Garmin MIP / AMOLED Palette

Oh thanks!! Is that the only Garmin device with an LCD? Love the display. They set the default to no backlight at least initially, which rendered the display black as if it was turned off LOL. Requires full time backlight to see anything. i wonder if the AMOLED colors are as vibrant and true to what most monitors display for the same HEX codes?

DaveBrillhart said:

Is that the only Garmin device with an LCD?

All Edge devices have LCD.

Edge 1030 and 1040 series have a special kind LCD - transflective LCD: this means, there is an extra reflective layer under the cristall layer, which enables the use of the device without backlight in sunlight. Therefore Edge 1030 and 40 have good colors and visibility in bright light. But disadvantage: dull colors in dark sourrounding when backlight needed.

Edge 1050 has a „normal“ LCD, but very bright backlight is possible. That makes this device better than predecessors.

Amoled colors are vibrant and true (most mobile phones have it), but not as bright as Edge 1050.

I think that it even depends on the monitor you're using with your computer. OK, probably nowadays most decent monitors would have a fairly accurate color displayed, but it's not hard to see that almost any 2 monitors, phones, tablets that are not the exact same "part number" will have different colors.

Regarding the RGB values: as long as you display the exact RGB values of the palette a device has, (unless there's a bug in the simulator.json) the screenshot of the simulator and the real device will look the same, when you look at the same monitor. And yes, this would even be true the other way around: if you create a CIQ app that displays a png image on the real device, and you send it the screenshot that was taken in the simulator, then it would look the same (faint) colors on the MIP display, as the same screen that you took the picture of.

But all the above only applies when your image only uses colors from the palette the device has! If you's try to display an RGB color that is not in the palette of a MIP device, then it'll 1st be "rounded" to the nearest color in the palette, and then you'll see whatever you see on the real device (and if you took a screenshot and look at it on your desktop computer, then it would look "better" than on the MIP display, but it wouldn't look the same as the original picture that you tried to display, because some of the colors were "rounded" to the palette colors.

Anyway, I also learned this the hard way, when I tried to pick colors for the Wordle Plus, which on a MIP display look totally different than on the Mac I use the simulator. And then I didn't talk yet about the 8 color fr55 :) which interestingly is the most popular device (23%) amongst the users. Apparently it "pays off" to support devices that are hard to support, because there are less competing apps.

DaveBrillhart said:

HOWEVER, while FR955's device snapshot looks the same as the simulator, it doesn't look the same to the human eye.

???

Each color is a different color. 

The computer sends these numbers to the screen hardware, which displays them anyway it likes.

The screen shot is recording the color numbers being produced by the computer.

It has nothing to do with the screen hardware.

The simulator doesn’t simulate the screen hardware.

So, the screen shot looking exactly the same as the simulator (on the same display hardware) is completely expected.

dpawlyk said:

So, the screen shot looking exactly the same as the simulator (on the same display hardware) is completely expected.

I think he knows that. He followed up by basically saying that a given colour looks very different on a MIP screen compared to standard computer / phone / tablet screens (e.g. traditional LCD (TN/VA/IPA) or AMOLED), which is something we all agree with.

It is kind of a strange thing to say.

Ofc something would be very wrong if a screenshot from a real device looked different from a simulator screenshot for the same device, *unless* the sim had a feature to adjust the colours or size of the output to make it look "realistic" (which it does not).

DaveBrillhart said:

I took a photo of the field's output and adjusted the photo so that this photo looks the same as it does in real life.

Why does your "realistic photo" look like you ran the original screenshot run through an AI filter, complete fake scratches, like it's supposed to be a faded, old-timey photograph? Also, each of the colour blocks in the "realistic photo" does not show a solid, uniform colour - it seems they are faded or have gradients, contrary to reality.

You could've at least tried to do the adjustment yourself instead of asking chatgpt to do it for you.

Or you could've simply displayed all of those colours on your real FR955 and taken a picture of that (e.g. with your phone). Not sure why you didn't tbh. That seems like it would be the simplest way to show us what those colours really look like on a MIP device.

EDIT: sorry, as others pointed out, it's a real picture. I'm a dumbass haaha

DaveBrillhart said:

Disclaimer - I understand that different MIP devices render colors differently, so my FR955's display might not look the same as your Instinct or D2 or Venu.

Not that it matters but:

- Instinct has a black and white display or AMOLED, depending on the model/generation. I don't think there's any Instinct with 16 or 64 colour MIP displays

- Venu is LCD or AMOLED, depending on model/generation

- D2 has MIP and AMOLED variants

Speaking of trying to adjust the colours of a simulated MIP device screenshot so they look (somewhat) as they would on a real device, others have tried to do this in the past.

There's a Windows tool linked in some old forum discussions, but unfortunately it hasn't been updated since 2020. It relies on being able to build the project on its own, so I'm not sure it will work with modern Connect IQ SDKs. You might be able to get it to work with super old CIQ SDKs if you have them lying around.

I did try for a couple of minutes to get it to work with a newer SDK, but didn't have much success.

Here's a couple of links if anyone is interested and/or wants to contact the dev (PUFFOLINO)

https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/8221/development-tools

https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/5749/colors-in-simulator-vs-real-world 

FlowState said:

I think he knows that. He followed up by basically saying that a given colour looks very different on a MIP screen compared to standard computer / phone / tablet screens (e.g. traditional LCD (TN/VA/IPA) or AMOLED), which is something we all agree with.

No. Saying/proving the screen shot looks exactly like the simulator suggests he thought they might be different.

The MIP display renders colors poorly (it's a "bad" display). So, of course, the colors look "very different on a MIP screen". Everybody (pretty much) knows this. So, it's "strange" to be telling people something they already know.

Worse. what he wrote might lead people to think that the screens shots and simulators could have looked different when that would be a very weird result. 

dpawlyk said:

Saying/proving the screen shot looks exactly like the simulator suggests he thought it might be different.

Yeah, I concede your point. I was just trying (for once) to give him the benefit of the doubt. I have to admit his statement jumped out at me for the exact same reason that you cited.

Either he thinks it might be different or he thinks *others* think it might be different, otherwise, as you said, there would be no need to make the statement in the first place.

dpawlyk said:

The MIP display renders colors poorly (it's a "bad" display). So, of course, the colors look "very different on a MIP screen". Everybody (pretty much) knows this. So, it's "strange" to be telling people something they already know.

Agreed.

But again, to give him the benefit of the doubt, he is saying all of this as a way to frame his project of trying to show us all the colours on a MIP device, which has been done before [*]:

It's background info, although it's known to all of us.

[*]

https://apps.garmin.com/apps/db246cc4-a2cf-4e83-a140-ddd2a44c0fae

https://apps.garmin.com/apps/18b50c6a-3537-492e-b7ea-caf3bd839c56 

It is weird that he apparently ran his screenshot through chatgpt ("make this look like an old photo") to show us a "realistic photo" instead of just taking a picture of his real MIP watch (which is exactly what was done for the first app I linked above)

dpawlyk said:

Worse. what he wrote might lead people to think that the screens shots and simulators could have looked different when that would be a very weird result. 

Can't argue with that.