alt Hacker NewsSorry, might be obvious to some, but is that rate applied to the whole screen or can certain parts be limited to 1Hz whilst others are at a higher rate?
The ability to vary it seems like it would be valuable as there are significant portions of a screen that remain fairly static for longer periods but equally there are sections that would need to change more often and would thus mess with the ability to stick to a low rate if it's a whole screen all-or-nothing scenario.
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With current LCD controllers but new drivers/firmware you could selectively refresh horizontal stripes of the screen at different rates if you wanted to.
I don't think you could divide vertically though.
Don't think anyone has done this yet. You could be the first.
Today it's mostly "all-or-nothing" at the panel level, but under the hood there's already a lot of cleverness trying to approximate the behavior you're describing
From what I understand, the laptop will reduce the refresh rate (of the entire display) to as low as 1Hz if what is being displayed effectively “allows” it.
For example:
- reading an article with intermittent scrolling
- typing with periodic breaks