Find out how to view the real refresh rate for apps and games on Android. The arrival of 120 Hz displays definitely has a visual impact, but it also has an impact on battery life. The best thing to do, for each, is to understand how your phone uses 120 Hz, especially in the case of smartphones with variable refresh rates. There’s a setting to see that.
Is 120 Hz useful or not? Our line of thought on 120 Hz has long been known to those who read us: 120 Hz is one of those features that bring no real benefit to smartphone users, except in very rare cases, but only visual gratification. With one consequence: battery consumption increases, because the rendering frequency of the GPU also increases.
Many users, therefore, find themselves having to choose between keeping the 120 Hz or giving up that much-hyped feature for more autonomy. Or, an alternative recently offered, whether to bet on the variable refresh rate, present in many tips of the range, to let the phone decide to depend on the situation when to go to 60 Hz, when to 120 Hz, and when to set a middle ground.
The best thing is to figure out in total autonomy how much you really need a 120 Hz screen and you can do it: on Android you can have displayed on the screen the refresh rate of the display in every situation, using an option within the menu dedicated to developers.
Nothing complex, nothing that invalidates the warranty: just go to the phone’s settings, look in the “info” or “software” section for the build or version number and click 8 times until the phone says “You have become a developer”.
Within the developer menu you’ll find many useful functions for those who need to test apps on a smartphone, and among them is also “Show current display refresh rate” which will overlay, when the screen is active, the refresh rate of the screen based on different conditions. The “Hz” will thus appear on the screen.
Leaving the setting active for a whole day a user will realize if the refresh rate is adequate to what he’s really doing: in many cases, we’ve tested it on several phones, the screen will run at 120 Hz even when it’s fixed on a web page, consuming more power than it should. You’ll also realize how there are plenty of apps and games that don’t use 120 Hz at all, and they’re maybe the ones that would need it. Youtube, for example, forces 60 Hz.
The best thing is to try it for yourself: every phone behaves differently, especially those with variable refresh rates, and every person also has a different perception of refresh rate. Some perceive a clear improvement during scrolling, and some instead can not notice the difference for physiological reasons: all eyes are not equal.
To return to the initial condition, just go back to the developer menu and disable the option.