If your battery is draining very quickly, disable this feature on your smartphone

A new study by DXOMARK measures the impact of the “always on” or “always on” function of our smartphones. As you will see, the latter has a huge impact on the autonomy of our mobile devices.

Always On mode has been around for years on Android smartphones, but its introduction to the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max has given it a new peak. DXOMARK took the opportunity to measure the power consumption of “Always-On”.

Four smartphones on the test stand

iPhone 14 Pro Max, Google Pixel 7 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, and Xiaomi 12S Ultra are all put through their paces. All four phones benefit from the AMOLED screen and the famous “always on” feature, which each manufacturer adapts in its own way. Obviously, the products have been tested under laboratory conditions with the same settings.

The first test of autonomy reveals quite as much The always-on display drains the battery 4 times faster Only if this option is not activated. Thus, we go from about 400 hours of autonomy in standby mode with the screen off to only 100 hours when “always on” is activated.

As you can see above, we note that the smartphones with the best standby time are also the ones with the worst autonomy with the display always on. DXOMARK attributes this to overconfidence on the part of manufacturers offering products with good autonomy, and thus ignores optimization. So the Pixel 7 Pro is the best performer when the feature is enabled, but the worst when it isn’t.

question of optimization

Not all smartphones have the same battery capacity, so the engineers decided to measure the discharge current (expressed in milliamps) with or without the always-on display mode. The results are very different and highlight the brands that provide the best improvement when this feature is activated.

In this little game, Apple and the iPhone 14 Pro Max pulled out of the game with a loss of just 9.3 mAh, slightly less than the Xiaomi 12S Ultra’s 9.8 mAh. The Apple brand phone is also best when the screen is not on at all with a loss of 35.5 mAh, just ahead of the Google Pixel 7 Pro which dropped by 36 mAh over the same period.

The iPhone’s very good results are even more remarkable since it is one of the smartphones with the highest average and maximum brightness, along with the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. Despite Apple’s choice to light up the entire screen and not just some pictograms like its competitors, the brand’s engineers seem to have done a lot of work on optimization.

iOS 17 vs. Android 14: The best new features for your smartphone

As part of the survey, DXOMARK asked users what they thought of this always-on display feature. Results are mixed, with 54% finding this option useful, while 46% did not consider it essential. Feel free to tell us in the comments if you use it or not. And above all, why?

source :

DXOMARK