Originally Posted by
mschwett
yeah, i'd be surprised if that was meaningfully true. it possibly requires more compute power / cpu cycles to decompress a compressed image with more detailed content. it certainly would take more power (again, tiny amounts) to decompress a higher resolution image. the biggest difference would be downloading the images - it definitely would take more power to download more/higher resolution images... but i'm not sure the difference between similar resolution map style images and aerial photography would be meaningful. i may also be seeing improved battery life because by now most of my rides are within the same 50 mile radius of where i live, and all the maps/images are already downloaded.
i think the screen is the biggest consumer of power, i definitely notice a bit of a difference if i leave it on the RwGPS map the whole time vs the misison control dashboard. an OLED screen uses much less power to display black than it does white...
Try running Google maps in Sat view and in Map view. The Sat uses a lot more power. Even the Topo view uses more power than the Map view. It's not the screen itself. It's the processing to render the image using the power. The more complex the image the more processing power it takes. Seems simple but don't take my word for it. Try it.