Nexus One sees red, nearly doubles battery life? (video)
By Sean Hollister 
posted July 3rd 2010 8:08PM
posted July 3rd 2010 8:08PM
posted July 3rd 2010 8:08PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Sounds like the "make every electronic display red" 80s may have been on to something.
@paul34 its the first communist nexus one. efficient in using resources as a result. and useless btw.
@paul34
In 80s any other leds but red cost a bundle. Even now the blue leds are the most expensive, but then days they costed 100$++.
Allways have been wondering why manufacturers insist using blue power leds. Red ones use the least current for logiht output. And if the led is only for showing id doesn't matter what color it is.
Blue power leds started as a novelty, then as a fashion. Now I'm waiting for them to go out of fashion so we start to get the old red power leds back, which use the least eneergy. Even that matters in battery devices.
@paul34: Likewise, the black screen of DOS might have been a power-saver as well.
Makes me wonder if a black wallpaper would increase the battery life of this phone...!
@aarond12
I may be wrong, but: I believe that used to be true in the CRT days; however, LCD screens use more power displaying black than white.
@paul34 True, but the Nexus One doesn't use an LCD screen. It uses an AMOLED screen. A black pixel is an off pixel and common sense (although not always true) would suggest that a mostly black screen would use less power.
@DrDrrae
Ahh, how noobish of me. indeed, you are correct. My mistake.
@paul34 Not a surprising result considering red LED architecture is much more efficient than the type of LED used for blue, green, white, and other colors, but VERY cool that this guy could enable this on an AMOLED screen.
@paul34 seems counter intuitive. What is the point of saving battery life if you have to look at that horrid screen?
@paul34
What does LCD have to do with the Nexus One?
@paul34
Doubles battery life, Doubles eye loss rate.
j
@Wise ass people, oh great you saw someone commenting about a thing you probably never going to figure it out yourself and go to direct insult. Brilliant!
@Others, back to topic.
Actually, this great thing to know. People might not like to decrease the brightness and having anther option is good. Even decreasing the brightness + having the screen turned red seems perfect to me.
Personally, I would be interested if a benchmark have been made for doing a semi-monochrome (white/black) + lowering the brightness and seeing how that impact the battery life.
@Atro In Soviet Russia, Nexus One roots you.
@paul34
It's nice to see yet another experiment where I can appreciate the fact that I have a life!
@DrDrrae
You are correct. In fact, all of the power savings of OLED vs LCD goes out the window when they are display bright, mostly white screens (like a webpage). Thus to save power, the UIs should be dark.
@aarond12 Black screens absolutely save power on OLED screens. There is no backlight. Every dot that gets turned on eats a little more power.
I wonder if using quad sub-pixels like the Sharp TVs do (Red-Yellow-Green-Blue) could result in overall power use reduction and an increase in battery life.
Don't get me wrong, Sharp's utter nonsense about increased color gamut annoys the hell outta me, but an improvement in portable electronics' battery life would be worthwhile.
@paul34 LEDBacklitted LCD also use less Power for displaying black than white because they dim the LED Backlight. I think mobile phones LCD all use LED as a backlight.
If they could make it black and white with similar power savings, they may be onto something. Otherwise not really.
@paul34
Seems like they could have an option to turn that on and off during times of low use (just checking the clock or lookong something up quickly).
Bring to market!!!
@paul34 Depends on the LCD technology. TN panels have to charge the pixel to reject light and produce black, while IPS screens are the opposite. Not sure about VA...
@paul34
With the phone lasting longer when red, it can now be marketed to the army as "good for extended night ops".
@paul34: Whole article in 3 words: Annoying but useful.
@Atro
Communism efficient???? Might want to research that a bit more.
Roid juice for phones
That sucks about AMOLED screens. Want one, but not worth the kill considering that I have a background that uses other color
@albinomexi
AMOLED's outdoor performance for me is a big deal.... This is why I'm gunning a Super AMOLED or a Pixel Qi phone...
I hope the HTC Vision's qwerty is as good as the Epic 4G's... I love the mini-chiclet style keyboard.
@albinomexi
LCDs are even worse as they work with removing colours from white light. No matter what the picture it uses the same amount of power.
Colorblind folks rejoice!
Makes me remember the Virtual Boy. My eyes still haven't recovered.
@DocDoom now I know why evil robots always have red eyes - to keep more power for blasters!
The power of open source.
@kpenning
If open source hasn't revolutioned your life, you haven't wasted enough time with it.
@kpenning
So nice, open-source bringing 4 colors to screens.
@kpenning so true i hate how ppl r like r u a developer? then y the fuck do u car about android....maybe cuz devs make cool shit that i can use on my phone i can say that about the iphon y get it if ur not a dev well devs makes apps dont they then there u fucking go dumb ass
@cocopuffs
I think I dropped a few IQ points reading your post.
@cocopuffs we cn tell u r not a dev if you typd lyk dis in a prgram it wld nvr wrk.
Android engineer > (read: pwned) apple engineer
Nexus One. The only phone with the Dead Eye Display.
I love the second one from the right....
Can't wait for the official Gingerbread phone, if there will be one. (I'll happily take a Pixel Qi qwerty-equipped HTC Vision instead)
@TareG "I love the second one from the right"
Otherwise known as yellow? Haha
Cool, you mean I can get an Android to make it past 3 hours on battery if I turn off all the colors but apple red? Irony.
@gnomehole You do not understand the concept of irony.
@gnomehole
A nonandroid/probablyapple fan boy trying to defend his product of choice...
not irony
@gnomehole
Since I own an N1 and even use a Live wallpaper and multiple push services.. I can say .. no.. It will last all day x 2...
This just in, the colour spectrum moves from red, through green to blue!
Ech. I think I "endure" the battery drain that my beautiful full color AMOLED gets me. This is still cool though, honestly I didn't think something like this would have made such a significant difference.
I donno how well I could manage with a red screen for all the time.. Maybe if it was disabled for apps that require full color I could manage to get away with it plus double the battery life is extremely impressive.
@fnztakedown
I wouldn't mind a display that could switch to gray scale for power savings. Pixel Qi needs to get in some commercial devices already. :(