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Does a white background eat more battery?

Just curious. When selecting watch faces, widgets etc you can usually choose between black or white background. Does either eat more juice than the other?

Thanks

Top Replies

jim_m_58 over 6 years ago +3

With this display technology, white vs black backgrounds don't make any difference. I believe it's called something like "memory in pixel', where power is only really used when a pixel changes.…
Former Member over 6 years ago +2

But no difference with a black bg vs a white one.

No, because no matter if the memory circuitry is integrated into the pixel or not, the liquid crystal molecules need an electric field to maintain their…
RingoSurf over 4 years ago +2

No in transflective display .. same battery consuption

All Replies

0 Dr Phil over 4 years ago in reply to Anton

Anton said:
so yes, I see a big difference of a factor of 3 between white and black background.

with a non-Garmin watch face. Try the same experiment with a stock watch face.

0 Anton over 4 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

I was wondering if anyone uses those?

0 Anton over 4 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

Just checked, on Garmin orig it says 0.0-0.1 per hour on black. And it was 0.3 per hour on write. Looks like we found an issue)

0 Tisztul_A_Visztula over 4 years ago

Out of curiosity, does vibration alerr eat more battery or sound alert? I never tested it, just thought I dont need both, since F5+ is not so good at making a long battery life.

0 -- over 4 years ago in reply to Tisztul_A_Visztula

A piezo beeper is very energy efficient, so I guess it will.

Guessing is no good though. Every time I see a question like this, I'm tempted to do set up an experiment. It is a compulsion I am learning to control. Feel free to do what I want to do, but don't have the time for:

Hard reset watch to defaults, use stock watchface. Charge watch to exactly X %. Note the ambient temperature. Set timer to repeatedly give an alarm (vibrate only, backlight off) every minute for an hour or two. Note battery level.

Repeat including reset. Make sure temperature is the same. Use beep alert this time.

Ideally, get ~ 15 friends to do the same.

Compare and post results.

0 Tisztul_A_Visztula over 4 years ago in reply to --

Ideally you have a longer test period than a couple of hours, moreover you start your test always from the same fully charged state, because the battery level indicator is not accurate enough (the decrease of “percentage” is far from linear even in case of passive “usage”)

Anyway thanks for your opinion.

0 Jared over 4 years ago in reply to Anton

There are too many factors present to draw a conclusion based on one trial in my opinion. Sometimes my watch to seems to burn through battery faster without any apparent reason. For example, it always seems like the battery loses charge slower in the first 50%, but faster in the latter 50%.

0 RingoSurf over 4 years ago

No in transflective display .. same battery consuption

0 flocsy🤠 over 4 years ago in reply to DarrinC

But not all garmin watches use the same display technology. Some have chroma-display, some have amoled: www.youtube.com/watch