One of the battery-slurping features of the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max is the 120Hz ProMotion display. This dynamically adjusts the refresh rate of the screen between 1Hz (for the always-on display when the phone is sleeping) to 120Hz for things like scrolling content and gameplay.
But if you’re trying to maximize battery life, is it worth turning off the feature? New tests suggest not …
Macworld’s Jason Cross got curious, and did some testing.
You can use a setting in Accessibility to limit refresh rate to 60Hz, which will prevent the display from ramping up to those battery-draining high refresh rates. Of course, it also means you don’t get the smooth scrolling and animations of ProMotion, so you’re giving up one of the key features for which you buy a “Pro” iPhone. Perhaps if the battery life is much better, it will be worth it?
He started with Geekbench 4 battery tests, which showed about a 5% improvement to battery life. A less scientific but more real-life test revealed similarly minor differences. As he concludes, that’s something, but not enough to give up the smoothness of ProMotion.
He said the one time you do see a big difference is when playing games which support 120fps.
Shooters Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG Mobile support high refresh rates, as do games like Brawl Stars, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Genshin Impact, Alto’s Odyssey, and more. In most of these titles you have to open the in-game options to select a special 120fps or high frame rate mode.
It’s impossible to do any scientific testing here, as there are simply too many variables, but he said that as a rough guide, he noticed that with ProMotion switched off, then battery usage was roughly halved. That’s because the high frame rate hammers battery life through more intensive GPU usage as well as the faster frame-rate.
That’s obviously a huge gain, and something you might consider if you do a lot of mobile gaming away from power, but generally speaking you don’t need to switch off ProMotion – as 120fps is usually something you need to actively enable in each game.
So unless 5% is going to make the difference between your battery lasting all day or not, leave ProMotion enabled. If you’re a gamer and want to save battery, just leave high frame rate off when playing without a power socket close to hand.
Images: Apple and Pawel Czerwinski/Unsplash
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