It’s no secret that dimming the display on your smartphone, laptop, or tablet is going to prolong the battery life. But do you know just how much battery life you can squeeze out of an iPhone by dropping the brightness?
As an example, Wired.com used an iPhone as the subject smartphone to mathematically prove how much battery life you can save. From this, an iPhone 4 should last about 6.5 hours of continuous use on the lowest brightness setting and about 3.5 hours on the highest brightness setting. Adjusting the brightness at about half would give a fairly reasonable usage time of around 5 hours. (Note: this is with wifi and 3G off) So, really your phone wouldn’t even last that long. I think it is safe to say that you will still get more battery time from your phone at half brightness than at full.
How much of a difference in battery life you see also depends on your usage. If you’re a power user, lowering the brightness setting can get you a good two hours of extra battery life, but if you don’t use your phone that much you won’t really see a big difference. An even easier solution is to use darker wallpapers and themes. While we’ve known for a while that lowering the brightness on your devices extends the battery life, it’s nice to know just how much it can save you over time.
