Ahead of this month's reveal of the Galaxy S7 and the S7 Edge, Samsung has trademarked the phrase 'Always on Display.' It's a curious approach because the ability to have information constantly showing on an AMOLED screen has been harnessed by many manufacturers in the past. Motorola smartphones had the Moto Display, Google has provided its Ambient Display on many Nexus devices and LG's Glance View all use the same basic principle to show information with minimal impact on battery life.
Not ambient, but expect more like this. Last year's Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge (image: Ewan Spence)
Unlike an LCD panel which has a full screen backlight behind the pixels (even the black ones) drawing heavily on the battery, an AMOLED screen can illuminate individual pixels. If you have a black screen, there's no actual power being drawn. Trigger a few pixels to put information on the screen and while it still draws power, it draws significantly less power than an LCD screen showing the same information.
Manufacturers can take advantage of this by providing 'idle' screens that are almost all black with a splash of information. That could be as useful as a clock, as informative as your notifications, or as exciting as your next calendar appointment. It turns what could be a wasted experience (a blank screen) into something useful with minimal battery draw.
Samsung's trademarking of the term highlights a likely marketing push around this technology. Although last year's Galaxy S6 shipped with an AMOLED screen, it did not offer an ambient display option. Expect this to be one of the key Galaxy S7 features promoted both at the product reveal (expected on February 21st) and in the marketing push to follow.
The problem with that approach is it may be a new feature to a Samsung smartphone, but it's not a new feature to the market. As noted it is present in devices from LG, Lenovo (nee Motorola) and Google. And fans of Nokia's smartphones will be able to point to the ambient display feature appearing on the Nokia N8 which was released in 2010.
Samsung wants to be more than 'another Android manufacturer' churning out handsets by the shipping crate. It wants to be seen as the alternative to iPhone. It wants to be seen as a leader in smartphone technology, innovation, and design. It wants to pack in new features, new ways of working, and unique interactions.
For the Galaxy faithful, the Always On Display will do just that. For everyone else, Samsung has finally caught up with the rest of the market and is expecting to get a cookie for doing what everyone else managed years ago.
(Now read how Samsung is starting another browser war with Google).
