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AMOLED and battery saver mode

Michael

I don't own an AMOLED device so can someone please answer me following question:

Do devices like the Epix2 allow to disable the native battery saver screen?

I assume they don't allow this to prevent burn ins, but to answer questions from my users with absolute sureness, I want to ask here as well.

To make it more clear:

With battery saver mode I mean the mode where the watch switches to a minimal watchface to save battery and to prevent burn ins...

  • in the energy mode, the user can put the "warning battery almost empty" to off

  • in reply to peterdedecker

    but he can't disable the minimal watchface that appears after some time, can he? that's what I actually meant with "battery saver mode"

  • in reply to Michael

    You can apply a trick in low power mode to overlay it with an alternating checkerboard so that the contents appear dimmed

    Personally I'm not a fan of applying this approach 

  • in reply to peterdedecker

    You can also display a minimal amount of data and move it around.  On watch faces where I have the checkerboard, I also have this option for people that don't want a dimmer time.

  • in reply to peterdedecker
    peterdedecker said:
    Personally I'm not a fan of applying this approach 

    Why not? Out of curiosity.

  • in reply to nonparametric

    One of the reason I include dim or move option, is that on the venu sq, dim (the checker board) is really dim.  And using the checkerboard may result in some pixels being 100% off on some devices.

    I think I heard about this from  a while back, but never looked into it myself.

  • in reply to nonparametric

    The checkerboard is a programming trick, in reality closeby pixels are not completely turned off which makes the risk on burn in a real possibility

  • in reply to peterdedecker

    I may not have been clear enough:

    My WFs do include a battery saver layout so that's not the question. I'm NOT talking about the layout my WF draws every minute.

    I wonder if AMOLED device do draw their own native screen saver layout if the battery saver mode is enabled and if those devices are able to disable the battery saver mode completely like e.g. MIPS devices.

    Here's an example from my F6X:

    Case 1: Battery saver mode is enabled

    Under Power Management I set energy saver mode to on

    What happens is that the watch will NEVER draw my custom WF but will always draw the minimal layout - the one the system provides which has nothing to do with my WF!

    Case 2: Battery saver mode is disabled

    Under Power Management I set energy saver mode to off

    My WF does decide what will be drawn - ALWAYS! I can draw a minimal layout and use technics like moving the layout or checkboards if the watch is only updated once a minute.

    Question:

    The question that comes to my mind is if the AMOLED devices do support case 2 the same way like my F6X, meaning the system integrated battery saver layout can be disabled completely and custom WFs do take over completely - just like on a MIPS display. Because a Epix2 user tells me he can't disable the battery saver mode so I wonder if he see's the one integrated in my WF or the one integrated in the system (the one I see e.g. in case 1 all the time)... The user also told me that all he can find is a setting that allows him to set up after which time the screen saver shows up but this setting only offers values like 4s, 8s and not never... As I said, on MIPS displays you can disable the screen saver layout completely if desired and the WF will take over 100% of drawing the screen and I wonder if this is possible on AMOLED displays as well...

  • in reply to Michael

    this works the same on epix2.

    Michael said:
    Because a Epix2 user tells me he can't disable the battery saver mode s

    I told you in my first reply how to disable it.

  • in reply to Michael

    I just bought Epix 2, so I can finally do a real testing on it Slight smile. 

    Just to clarify - on AMOLED screens the low power mode is called AOD (always on display), not screen saver. User can disable AOD in settings, and your app won't be able to draw anything at all. However, if you do use it, you have some screen burn-in restrictions explained here: https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/connect-iq-faq/how-do-i-make-a-watch-face-for-amoled-products/

    If your app exeeds those restrictions, AOD mode is turned off for your watch face app. There is no way around it for CIQ apps (as far as I know). Stock watch faces seem to be able to ignore "No pixel can be on longer than 3 mins" rule. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't see any checker pattern on them Rolling eyes.

    Epix 2 also has special settings for DND and Sleep (bed time) modes. User can choose in settings:

    • Disable AOD
    • Battery saving mode (which by default uses different watch face) 
    • Sleep watch face (will switch to system "sleep" watch face during sleep time)

    So, you can ask your user to look into System > Sleep, and System > DND settings. You can also tune the battery saving mode to not switch to a system watch face.