Samsung has been working on a new variable refresh rate (VRR) technology surrounding the displays used within mobile devices that promises to noticeably increase battery performance, allowing smartphones (and likely tablets) to last a little longer than they do now. Something the industry needs as devices continue to grow more powerful each year.
We’ll take any percentage gain we can get within our mobile devices, and Samsung says this will improve battery performance by up to 22%. This is a fantastic improvement and the new technology is making its debut this month with the new Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G flagship smartphone (available for Pre-order from Amazon, B&H) that is launching this month (Aug 28th).
It uses Samsung’s low-power OLED adaptive frequency technology to consume the least possible amount of power for each type of application by adjusting the screens refresh rate as needed. Not every app needs to display at 120Hz, so it can adjust this down to as far as 10Hz for still images or text. A significant change vs displaying everything at 60-120Hz, even when it isn’t needed.
This technology has already been making its way into gaming monitors and TVs as of recent, which has improved system and TV performance all the same, allowing resources to be spread to where they are better needed. Now, this can include battery life in our mobile devices.
You can expect to see this become a norm for most of Samsung’s mobile devices in the future, and eventually, other manufacturers as they catch up.
Hopefully, this will mean we will spend less time dialing back the resolution of our phones to save battery life. Especially since these fancy screens are a large part of the reason we buy into these devices.
