Controlling Display

Abstract

An energy-conserving mobile station and a means for reducing the energy consumption of a mobile station and to reduce burn-in on the display element, where a part of the liquid crystal display element (LCD) of a mobile station is switched off, when the whole display element is not needed and a limited amount of information is displayed on the switched-on part of the display element (A1). An arrangement according to the present invention can be implemented by e.g. driving the control circuit (DC) of the liquid crystal display that supports the partition of the display element to switch of certain rows of the display element in energy conservation mode and switching them on to be used, when information is desired to be displayed on all of the display element.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The present invention concerns displays of electronic devices, specifically controlling displays of electronic devices BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] Displays have been incorporated to electronic devices to improve the usability of the devices. For example, presently ordinary mobile stations incorporate a display device, on which the user can monitor the success of keying in a telephone number and by using which he / she can edit the telephone number being keyed in. In tune with the evolution of mobile stations they have been used for communicating by short messages and in future mobile station also by transferring moving images. For these uses it would be preferable for the display of a mobile station to be large so that it would be easy to recognise textual information and / or images. The size of new mobile stations has been perpetually decreasing to improve portability while the evolution of their battery technology and energy maintenance has enable...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is about a method and device that saves energy by controlling the display of an electronic device. The method involves using new display elements that can be switched off to decrease energy usage. The display element is divided into two parts, and only the part that needs to be active is switched on to show information. The method allows for flexibility in how the display is used, and the device can switch between a full-screen mode and a partial screen mode to conserve energy. The technical effect of this invention is to reduce energy consumption of electronic devices and improve their efficiency.

Problems solved by technology

With the future mobile station models the need for large amounts of processing required by manipulation of moving images along with an increase in display size and furthermore the transition from passive matrix displays to colour active matrix displays of better quality will significantly increase the power consumption of mobile stations and decrease their standby-time.

The power consumption of the liquid crystal displays now used in mobile stations, as well as that of emission displays being designed, increases relatively to their size.

Thus a larger display needed to provide a larger picture area unavoidably consumes more energy and shortens the stand-by time of the mobile station.

On the other hand, in this case it is impossible to show the user useful information, like strength of field or battery status, by using the display.

However, this solution is space-consuming and more expensive and slower to assemble than a single-display solution due to installation of separate components.

One other problem caused by displaying the status information is the marks left on the display by years of displaying same data on same place, which marks can interfere with reading the text on the display.

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