Well, friends from Rede Globo, here I am again.
My question for today is this: does using the iPhone with VoiceOver enabled affect battery life more than using it without the reader? To recap: Two people using the same iPhones in exactly the same conditions, considering that one is blind and the other is not, will the battery consumption be similar or greater for the blind person? I imagine that interpreting the content on the screen and converting this content all the time to voice output must be costly for the battery, but I still think it would be nice if we had a consumption similar to that of sighted people.
That's all for now, I look forward to hearing your opinion. Thank you very much and a big hug!
Comments
I think not
I think we get better battery usage, especially if you have screen curtain turned on. I certainly notice a difference when screen curtain isn't turned on.
There might be a very slight energy drain.
After all, it's using an app vs not using one.
Interesting question
@Brad I mean yeah one is using voiceover while the other one isn't, which, might be a slite increase draining of battery on voiceover's side but, doesn't that get balanced out again when you take into account voiceover is using screen curtain? That would put them on an even field I think.
But yeah, I'd honestly like to see if this experiment could be done just to see the results, the findings would be interesting to see for sure.
screen curtain?
Some said that it does not make any different regarding saving power. Never used it so do not know. Anyone who has 2 phones can test it. Luck.
Probably
If I had to guess, I'd say yes. There's more power used simply because the screen reader is yet another program that constantly runs in the background. I don't think screen curtain saves power. As far as I can tell, the screen is still on, it just puts a blank window over it to hide what you're doing. The best way to save power in that case is to either totally disable the screen, or set the brightness as low as it can go.
Screen type
Screen curtain, or lowering the brightness, would save power with OLED displays, but not LCD displays. If the LCD display is on, its power consumption is constant.
The OP seems more concerned with equivalent battery usage between sighted and blind users, but I'm unsure if there's a reason for this concern, or the OP is just curious or making conversation.
The answer seems obvious. Blind and sighted users have different interfaces. Even when performing the same tasks, there will be differences in battery usage..
If a tree fell on a blind person in the forest...
I can't figure how I have a choice, or what I could do about it.I know there's Braille displays, but the same question could come up for that device.
I think using the phone…
I think using the phone constantly in 0% brightness would even the power consumption, or even turn it in favour of Voiceover.
Interesting question
in my opinion, voice over could have a certain lead here, but it depends on what you’re doing. If you’re browsing Facebook and TikTok all day, regardless if you’re using voice over, or not, you’ll see, definitely a decreased in battery life. But if you have, like if you just listen to music with the screen locked then like you should see a less noticeable battery drain, especially if using voice over. It also depends on what settings you have set, How old are you? Batteries, whether you have screen curtain on what your display brightness is etc.