Note 7 Power Saving Mode scales down display resolution and performance

QHD resolution displays are wonderful to stare into, but these technological advances have come at the expense of battery life. Not only do more pixels require extra power, but there’s a significant increase in GPU processing required to render and push all those pixels to the display. Being the smart engineers that they are, Samsung has implemented an interesting new power saving feature into its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone that can save battery life by altering the display’s resolution.

The Note 7’s Power Saving Mode boasts that it can squeeze an extra 35 hours of extra usage out of the phone at its best, which is no small feat. To accomplish this, there are three three tiers of saving – Off, Mid, and Max. Mid sees the display resolution drop from QHD to 1080p, while also dialling back processor performance and limiting the maximum brightness of the display to 90 percent. Max takes this one step further, cutting the resolution in half to just 720p, forcing CPU speed to a minimum, disabling animations, and also shutting off all network usage.

The latter option might sound a little extreme to some, so Samsung has made many of these options configurable, allowing users to create their own presets from within the app. Users may want to re-enable network usage on the Max preset, or increase the display output to 1080p for a better looking presentation. Of course, this will reduce the available battery time, but even enabling just a couple of settings will still offer a saving over running the phone at full pelt.

To some, it might seem a little absurd to cut down the Note 7’s top-notch display and performance after paying through the nose for the privilege of owning said features. However, heavy users and those on the go will probably find the option to squeeze out a few extra hours of battery life when they need it very helpful indeed.

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