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Consider changing the AOD mode on AMOLED

4389125
5 months ago

Having to flick your wrist all the time to activate the screen feels terrible, especially due to the unreliability of the watch to detect these flicks. 

Right now the watchface dims down, reduces elements (depends  on the watchfaces) and turns off the seconds(very bad!) when entering the AOD state. 

I suggest that it only dims down, and KEEPS the seconds. I didn't buy a watch so that the seconds fade after a few seconds... Very annoying. And even worse when using 3rd party watchfaces, as it always involves lag when the watch switches from the AOD mode to the actual watchface. Sometimes it takes up to a second. So just keep the watchface, keep the seconds and only change brightness of the screen as a burn in protection.

I mean here are watchfaces which almost look identical in the AOD mode, except for the disabled seconds timer. So this would be a very small change, but with a huge impact. And to be honest it makes absolutely no sense to disable the seconds, as they are moving, so they don't matter for potential burn in. 

  • 0 5 months ago
    4389125 said:
    And to be honest it makes absolutely no sense to disable the seconds, as they are moving, so they don't matter for potential burn in.

    But they do matter significantly when considering battery life - much shorter with seconds (or any other "moving" display element) are enabled.

    HTH

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to gaijin

    I really don't think that a few pixels of digital seconds / analog seconds hand have a significant impact on battery life. 

    What has a significant impact is AOD, so if you want the best battery life, disable AOD. 

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to 4389125

    It's not just the pixels to display seconds.  When a watch face is in AOD mode, the code to update the screen only runs once a minute instead of once a second.  So 1/60th as often.  On MIP devices this is called "low power mode" as less battery is used most of the time

  • 0 5 months ago

    how long is the batterylife (100% -> 0%) of the bigger Fenix8 (AMOLED) with AOD activated?  (in real life not from specs)

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to jim_m_58

    Since you brought up MIP devices, as you know very well, Garmin allows all but the oldest MIP devices to run CIQ watchfaces in “always-active mode”, which means that part of the screen (such as a seconds indicator and/or a live heart rate indicator) can be updated once per second, even in low power mode (which is the state where the screen is only fully updated once per minute). High power mode is activated in both MIP and AMOLED devices by turning the wrist, which results in the whole screen being updated for a period of a few seconds.

    Given that Garmin is willing to allow code which partially updates the watchface once per second all the time, but only on MIP devices, it stands to reason that for AMOLED, the main concern for Garmin is not the code which runs to update the screen once per second, but battery life concerns related to updating the AMOLED display too often.

    If Garmin were solely or mainly concerned about the battery life implications of running the partial update code all the time, they would not allow it for MIP devices either. Conversely, if the additional cost of constantly lighting up / changing pixels on an AMOLED display were negligible compared to MIP, then there would be no reason for Garmin to not allow “always-active mode” on AMOLED.

    I’ll also note that the latest Apple Watch (which ofc has an AMOLED display) actually allows watchfaces to be updated once per second, even when “idle” (their equivalent of low power mode). The claim is that this is possible due to the use of a more energy-efficient display.

    Take that for what you will.

    https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/aw-ultra-1-1hz-ability.2436587/

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2024/09/17/review-apple-watch-series-10-is-slim-and-attractive-if-youre-just-into-looks/

    The new LTPO3 display is also much more power-efficient, so instead of updating in standby every minute, it does it every second. This means that one new Watch face, an attractive analog face called Reflections, has a second hand that keeps ticking by even when your Watch is by your sid

  • 0 5 months ago

    AOD is the wrong place to obsessively save energy. Right now the AOD is almost equally useless as the gesture mode, because you have to do the gesture anyways. I don't need to squeeze out the last few percentiles by ruining every day comfort.. 

    Again, I want to be able to quickly glance on my watch to view LIVE data without having to do arm gymnastics. 

    If you absolutely want the best possible battery life you can simply use gesture mode. But AOD should be AOD and not something in between. Furthermore I don't think that the battery life will suddenly drop from 6 days AOD to 1 day AOD for example. 

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to 4389125

    I don't have an f8, but on AMOLD devices I have, having AOD on cuts the battery life.  I get  25-30% of the battery life I get with AOD off.

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to 4389125
    4389125 said:
    But AOD should be AOD and not something in between. Furthermore I don't think that the battery life will suddenly drop from 6 days AOD to 1 day AOD for example. 

    Aren't you at all worried about "burn-in" of the display if left ON all the time?  Seems to be a legitimate concern with all AMOLED displays...

  • 0 5 months ago in reply to gaijin

    Not at all. I mean the display is already always on already on the current AOD mode, if the seconds would also stay this would not further increase burn in risks. Which are already very low.

    Unless you are having the watch on maximum brightness for hundreds of hours, there won't be any burn in. The watch goes empty long before any burn in can happen. 

    I also think the primary reason for the current fake AOD is increasing battery life. Not really a good choice, if I want to maximize battery life I'll disable AOD, but I want to maximize functionality and every day use with AOD enabled. I totally don't care if I drain 5% or 10% per hour, if I can get a fluid and proper AOD experience on my watch. 

  • 0 5 months ago

    I totaly agree with this post. I would love to have the posibility to keep the seconds on the watchface all the time, even if this would greatly decrease battery life. There are many situations when i want to count some seconds, or I want to do something at exactly x minutes 0 seconds, and it's horrible to keep spinning the hand.