Mike Adams Live: The LG G5 has an always-on display that won't hit your battery too hard

Sunday, February 21, 2016

The LG G5 has an always-on display that won't hit your battery too hard

The G5 is LG's second smartphone with an always-on display, but this time it's not secondary.

Like the LG V10, the LG G5 features an always-on display. Unlike the V10, the G5's always-on display is the main display. Put the phone to sleep and a second later a large digital clock and your notifications appear in the upper third of the screen.

LG's taken some lessons from the V10's secondary screen, adapting the separated backlight waveguide to direct light to the center of the IPS LCD display even when the phone's display is asleep. The always-on display also features its own driver IC memory and power supply, which stops the phone from having to wake the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor to handle the minor task of delivering the time and notifications in black-and-white to the display.

LG claims that the always-on display reduces the need for turning on your phone to check the time and notifications by up to 150 times a day (which seems kind of excessive to us). They also stated that it should use somewhere between 0.3 percent and 0.8 percent of the battery per hour, though that will vary depending on how frequently it needs to refresh the information displayed (i.e. how frequently you get notifications).

And because this is an IPS display, LG's not worried about the burn-in that can occur with the AMLOED displays that are typically used for always-on displays. As such, the clock will be displayed in the same spot — no shifting pixels here.