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What is the best background color to save battery?

I am developing a web application for mobile devices and I was thinking about the default background color.

Are different colors used for different battery life periods? For better battery life should I choose black or white or some other color?

I would suggest that since there is back light behind the LCD, then white will use the least amount of energy because no pixels should be turned on, is this an assumption?

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For most devices, the background color you use does not affect battery usage. The backlight intensity does not change.

However, on AMOLED displays, power consumption can vary “significantly”. See the wikipedia page for more details:

"For example, our measurement shows that the commercial QVGA OLED display consumes 3 and 0.7 watts, displaying black text on a white background and white text on a black background, respectively."

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With conventional LCDs, the backlight will consume much more energy than any number of pixels. If your device has a fixed brightness, you can choose any color you want, the difference in energy consumption will be minimal.

On the other hand, if you can adjust the brightness, then you need a color scheme that provides the best contrast / visibility at the lowest possible screen brightness.

If it's an embedded device and you have full control over features such as screen brightness, it might be worth a little time. But if you are writing an application to work on your existing OS infrastructure, something like the overall brightness of the display will probably not be something that you will be allowed to control.

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I don’t think that background color can affect battery life (but if so, black will be an “energy-saving” mode)

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For LED indicators, the background color does not matter.

For AMOLED displays, which are used in many new smartphones, the black background saves a significant amount of energy.

If battery life is the only issue, use a black background.

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Recent studies confirm that lighter backgrounds use more energy

Microsoft's Battery Conservation Blog

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