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Upcoming Samsung smartphones will use variable refresh rate displays to lower power consumption when static content is being displayed:
Today, Samsung Display is announcing that they are for the first time revealing new generation display panels that allow for variable refresh rate technology, alleviating one of the biggest draw-backs of current generation high-refresh-rate smartphones. The new technology is makings its debut in the new Galaxy Note20 Ultra, which should be available to the public in just two short weeks.
[...] Samsung's new display panel employed in the new Note20 Ultra is actually described as a VRR panel, with Samsung promising new refresh rate modes such as the ability to operate at 120, 60, 30 and 10Hz modes. The latter super-low refresh rates have been to date never been used in smartphones. Samsung describes that the display will now be able to lower itself down to this new 10Hz mode when viewing static content.
Samsung describes the usage of a new backplane technology in order to achieve this – whilst we haven't had an official response from Samsung to our questions on the matter, there's been rumours that this is the generation in which the company has introduced LTPO backplane technology, allowing it higher switching performance and lower power consumption.
Another question which remains to be answered is exact details on Samsung's VRR workings, and whether it is a proper implementation of adaptive sync technology and if it has finer refresh rate granularity in the 10-120Hz beyond just the mentioned 60 and 30Hz examples.
Refresh rates as low as 1 Hz have also been rumored. Apple owns a patent on the technology and may be introducing it into iPhones starting in 2021.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday August 13 2020, @07:32AM (2 children)
It seems to be more a case of "lookit what we can do!". The closest they ever get to revealing what effect this gee-golly-wilikers tech will give us is:
which tells you nothing about what it will do for battery life. By the time it gets integrated into the overall phone power budget it could end up adding 0.5% to battery life.
So it's further proof that cellphones are a mature market and have been for some time. They're really out of meaningful new features they can add.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:24PM
Powering the display is a big chunk of a smart phone's power usage.
This should definitely help add to battery life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:30PM
I was thinking that too. The power savings for lowering the screen refresh will be offset by the power hungry chip you need to add that figures out whether the content is static and that it can drop the refresh rate. :)