there is less light going to your eyes doesn't mean that that light isn't being generated. It's just being blocked out by the LCD layer to make the 'dark' pixels.

There's no way for the backlight to use a reduced amount of power just because some of the light is being blocked out by the LCD layer. The backlight is either on or off for the whole display and uses power based on the brightness setting.

Edit: To use your analogy, think of an LCD display as a big fire with a stencil (cutout shape) placed on top of it. You look down at the stencil and you see light through the holes and black where the stencil is. No matter what stencil you use, even if it has no holes at all and is sold black, the fire is still going underneath and using fuel.

[schubb2003]

You're all are crazy, people :) No matter the technology, lower voltage usage always going to be on the side of displaying darker colors.

Displaying lighter pixels (bright colors), is more draining on the battery than to display darker pixels (dark colors). It's like if you light two fires and will want to make the second one brighter than the other one, you'll have to feed it more wood. No other way around it.

So if there are blinds over the fire, only adding fuel makes it brighter if you are looking down on the fire? Opening the blinds would adjust the amount of light coming through much better, more fuel would only add to bleed around the blinds.

[Buttus]

someone should start a cellphone background thread! post the background and resolution....

i always use dark backgrounds, for pretty much what was posted here

[Pupik]

Edit: To use your analogy, think of an LCD display as a big fire with a stencil (cutout shape) placed on top of it. You look down at the stencil and you see light through the holes and black where the stencil is. No matter what stencil you use, even if it has no holes at all and is sold black, the fire is still going underneath and using fuel.

You didn't understand my analogy at all. Both fires still use wood while burning. Only the fire that burns brighter, needs more of it.

So if a display needs to make a part of it brighter, it will use more battery power than it uses while the display has less bright colors to display.

someone should start a cellphone background thread! post the background and resolution....

i always use dark backgrounds, for pretty much what was posted here

There's already one on Neowin for that somewhere.

edit: Tried, but couldn't find it.

[Mr. Gibs]

The ONLY advantage to amoled today is the black levels, which gives it "dynamic" contrast. SLCD has better colors, viewing angles, daytime viewing and real contrast

Power saving with darker colors, and generally faster response time.

Viewing angles mean absolutely nothing on phones since 99.99% of the time you're looking at your phone head on. SLCDs may have better/realistic color reproduction but colors on AMOLED look better because of the over-saturation. Hence why I said it comes down to personal preference. Some people like the way the colors on amoleds are more vibrant, some people prefer realistic colors.

[Stetson]

You didn't understand my analogy at all. Both fires still use wood while burning. Only the fire that burns brighter, needs more of it.

So if a display needs to make a part of it brighter, it will use more battery power than it uses while the display has less bright colors to display.

The problem with your analogy is that there are two fires, one per pixel. An LCD does use a tiny bit of power per pixel, but most of the power is used by the backlight. In a phone LCD there is almost always a single backlight unit for the whole display. There is not a separate light per pixel.

You can't 'brighten' one pixel and 'darken' another by sending more or less power to the backlight.

You can only let the light through, or block the light. That's how LCDs with backlights work. Displaying a black pixel doesn't use less power because the backlight is still on. This is why an LCD monitor that is 'on' but displaying a black screen looks different to one that is truly turned off.

If an LCD has a backlight that at full brighness uses one watt of power, that backlight will continue to use one watt of power whether or not you are letting all of that light through to your eyes (white screen) or blocking out some of that light before it gets to your eyes (black pixels).

The only way to significantly reduce the power output of a backlit phone LCD is to dim the entire backlight by turning down your phone's brightness setting or having it auto-dim.

Edit: I made a diagram, maybe this will help:

Turning the pixels on or off has no effect on how much power the backlight uses.

[pes2013]

If you have a good AMOLED screen (super amoled or clear black) it's pretty hard to see where the screen ends and the bezel begins if you're looking at it head on.

You haven't seen too many smartphones as well then; LCD, SLCD, AMOLED.....Anyone who has seen can tell. More so the bottom dock gives it away....

[techbeck]

Nothing new for me. I always have a dark background image on my cell phone.

[Guest]

Quickest and easiest way to get your black wallpaper:

1. Open your camera app

2. Take a photo with your finger covering the lens fully

3. Set as wallpaper

[Knife Party]

Quickest and easiest way to get your black wallpaper:

1. Open your camera app

2. Take a photo with your penis covering the lens fully

3. Set as wallpaper

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

With wallpaper - without. Which one's best?

[tsupersonic]

^ Without wallpaper - your icon scheme is designed for a black (dark) wallpapers...

[+Warwagon MVC]

Last night I was looking on the Google Play store and found a theme called

Black Infinitum Inverted

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.razerx.theme.blackinfinitum2&hl=en

It's a white on black theme for android. It looks really nice.

[Richteralan]

While I understand "sexy" is subjective, however, black/white, i.e. lack of colors is not going to be sexy.

I suggest http://mycolorscreen.com/ for sexy home screen inspirations.

[123456789A]

Remove the Samsung logo.

[HawkMan]

While I understand "sexy" is subjective, however, black/white, i.e. lack of colors is not going to be sexy.

I suggest http://mycolorscreen.com/ for sexy home screen inspirations.

No actually the Infinitum themes are secy, not with a black background on the home screen though, but a nice neutral wood panel background makes it great, combined with a simple mono color icon set.

[techbeck]

hmm, may have to give AOKP a try again.

[HawkMan]

ugh, I can't wait until Sony releases 4.1 for my Xperia S. the whole AOKP/CM crap is getting on my nerves. Granted this may vary on phone manufacturer since Sony is pretty much the only one actually doing a proper job optimizing Android for their hardware. but I miss having a phone that has properly working media players with "send to" function that can send to any DLNA tv and other such neat working functions that don't seem to work on any of the third party players, that's when you don't get a player that also includes pop up ads spam with a different icon in the notification tray.

[Richteralan]

ugh, I can't wait until Sony releases 4.1 for my Xperia S. the whole AOKP/CM crap is getting on my nerves. Granted this may vary on phone manufacturer since Sony is pretty much the only one actually doing a proper job optimizing Android for their hardware. but I miss having a phone that has properly working media players with "send to" function that can send to any DLNA tv and other such neat working functions that don't seem to work on any of the third party players, that's when you don't get a player that also includes pop up ads spam with a different icon in the notification tray.

Xperia S? And Jelly Bean?

Good luck waiting buddy. You know the good thing is that update will eventually be here.

[HawkMan]

May actually.

I've been wanting to just install the official rom though, as Sony does such a good job on the software their old software ran just as smooth as CM JB. Except with all the neat functions they pack into it.

[Noir Angel]

I've owned 2 AMOLED and 2 LCD Android phones and it's my impression that the overall appearance was on the AMOLED screens. I haven't really noticed any real differences in power usage though, all modern smartphones seem to chew through their batteries pretty quickly.

[Sir Topham Hatt]

I can see how this may define the icons and text from the background though, which might make them seem brighter.

Might give it a go :)

I already have my background at the lowest, WiFi only when I am using it at home, so there isn't much more I can do to get more battery life.