Dark Mode was one of the most requested and anticipated features of iOS and, with the launch of iOS 13, we finally saw it come to the iPhone and the iPad. It brought the feature to all of Apple’s own apps and it covered everything at the system level. Since the launch of iOS 13, developers have been rolling out Dark Mode on their own apps as well, thanks to their hard work and Apple’s launch of SwiftUI which automatically gives apps built with the language the feature.
One of the things that Dark Mode could potentially benefit is battery life. If you don’t have to push white or colored pixels and can leave them inactive, you use less battery. It makes sense in theory, but we haven’t seen much in the realm of testing on the subject – until now. PhoneBuff has released a new video in which it puts two iPhone XS models head to head: one with Dark Mode enabled, and one without.
They ran the tests using robotic arms that could tap through a number of scenarios in exact synchronization with the other robot in order to calculate the battery difference as accurately as possible. The test put each phone through a number of common use cases: talking with people on iMessage, watching YouTube videos, and getting directions with Google Maps.
The results of the test were promising. The iPhone XS that did not have Dark Mode enabled ran out of battery, while the one that did still had 30% battery life remaining. Of course, this was a controlled test using a specific set of apps and the iPhone used featured Apple’s OLED display, something that can only be found on the iPhone X, XS, and 11 Pro. The overall benefit has yet to be tested on the iPhone 11 which features an LCD display. Regardless, it does show that enabling Dark Mode is a perfectly legitimate way to help extend the battery life for your iPhone.