Tired of your iPhone constantly running out of juice? The tech whizzes of the Internet have a solution. Hooray!
According to YouTube channel PhoneBuff, who conducted their very own experiment, setting your phone up with Apple’s new Dark Mode can help it preserve its precious energy.
Dark Mode is a new feature of Apple’s latest software update – iOS 13. It uses a darker color palette than Light Mode – the color scheme iPhone users are used to – which allows content in the foreground to stand out. For example, if you visit Instagram while in Dark Mode, the background becomes black, allowing text and images to really pop.
According to Apple, the new color scheme provides “a great viewing experience especially in low-light environments.”
To check it out, simply head over to the Settings app on your iPhone, and click on Display & Brightness. Then, tap “Dark” to initiate Dark Mode. If you don’t like change, click on the “Light” option to return to a lighter color scheme.
You can also set Dark Mode to come on at specific times or at sunset. Just tap on the Automatic option below the Light/Dark options. You can either select “Sunset to Sunrise” or set your own schedule by tapping Custom Schedule.
So how does the setting impact your phone’s treasured battery? PhoneBuff took it upon themselves to find out. They charged two iPhones up to 100 percent battery and ensured their displays were set to the same brightness levels. They then employed two little robot arms to tap away at the screens, just as texting human fingers would, until the first phone died.
After two hours, there was already a difference in how the batteries were running down. The Dark Mode dropped to “a healthy” 88 percent, while the Light Mode iPhone’s battery declined to 83 percent. Next, the robot arms spent two hours pretending to be humans by aimlessly scrolling Twitter. After this time, the Dark Mode phone reached 72 percent battery, while the Light Mode phone’s juice plummeted to 57 percent.
The robots then spent another two hours watching YouTube videos. The Dark Mode iPhone still had 43 percent of its battery life left after the two hours were up, while the Light Mode phone only had 20 percent.
Finally, the robots started using maps, with the initial intention of doing so for two hours, as they were clearly very lost. However, after 1 hour and 33 minutes, the Light Mode phone took its last breath and died. At the same time, the Dark Mode phone still had 30 percent of its battery remaining.
However, before you rush away to set up Dark Mode, PhoneBuff has a few things to point out. First, they only used apps that have Dark Mode enabled on them, so you probably won’t see such an extreme result when using a wide range of apps and websites, as they won’t all employ Dark Mode. What’s more, the brightness of you iPhone will also have an impact – Phonebuff used 200 nits, which is a pretty standard level of light.
Still, if you’re running low on power, it looks like using Dark Mode could help your iPhone cling on a little longer than it otherwise would.
