Battery Saving smartphone wallpapers?

[moorken]

My cousing told me that when i would install a black or very dark android wallpaper that i should be able to save a wbole bunch of extra battery time, however i could nowhere find this story confirmed, is this true?
i've installed this one now, http://www.androidwallpapercentral.com/Android/Download/Samsung-Galaxy-S4-wallpapers/Dark/beautiful-feather.aspx should this be sufficient, or will it need to be completely black? or doesnt this matter at all?

 

[BoogieManFL]

I've read that it takes less power to render a solid black background than white or a lot of colors and it makes sense if you think about it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say a lot of extra time, but some. I've been meaning to try it. I was going to load up Paint or something and just make a plain black image and copy it over to my phone.

 

[Esotera]

As long as you don't have an animated wallpaper you should save a fair amount of battery time. Black is the absence of light, so your phone doesn't have to waste energy making a bright white background for example. Some other useful tips:

- Switch on battery saving mode in settings
- Turn off GPS, bluetooth, and wifi & switch them on when you need them
- Disable push notifications from sites like facebook/twitter, these are a major battery waste
- Dim down your screen brightness a bit from the factory default

You can take more hardcore measures such as installing JuiceDefender, but these alone should get you battery-time of ~24h.

 

[Scarim Coral]

When I first bought my smartphone, I also bought a smartphone quickstart guide magazine with it aswell and it did mention having a dark/ black wallpaper does save battery life (it's quicker for it to turn black when you're not using it). Granted I haven't try any other background than the standard black default on my nor have I read elsewhere if the info is true.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Your background doesn't change your battery's life that much. Obviously a blank background is going to use less battery life than an interactive or animated background, but your phone actually being turned on and used is going to drain about 5-15% power in the duration of a good charge. Less drain if you use low brightness and constantly put it on standby, more drain if you do the opposite. Wi-fi, GPS, and mobile networking take up a lot of power, especially if you're in a shoddy place where the connections are weak and the phone keeps seeking them out. Running intensive apps is bad, but everyone should know that. If you run your phone in airplane mode, which is essentially turning your phone into a brick that can play Angry Birds, your phone's life can just about double.

 

[Olas]

As long as you don't have an animated wallpaper you should save a fair amount of battery time. Black is the absence of light, so your phone doesn't have to waste energy making a bright white background for example. Some other useful tips:

If that's true (and I'm not so sure it is, LCDs not really working like CRTs) then Google is a very environmentally unfriendly and we should all use [a href="http://www.blackle.com/"]Blackle[/a].

Ultimately I think the energy savings you'll get from this is pretty inconsequential compared to other things you can do like disabling unnecessary background programs and features, turning down the brightness, installing a power management apps, stuff like that. So I wouldn't sweat it if you want a lighter background.