Limited-colour screens may improve your mobile phones' battery life

London, July 8 (ANI): Scientists have come up with a way to make limited-coloured screens for mobile phones, which can improve batter life.

Johnson Chuang of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, has shown that OLEDs can be made frugal by carefully choosing the balance of colours used to make up an image.

The researcher says that each pixel in an OLED screen is made from a spot of polymer that emits coloured light when supplied with power, and each uses different amounts of energy depending on the colour being displayed.

According to him, yellow colour uses less energy than magenta at the same brightness.

"Colours with equal perceived brightness don't necessarily use the same amount of energy," New Scientist magazine quoted the researcher as saying.

The researcher further said that LCD panels use the same amount of energy no matter what hue the screen, as the backlights in the display always remain switched on.

Chuang and his colleagues have now successfully designed sets of colours that slash the power consumption of an OLED panel by up to 40 per cent, with minimal effect on how people perceive an image.

They have revealed that their colour choice resulted in energy savings of between 37 and 41 per cent over a traditional colour palette, depending on the scene being shown.

The new colour palette could help the designers of mobile devices like cellphones extend their battery life.

Presently, about 50 per cent of the stored power of a mobile device, such as a cellular phone, is typically used to run its LCD display.

"Say you're running low on battery and you want to use Google maps to get home. Switching to an energy-aware colour set could make your battery last longer," says Chuang.

Chuang now plans to start testing how much energy the new colour palettes can save on physical devices.

He says that the energy savings will depend on the specific display, the content, and user preference, but should be significant over OLED displays that use a full colour set.

"It depends on how much the user wants to sacrifice," he says. (ANI)