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Apple introduced variable refresh rate back in 2015. That’s over a decade ago, I’m sure there’s some new tech involved here, but quite the omission.
Why does refresh rate have such a large impact on power consumption? I understand that the control electronics are 60x more active at 60 Hz than 1 Hz, but shouldn't the light emission itself be the dominant source of power consumption by far?
Haven't phones, watches and tablets been using low refresh rates to enable battery improvements for a while? The Apple Watch Series 5 (2019) has a refresh rate down to 1Hz. M4 iPad Pro lacks always-on display despite OLED panel with variable refresh rate (2024): https://9to5mac.com/2024/05/09/m4-ipad-pro-always-on-display...
Phones and watches do that with LTPO OLED which I don't believe exists at higher screen sizes although I'm not sure why. This is supposed to be special because it isn't OLED so should be able to get brighter and not have to worry about burn in.
So it makes sense you could cut the refresh time down to a second to save power...
Although one wonders if it's worth it when the backlight uses far more power than the control electronics...
So if a pixel is not refreshed, it doesn't use any power?
I'm not even sure how they got their 48% figure. Sounds like a whole-system measurement, maybe that's the trick.
Sorry, might be obvious to some, but is that rate applied to the whole screen or can certain parts be limited to 1Hz whilst others are at a higher rate? The ability to vary it seems like it would be valuable as there are significant portions of a screen that remain fairly static for longer periods but equally there are sections that would need to change more often and would thus mess with the ability to stick to a lo…
I don't think you could divide vertically though.
Don't think anyone has done this yet. You could be the first.
> That will help save enormous amounts of power: up to 48 percent on a single charge, Why does refresh rate have such a large impact on power consumption? I understand that the control electronics are 60x more active at 60 Hz than 1 Hz, but shouldn't the light emission itself be the dominant source of power consumption by far?
Anyone who has accidentally snapped the controller off a working LCD can tell you that the pixel capacitance keeps the colours approximately correct for about 10 seconds before it all becomes a murky shadowy mess... So it makes sense you could cut the refresh time down to a second to save power... Although one wonders if it's worth it when the backlight uses far more power than the control electronics...
> That will help save enormous amounts of power: up to 48 percent on a single charge, Why does refresh rate have such a large impact on power consumption? I understand that the control electronics are 60x more active at 60 Hz than 1 Hz, but shouldn't the light emission itself be the dominant source of power consumption by far?
Apple introduced variable refresh rate back in 2015. That’s over a decade ago, I’m sure there’s some new tech involved here, but quite the omission.
What's new here is the 1 Hz minimum.