Some "new" icons

[marbalf]

Long story short: I changed all the icons on my phone.

So, some time ago I found myself looking for an alternative for an icon on my phone; I thought I could try to change it, and something I did, but I also ended up getting carried away…

I am attaching here two screenshots of what I came up with. Since there has been some “underground” talk about design changes going on here lately, I thought I could share these here, rather than keep them to myself.

Some caveats: I am attaching screenshots here, because I have not dived into the licence aspect of each and all of them yet and, also, I would not know how to make them available (both technically -Zip file?- and legally -I know the Jolla ones are CC 3.0, but the other ones are a can of worms…).

Even if just on my phone, if someone feels or knows that any of the icons should be edited or even removed, please let me know (and tell me why: I am totally green on these aspects).

Cheers.

[fingus]

Very nice work. Specially on OLED-Displays it will save Battery (less pixels brighten = less power consume).

[wetab73]

It won’t save any power unless the background blur effect is disabled, because it causes that the background is never really black (#000000) and the entire display is powered.

[jameson]

On OLEDs, more light = more power, so a darker display will consume less even if it’s not 100% black.

[turmelus1]

Wouldn’t you have to spend a lot of time in app menu to get any significant power savings? But very nice icons, this is exactly what I have been wanting. Hope you can make them available soon, with good applying instructions for dumb people like me.

[wetab73]

@jameson

On OLEDs, more light = more power, so a darker display will consume less

As you can easily check with e.g. Battery Buddy (which shows power consumption in mA), the difference is hardly (if at all) noticeable.

As I wrote, as long as SFOS uses a blur effect on backgrounds (including the launcher’s and events screen backgrounds), even if a black theme is used it keeps all background’s pixels permanently turned on because the background is actually dark-gray and not black (whereas only #000000 black pixels are switched off on OLEDs). If the blur effect could be disabled, all pixels of a black background would be entirely switched off and only icons’ pixels would remain lit. Only that (switching millions of background’s pixels entirely off, and not just lowering their brightness, which apparently doesn’t reduce power consumption by any noticeable factor) could bring some usable power savings.

How the blur effect makes a black background gray can be checked this way:

• set a black picture as background (or use a black theme like White on Black ambience)
• set display brightness to max (this will make the effect more apparent)
• go to the main (app switcher) screen
• slowly swipe between the main screen and the events screen and observe how the black background turns to gray-ish.
  The same blur effect is present on the launcher (icon grid) screen.

[jameson]

@wetab73

Only that (switching millions of background’s pixels entirely off, and not just lowering their brightness, which apparently doesn’t reduce power consumption by any noticeable factor) could bring some usable power savings.

I don’t know about your tests, but for sure the power consumption of an OLED is roughly proportional to the light it emits, unlike LCDs which only filter out colours from a lamp’s white light.

[wetab73]

@jameson

I don’t know about your tests

So please do your own tests instead of theorizing… Switch the device to Flight mode and close all applications to disable other power consumers, set fixed (not automatic) screen brightness, set a colorful ambience with colorful icons, then a black ambience with as simple icons as the ones above, and simply compare power consumption between them, even just in Battery Buddy (or directly from e.g. /sys/class/power_supply/battery/current_now) . Please report if you notice ANY difference.

P.S. In Patchmanager’s Web catalog there is a patch from @nephros called “Pure Black Backgrounds” which tries to address the above described phenomenon, i.e. make most windows black to save power on OLED displays by disabling the blur. I haven’t tested it yet.

[eson]

Since I thought I recognized those icons, or at least some of them, and at the same time remembered that we had some kind of “icon party” in 2018, I started looking at my hard drives.
And there they were…

They were called “wireframes” and were published by someone under the Creative Commons version 3.0 (CC BY 3.0) license.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember who published them or where, but given the license, I can at least share them here.

https://svenskasprakfiler.se/dl/jolla-icon-set-wf.zip

[marbalf]

@wetab73

P.S. In Patchmanager’s Web catalog there is a patch from @nephros called “Pure Black Backgrounds” which tries to address the above described phenomenon, i.e. make most windows black to save power on OLED displays by disabling the blur. I haven’t tested it yet.

In fact, I have to say that one of the reasons for the restyling was night reading: I dunno 'bout battery performance, but me eyes are happier (and I use Pure Black Backgrounds, too).
Speaking of which, sorta, may I ask either of you if there is a way to have both Fuzzy Time (thank you @nephros!) and your custom-text-on-lockscreen (thank you @wetab73! -and side mini thank you @eson for packaging it) working at the same time?

[marbalf]

Yes!

They were here: https://together.jolla.com/question/33798/collection-jolla-icons/

But the links do not work anymore. In fact I had looked there first.

As for the icons themselves, I think (but as previously stated, if I am wrong please tell me) that most of the same ones are derivatives of Jolla’s (as in, for what concerns me, just stroke paint minus fill in Inkscape).
The other ones depend on the licence provided together with the respective app, and I didn’t check them at the beginning (which would have been a good idea), so now I have to go through each single project by itself again.

[wetab73]

@marbalf

Speaking of which, sorta, may I ask either of you if there is a way to have both Fuzzy Time (thank you @nephros!) and your custom-text-on-lockscreen (thank you @wetab73! -and side mini thank you @eson for packaging it) working at the same time?

I’ve just taken a look at it but I can’t see why those two wouldn’t work at the same time. They don’t even patch the same qml files, so they actually don’t have anything in common. The “Fuzzy Time” patch by @nephros seems to modify /usr/lib/qt5/qml/Sailfish/Lipstick/ClockItem.qml and /usr/share/lipstick-jolla-home-qt5/lockscreen/Clock.qml whereas my “Custom Text On Lockscreen” patch only modifies /usr/share/lipstick-jolla-home-qt5/lockscreen/LockItem.qml…

EDIT: I’ve just successfully activated the “Fuzzy time” patch along with my “Custom Text On Lockscreen” patch already active on my 10 III. No conflicts or problems of any kind… So it must be specific to your setup.

[jameson]

@wetab73

So please do your own tests instead of theorizing

I do not “theorize”. I am an electronics engineer and I know how solid state devices work down to quantum physics. A colleague of mine also worked on OLEDs at their origins 25 years ago. No light from an OLED means no current and therefore no power; little light means little current and therefore little power, being that voltage is almost constant.

[wetab73]

@jameson

I do not “theorize”. I am an electronics engineer and I know how solid state devices work down to quantum physics. No light from an OLED means no current and therefore no power; little light means little current and therefore little power

Congratulations! And yes, I do know how OLED screens work, too. But it doesn’t change the fact that in practice the actual difference on the 10 III is untraceable, and you can easily check this yourself if you only want to.

The reduction of current draw resulting from just lowering brightness of some pixels used by icons (which is usually less than pixels used by the remaining part of the display, i.e. the background) is simply way too small to be of any significance, like maybe 1-2 mA in total, if not less. Completely negligible on a device which consumes 100-500 mA when in use. Only completely switching off some large number of pixels (e.g. all pixels of a fully black background) on most of the UI screens (and not just on the icon grid screen that’s used only to start apps, i.e. like maybe a few seconds per hour) might give current draw reduction that one could notice (and that might have any impact on battery life), but - as I’ve tried to explain - that would require getting rid of the background blur effect that turns black into gray. Otherwise, it is purely cosmetical and ophthalmological, i.e. maybe saving one’s eyes but not any worthwhile power consumption.

Once again, please just test it yourself in real life conditions, where you can observe the actual current draw changes, as just talking about it doesn’t make much sense.

[jameson]

Unless physics has changed, what you are saying is not correct. An OLED pixel draws a power that is with good approximation proportional to its brightness. You will find plenty of charts on the web confirming this.
Maybe you experienced that the current draw of the device changes little. But then, I don’t think you put an ammeter in series with the display. The draw might be due to the CPU or to some other logic, even in the display. But the pixels draw a current that may be well approximated by being linear with brightness.
A quick search on Google brought up this as an example: Ask HN: Do OLED displays only save energy with absolute black? | Hacker News

[wetab73]

@jameson

Unless physics has changed, what you are saying is not correct.

So please test it on the actual 10 II or 10 III and come back with actual mA figures proving it… Until then, any future discussion is pointless.

P.S. And if the Xperia XA2 Ultra, with its much older and considerably less power-efficient 14 nanometer SoC and huge IPS display draws around 3 times less current (40-50 mA vs. 120+ mA) than the 10 III with its allegedly much more power-efficient 8 nm CPU and modern OLED display then clearly not only physics and theories account for the ACTUAL power consumption but apparently also many other things, including, but not limited to, e.g. sub-optimal or buggy hardware drivers somewhere between Sony’s stock Android, AOSP binaries and SFOS layers.

[nephros]

@wetab73

P.S. In Patchmanager’s Web catalog there is a patch from @nephros called “Pure Black Backgrounds” which tries to address the above described phenomenon, i.e. make most windows black to save power on OLED displays by disabling the blur. I haven’t tested it yet.

IIRC LipstickSilica actually does turn off the blur effect whenever the background is a solid color. Which is what the patch does, it forces all application backgrounds to black per default.

Launcher and Home Screen are not affected.

[wetab73]

@nephros

Launcher and Home Screen are not affected.

That would be really good, but those are still among the least used screens in terms of usage time. I mean, one goes to the launcher screen only to tap some icon in order to launch an app, and then spends most of the time using that app. Similarly, the home screen is mostly used to just switch between running apps, which also takes just seconds. So, what really matters and can bring any usable power draw reduction is black background in applications (where the user spends most of screen time) that would allow to switch off those pixels for some considerably long periods of time, and not for single seconds like on the launcher or home screen. And that’s what I’ve been trying to explain to @jameson

So kudos for your great patch bringing real black backgrounds to applications, i.e. permitting them to be switched off on an OLED display.

P.S. One screen that certainly has the blur effect is the Events screen. Does your patch remove it?

[nephros]

@wetab73

P.S. One screen that certainly has the blur effect is the Events screen. Does your patch remove it?

Nope. Despite several attempts to get behind the magic that goes on with those effects, I have not been able to find where it’s defined, and how to manipulate or patch it.

You can complete disable the effect itself, but that makes most of the UI unreadable unless you also use a monochrome-ish background wallpaper.

[wetab73]

@nephros

Nope. Despite several attempts to get behind the magic that goes on with those effects, I have not been able to find where it’s defined

I’ll hunt for it in some spare time, too.