Amoled screen AOD flickering

Maybe it is, still the flickering looks kind of crappy. You can clearly see pixels moving constantly quite fast on the areas where there is the checkerboard pattern.

Maybe it's updating more frequently (not only once per second), and you are switching between the patterns in each call to onUpdate?

With a watch face in low power mode, onUpdate should only be called once a minute, and on AMOLED devices, onPartialUpdate shouldn't even be available.

If someone has one of the impacted watches, I'd try a sideload with logging to see what is happening with these two calls.

The flickering is some kind of internal garmin ”feature” it’s so quick and something we could not do im CIQ. 
But I also noticed that especially Epix 2 Pro 47mm sometimes updates constantly the heartrate in lowpower mode (which should not be possible, and tested with the newest method to get the stress average (built im system) and that one also updates in lowpower, so something is clearly happening that should not be possible)

My guess is that because every other line of pixels is OFF, there is a pulsating power demand that affects the hardware (perhaps the power circuitry) and then causes the flicker.

I cannot find any official Garmin documentation that says that the 3 minute rule does not apply on System 7. This page still says all the old original rules   https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/connect-iq-faq/how-do-i-make-a-watch-face-for-amoled-products/#howdoimakeawatchfaceforamoledproducts

The System 7 announcement only says that we can turn on more than 10% of pixels if we don't exceed 10% luminance. It doesn't say that the 3 minute rule doesn't apply any more.

https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/b/news-announcements/posts/welcome-to-system-7

True, but I have tested already a month with my epix 2 pro, it stays on if I cut out the date and time areas from checkerboard. I have quite a lot on the screen in AOD mode and it stays on perfectly. System 7 made this possible. Before it shut down the AOD.

Why cut out the date from the checkerboard?  Most of my watchfaces are analog, so I would have to cut out most of the screen to surround the hands with a box, but that would look really strange.  I'm wondering if the number of pixels and luminance is reduced enough, then we shouldn't need a checkerboard at all.  Would you agree?

It makes sense in digital watches. The time and date becomes clearly more bright and visible without the checkerboard pattern.