Patent ID: 8334857

Claim:
A method for dynamically controlling a display refresh rate, comprising: driving a display device at a first refresh rate at a time t; deriving a measured content rate based on a number of first content frames with changes in content out of a plurality of content frames that are generated over a period of time between the time t and a time t 1 for the display device, wherein deriving the measured content rate comprises: merging multiple image surfaces into an intermediate display frame and incrementing a first frame counter; comparing a value associated with the intermediate display frame to a value associated with a previous intermediate display frame to determine if there is a change in frame content; and incrementing a second frame counter if there is a change in frame content; driving the display device at a second refresh rate when the number of first content frames during the period of time between the time t and the time t 1 meets a first condition associated with a first threshold reference; deriving another measured content rate based on the number of first content frames with changes in content out of a plurality of content frames that are generated over a period of time between the time t and a time t 2 for the display device; driving the display device at a third refresh rate when the number of first content frames during the period of time between the time t and the time t 2 meets a second condition associated with a second threshold reference; and increasing the first refresh rate to the second refresh rate before deriving the measured content rate, wherein a maximum content rate of the content frames is limited by the first refresh rate and the second condition includes the second threshold reference configured to be higher than the first refresh rate.