Lowest power consumption from UC1701 / JLX12864G 128x64 monochrome LCD

Using Arduino Displays
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I bought this display as a replacement for the Nokia 5110 (transflective/monochrome/low-power)

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The datasheet says that it's extremely low power. I hooked it up and was measuring a current of 2.0 to 2.25mA depending on whether it was active or sleeping. This didn't make sense since it was advertised as being super low power. I realized that I had been given the 5V version which includes a 3.3v linear regulator (large 3-pin chip on left side of image). I removed the regulator since I'm running it at 3.3V, but that only reduced the current consumption by a small amount. The PCB I received has a Chinese font serial EPROM in the upper left corner (U1 - missing in the photo). Since I don't intend to use it, I removed it and now the current measures from 0 (sleeping) to 276uA (active). This is nearly half the active current (400uA) of the Nokia 5110 and at a higher resolution. The backlighting is bright and evenly distributed and only draws an additional 4.8mA. If any of you have the same PCB that I bought and were wondering why it was drawing so much current, hopefully this info has helped you.

I released a simple C library to drive the display here (Linux + Arduino):

GitHub Link

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Very lucky to find this post from google, i am using the same LCD module recently and want to reduce the power consumption. But i have less experience in using LCD module only.

I tested your method, current reduced 2.52 mA to 1.3mA.
And then i also removed the regulator, current finally reduced to 0.27mA only

Thanks so much for share your experience and it saved many time for me to find out solution.^^

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if it may interest you, i got the 3.3 volt model and the current consumption is 0.3 mA without backlight.
With backlight and R = 1.5 Kohm total current consumption is 0.8 mA.
Have a good day.