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Always On Display may be one of the most interesting features that Samsung introduced with its Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge smartphones last year, but owners of Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 hoping to get the exciting new feature on their devices may have to temper their expectations if a new report from SamMobile is anything to go by. According to the website, the South Korean company is unlikely to update its 2015 flagships with Always On Display on account of their relatively smaller batteries. While the Galaxy S6 ships with a humble 2,550mAh battery, the Galaxy S6 Edge carries a slightly larger 2,600mAh power pack. Although the Galaxy Note 5 does come with a 3,000mAh battery, it will apparently still be insufficient for what is essentially a fairly power-hungry feature.
While Always On Display is available out of the box on both the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, the feature has now also been introduced on some of Samsung’s mid-range smartphones, like the company’s Galaxy A (2017) lineup. When it comes to rolling out Always On Display to its older smartphones, Samsung is yet to comment officially on the matter, but speculations seem to suggest that the Galaxy A (2016) lineup may well get the feature at some stage going forward. It will be interesting to see if Samsung does roll out Always On Display to any of its premium devices from 2015, but with the feature expected to take a massive toll on battery efficiency, it won’t be too surprising if the South Korean company decides against it.
As a refresher, Always On Display is software feature that allows users to check the time, date and some notifications even when the phone is on standby. It requires an AMOLED display, which consumes significantly less power than LCD displays that are common on smartphones from many manufacturers. However, while the display itself doesn’t consumer power when it is black, other components, such as the Display Driver IC (DDI), the Application Processor (AP) and various sensors still consume some amount of power when Always On Display is enabled, even though Samsung continues to optimize, tweak and fine tune the feature to keep battery consumption at a minimum.