Apple has avoided using OLED technology in its terminals for various reasons, but at the same time it has sought to improve the way screens equipped with it work. Recently it happened to Apple posted a patent describing a technology that improves battery life while using a screen designed with this technology. Practically for Apple, the main problem lies in the high energy consumption of the screens when they display the color white and the patented technology now seems to solve this.
The relative power inefficiency in display white spaces using an OLED display may be particularly problematic in certain contexts. For example, certain applications, such as word processing, spreadsheet design and use, database design and use, e-mail, and other business or productivity applications, typically utilize dark or black alphanumeric characters on a white background, such as to simulate writing or printing on a sheet of paper. As a result, these applications may cause the display of large expanses of white background with relatively little area devoted to the non-white alphanumeric characters. Such applications, therefore, may make the use of OLED displays unsuitable or undesirably power intensive for battery powered and/or portable electronic devices, such as handheld devices.
Apple describes a method by which an OLED panel would be positioned in front of a layer with a white background and that transparent OLED panel could change its color to allow the use of the layer and avoid changing the color of the screen to improve battery autonomy. In short, the process explained by Apple allows the development of OLED screens that consume little energy and that can be implemented in future iDevices. The implementation of this kind of screens would significantly improve the battery autonomy of our devices, but everything depends on how the process described by Apple will work or not.
