An app’s background color ratio x energy efficiency

Question

Thinking about a mobile application, which is the best color palette in relation to energy consumption?

For example, let’s say I’m developing an app and want to focus on battery consumption. Imagining an ideal environment in which the brightness and consumption of mobile data do not affect the load time, what is the most appropriate color for the background of this supposed application? What is the most efficient color, a black background or darker shades or a white background or lighter shades?

In other words (and to put it bluntly): is more energy consumed to generate a totally black screen or a totally white screen? There is this differentiation?

In the question I dismiss any type of UX, I question only the questions of efficiency and pure consumption.

Answer 1

Depends on screen technology.

Screens with background lighting spend more on black, screens with led in the "pixels" spend more on white, but both are irrelevant near other factors.

See this image, released by a well-known manufacturer:

For you to understand better:

A conventional LCD has a white background, always illuminated. The LCD itself is transparent and the pixels "cover" the white light when they are energized. On the LCD, the energy "cover" the light.

An OLED screen, in turn, is black, and each pixel is an independent LED. They turn on when the energy passes through them. In OLED, the energy turns light.

Relevancy:

In practice, the difference does not justify the concern from a design point of view.

First, because you have no control over it as a programmer. There is no reliable way to identify this, and the practical difference is derisory in everyday life.

A simple poorly made loop is more problematic than the color of the screen. Better learn to deal with the Idle States processor, save processing and connectivity resources, which every good developer manual usually covers.

The color of the screen, on the other hand, has to make life easier for the user to spend less time looking for what he wants. No use saving a negligible amount of energy if the user spends more time using the application.

^{_{This reminds me of those "black pixel" campaigns, which caused more damage than solution, with the advent of backlight LCD monitors.}}