Turning off always-on screen ruins iPhone 14 Pro | digital trends

What’s so good about the iPhone always-on screen? The main thing is that it is absolute Splendid. Always-on screens are nothing new. If you’ve used just about every Android phone in the last few years, there’s an option to show the time, date, notification icons, battery percentage, and sometimes, if you’re very lucky, even a small image on the lock screen. But the screen is always black, and while they’re informative, Android always-on screens just feel functional and nothing more.

iPhone’s always-on screen is a stunning, full-color continuation of your home screen. The designers took what they learned from the Apple Watch’s always-on screen and applied it directly to the iPhone’s much larger screen. It’s now part of the operating system and the flow between it, the home screen, notifications, shortcuts and widgets is seamless.

If you choose one of Apple’s themed wallpapers (I’m obsessed with the astronomy themes), the attention to detail is amazing. The little green dot showing your location on the globe is just such a cool touch. If you want to use other wallpapers, that’s fine, and if you want the screen to be always on, you can add widgets too. However, in my opinion, it’s best if it stays almost completely stock with no widgets – just a gorgeous wallpaper to see all the time.

Practical and beautiful at the same time

The always-on screen of the iPhone 14 Pro is also excellent from a practical point of view. The iPhone now technically has three main interactive screens. The first is the always-on locked screen, with its large, obvious notifications along with the time and date. Second, if you unlock the phone with Face ID but don’t swipe, you can read and act on notifications. Then the third and final stage is to swipe up and fully unlock the phone. The wallpaper, icons, fonts, and brightness shift and change at all times to make your phone appear like a living thing.

I put the always-on screen on a feature wish list for the iPhone 14 and couldn’t be happier with the feature now that it’s here. I now have the new iPhone 14 Plus alongside my iPhone 14 Pro, and the Plus’s drab black screen makes the phone look old and boring. The 14 Pro looks inviting, bright, exciting and downright cool with its always-on screen. If you turn it off, you’re missing out on a beautifully designed software feature that actually improves everyday use.

What about the battery?

Early on, the iPhone 14 Pro got bad press about its battery life, and some people attribute that to the arrival of the vibrant always-on screen. It’s a fair point as it absolutely drains battery power when it’s on. But is it so overwhelming that your new iPhone stops working for a day? I’ve been using the iPhone 14 Pro since it was launched and it’s received several small software updates since then – each has incrementally improved efficiency to the point of largely assuaging my initial concerns about the very short battery life.

With around three to four hours of activity per day, from around 7:30 a.m. to midnight, the iPhone 14 Pro now ends the day with around 20% remaining power. According to the iOS 16 battery page, the astronomy wallpaper I use uses about 3% of the battery, or drains about 5% on days when I haven’t used the phone that much. The way I see it: things would be pretty desperate if the battery level only got to 5%, and at this point I probably wouldn’t worry about the few percent I would have regained if the always-on screen was the whole day away.

Battery life isn’t the iPhone 14 Pro’s best feature, but it’s improving as the phone continues to be optimized through software updates. However, judging by the battery stats after 10+ days, the always-on screen isn’t the main source of power drain I’ve seen. yes you save some Power by turning it off, but nothing life changing in my experience. Instead of worrying about a few percent, why not enjoy the always-on screen?

Leave it on – or don’t buy the phone