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Dark UI Colors

Provide a dark UI color theme to save battery on devices with AMOLED screens.

Context

Screen is one of the major source of power consumption on mobile devices. Apps that require heavy usage of screen (e.g., reading apps) can have a big impact on battery life.

Solution

Provide a UI with dark background colors. This is particularly beneficial for mobile devices with AMOLED screens, which are more energy efficient when displaying dark colors. In some cases, it might be reasonable to allow users to choose between a light and a dark theme. The dark theme can also be activated using a special trigger (e.g., when battery is running low).

Example

In a reading app, provide a theme with a dark background using light colors to display text. When compared to themes using light backgrounds, a dark background will have a higher number of dark pixels.

References

• - Agolli T, Pollock L, Clause J. Investigating decreasing energy usage in mobile apps via indistinguishable color changes.
• - Linares-Vásquez M, Bernal-Cárdenas C, Bavota G, Oliveto R, Di Penta M, Poshyvanyk D. GEMMA: multi-objective optimization of energy consumption of GUIs in Android apps.
• - Ding Li, Angelica Huyen Tran, and William G. J. Halfond Making Web Applications More Energy Efficient for OLED Smartphones
• - Ding Li, Angelica Huyen Tran, and William G. J. Halfond. Nyx: A Display Energy Optimizer for Mobile Web Apps

Occurrences

Android

iOS