These mobile phone functions and skills can solve holiday battery anxiety

Although there has not been a revolutionary improvement in battery capacity, the industry has taken a different approach in recent years and has made a lot of progress in power saving and charging. Especially recently, this type of technology has ushered in some small updates. I hope that with these technologies, combined with some usage tips, we can stay away from battery anxiety, especially in an environment where we should be completely relaxed during holidays.

01 Screen power saving technology

Even with the extremely powerful hardware such as SoC and camera, the screen is still the biggest power consumer in daily use. This was true before high refresh rate screens became popular, and even more so after they became popular. So how does the industry save power on screens?

The first step is to embrace OLED. The way a screen displays content is by emitting light from the screen. Unlike traditional LCD screens, OLED does not require a continuous backlight for the entire screen, because each pixel of an OLED screen can emit light independently, so OLED is more power-efficient.

OLED has almost replaced LCD in mobile phones

The second step is to improve the OLED screen. With the advent of the high refresh rate era, the internal structure and material of the OLED screen need to be changed.

Each pixel of the OLED screen contains a semiconductor material called "LTPS" (low-temperature polycrystalline silicon). By controlling the current, these semiconductors can control the light emission of each pixel on the screen. However, the efficiency of LTPS semiconductors in controlling light emission is low, and some electricity will be lost in the control process. When the screen resolution is increased, there are more pixels; when the screen refresh rate is increased, the number of times each pixel changes light emission increases. In short, high resolution and high refresh rate greatly increase the workload of LTPS semiconductors. Some electricity is lost every time, and more electricity is lost when the workload increases.

LTPO screen

So there is a new semiconductor material - LTPO. LTPO is not a new material, but another material is added to each pixel based on LTPS. The new material will take over the least efficient part of LTPS, thus improving the overall efficiency.

LTPO screen

Theoretically, even if the refresh rate is the same, LTPS consumes more power than the LTPO that is gradually emerging. However, LTPO can bring a lower screen refresh rate from the hardware level. If the mobile phone can use this capability to reduce the screen refresh rate when the screen does not need a high refresh rate, it can further save power.

LTPO screen

However, there are still very few OLED screens using LTPO technology. When it becomes popular in the future, we will see more mature software adaptation, which will make the power saving advantage of LTPO OLED more obvious.

What is the biggest advantage of gasoline cars over electric cars? Of course, it is the battery life. There are two reasons behind this: gasoline cars can store more energy at a time (larger fuel tanks), and gasoline cars can be refueled quickly. The fast charging of mobile phones is based on the latter idea. Nowadays, the 50-watt, 60-watt, and even 120-watt charging of various manufacturers have directly deprived the "15-watt" and "18-watt" charging powers that we once called fast charging of the name of "fast charging".

Wired fast charging can fully charge a mobile phone in as fast as 16 minutes

Ten minutes, 30 minutes, and 50 minutes to fully charge have become the main theme in recent days. This includes some mobile phones that cost more than 1,000 or 2,000 yuan. Ultra-fast wired charging is no longer a rare thing in 2021. In addition, wireless charging has also ushered in its own glorious moment, and wireless charging power of more than 50 or 60 watts has also come to some models. Everyone can already experience wireless charging that is as fast as ultra-fast wired charging.

In addition to increasing power consumption, enhancing power conservation, and speeding up charging, how else can we alleviate power anxiety? The industry's answer to us is "wireless charging". Wireless charging means that our mobile phones are "always" charged (within the working range of the charging device). Although consumers cannot buy wireless mobile phone chargers for home use now, judging from the current industry achievements, some manufacturers have achieved the wireless charging capability of powering 32 devices at the same time within a range of 9 meters.

Wireless charging charger

When wireless charging becomes popular, homes, shopping malls, restaurants and other places can be equipped with such chargers, making charging a passive process that does not require users to worry about it.

Wireless charging

03 Finally, let me teach you some tips on how to save electricity

After talking about so many battery life extension technologies that have just become popular, just appeared, and are not yet used, we still have to return to reality. At this moment, if everyone does not spend money to buy the latest mobile phone and does not enjoy the latest technology, they can also improve the battery life of their mobile phones through the following tips.

First of all, friends who have high-refresh screen phones should try to set the screen refresh rate to "smart switch" instead of full-time high refresh when going out for a long time. Because the power consumption of full-time high refresh is much more obvious than the fluency disadvantage brought by "smart switch".

Secondly, users of OLED screen phones (most people nowadays) can set some dark wallpapers, lock screens, chat backgrounds and keyboard skins for their phones. It would be best if they can be black, because OLED screens save the most power when they are black. When the screens that often appear on the phone turn black, the screen will often be in a state of not fully emitting light, which naturally saves more power.

Black power saving mode works on all OLED phones

Then, many people may not pay attention and turn on Bluetooth or NFC without knowing when. If you can predict that you will not use Bluetooth or NFC in the next period of time, it is best to turn off these two functions to help extend the battery life.

Finally, Android users should clean up background programs in a timely manner, leaving only two or three resident apps that need to receive notifications. If a phone has a bunch of apps running in the background for a long time, the battery will be consumed faster.

In short, to relieve battery anxiety and have a quiet holiday, it is not only necessary to improve the technology of the mobile phone itself, but also to develop good usage habits. If you treat your phone better, your phone will naturally treat you better.