One of the new features of the iPhone 14 Pro is the Always-On display. New panel technology alongside the A16 Bionic chip allows this screen to refresh just once per second, making it more energy efficient than ever.
That said, some users have complained in recent months that the Always-On display consumes more battery life than it should because it shows a dim background instead of a black screen.
With iOS 16.2, released last month, Apple tweaked how the iPhone 14 Pro’s Always-On display works to provide a black background showing only the time, calendar, and widgets. To test how the iPhone 14 Pro behaves with the Always-On display fully on, with a black background and turned off, the YouTube channel PhoneBuff did a 24-hour comparison test.
The results show that the Always-On display with background has a battery consumption of 0.8% per hour; without it it is only 0.6% per hour. To run the test, the YouTuber put the iPhone 14 Pro in airplane mode with a brightness of 1000 lux, which is roughly what the iPhone uses in an outdoor environment.
Surprisingly, the iPhone 14 Pro with the Always-On display with background consumed 16% of the battery after 24 hours, 14% with a black background and 0% with Always-On off.
While it’s impressive how little battery the iPhone drained when comparing the background display and the dim display, it’s important to note that it’s not a real use case since most of the time people also have a Wi-Fi or LTE connection, incoming notifications. such as continuing to use the smartphone to check notifications, email, listen to music, etc.
Compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the iPhone 14 Pro performed similarly. After 24 hours, both phones finished the test with 84% charge. You can watch PhoneBuff’s full video with all the details below: