This needs to be fixed asap. On CIQ watchfaces, the seconds only show with a gesture.
I did not buy an MIP watch to do arm gymnastic like I did on my AMOLED watch. Please fix this immediately and do NOT let the seconds disappear...
This needs to be fixed asap. On CIQ watchfaces, the seconds only show with a gesture.
I did not buy an MIP watch to do arm gymnastic like I did on my AMOLED watch. Please fix this immediately and do NOT let the seconds disappear...
But yes, this is a forum, and we can debate.
To make a request to Garmin... you must contact Garmin.
However, small points are easier to implement for CIQ developers, as the time available for a screen update is extremely short.
Be that as it may, as I've tried to highlight over and over…
It has everything to do with Garmin, as they are the developers of the watchface.
It's a pity that we can't find out which watchface your complaint is about. I therefore assume that the developer…
this is a clear request to garmin.
Then contact the development team. It has already been mentioned several times how this works
My 2 cents (sorry for the blogpost):
- I can't speak for fenix 8 solar, but all the built-in watchfaces (both digital and analog) for FR935 and FR955 have "permanent" seconds (always visible, always changing). I'm going to call this "always active (updates)" because that's what Garmin calls it, in reference to CIQ watchfaces
I know that the first support article says that the analog second hand will disappear after 30 seconds, but that's not true for all watches. (Note that FR955 is a currently supported watch which continues to get firmware updates with major features, so it's not like it's "too old" to reflect modern Garmin practices.)
- not to state the obvious, but always active watchface updates are only supported on MIP devices, not AMOLED devices
- both support articles which were posted refer to built-in watchfaces, not Connect IQ watchfaces.
The text on the 2nd page says that seconds can disappear (not that they will disappear).
> The seconds hand or digital display can disappear from your watch face to save battery life.
However, the 2nd page also claims that HR and seconds won't be updated in real-time, which is definitely not true for built-in watchfaces on FR955 (which do update seconds and HR continuously, all the time)
I will speculate that both support articles are geared towards AMOLED devices, which would make sense given Garmin's general strategy of phasing out MIP over the past few years.
- I saw posts were fenix 6/7 users said their built-in analog watchface had a second hand that disappeared after a very long time (more than 30 seconds)
- If you create a Face-It watchface for FR955, digital seconds will be "always active", but the analog second hand will disappear after a few seconds
- based on the previous points, I disagree that it's "standard" for seconds to disappear on Garmin watches (as a general statement). On the contrary, for MIP watches it seems that it's "standard" for seconds to *not* disappear (at least for built-in digital watchfaces). It makes sense for digital seconds to be permanent while the analog seconds hand disappears (in some cases), because animating an analog second hand generally requires changing more pixels than updating digital seconds, which results in a greater impact to battery life.
- CIQ watchfaces on MIP device can support "always active" mode, where the screen can be partially updated once per second, all the time. But this isn't on by default, and implementing it requires additional work. It's not as simple as flipping a switch, the dev has to write code to partially update the screen which avoids exceeding a certain power budget, in addition to the code which would update the whole screen under normal circumstances
- All things being equal, CIQ watchfaces use more energy than built-in watchfaces
- If a CIQ watchface supports "always active" mode, then it will use even more energy (as others pointed out)
- It does seem that Garmin has decided that none of its current Connect IQ watchfaces will support always active mode. Unclear whether this is due to battery life concerns or they don't want to allocate the resources to do the work, or both. Also not sure if any of their really old CIQ watchfaces have always active support.
TL;DR
- Garmin support articles (and manuals) aren't always 100% in sync with reality
- enabling "always active" mode / "permanent seconds" for CIQ watchfaces imposes a cost on both the user and the dev. The user gets worse battery life and the dev has to do additional work. Yes, built-in watchfaces do support this, but built-in watchfaces also have better battery life than CIQ watchfaces.
- It would be nice if Garmin would at least add a setting to their CIQ watchfaces to support "permanent seconds" / "always active" updates, but I kind of doubt this will ever happen. From their POV, they would be doing a bunch of extra work just to make MIP users happy (and MIP users are now 2nd-class citizens Garmin's world.)
On the contrary, for MIP watches it seems that it's "standard" for seconds to *not* disappear (at least for built-in digital watchfaces).
Not really. For example all Instincts, from the oldest Instinct, to the current Instinct 3 have disappearing seconds on all built-in watchfaces, both digital and analogue. On MIP displays, it makes much more sense than on AMOLED models, because the consumption of an MIP display is close to zero when it is static. It consumes power practically only when the pixels change the state. Hence avoiding changes of the display every second helps decreasing the power consumption (apart of lowering the CPU load).
For the purposes of this comment I will define "always active" (watchface) again (just as a reminder):
- the display is always on
and
- certain parts of the display are continuously updated (e.g. seconds and HR) all the time, once per second
I will also say that I agree that in this discussion, Garmin's chief concern is battery life.
What I specifically disagree with is the implication or explicit statement that disappearing seconds are "standard" for Garmin, in the context of MIP devices.
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On the contrary, for MIP watches it seems that it's "standard" for seconds to *not* disappear (at least for built-in digital watchfaces).Not really. For example all Instincts, from the oldest Instinct, to the current Instinct 3 have disappearing seconds on all built-in watchfaces, both digital and analogue.
That's fair. I guess I usually think of Forerunner (and Fenix) devices when I think of MIP devices, because:
- I use Forerunner exclusively
- Since 2017, Forerunner 9xx and Fenix models have shared similar software / UI. More recently, all current Forerunners seemingly share a similar codebase and UI with Fenix 7
- As far as I know, for both Forerunner and Fenix MIP devices, the built-in digital watchfaces have digital seconds which are constantly visible and changing
- As far as I know, for Forerunner MIP devices, the built-in analog watchfaces have a seconds hand which never disappears [and is always moving]
- From what I've heard, at least for some Fenix MIP devices, the built-in analog watchfaces have a seconds hand which disappears after a long time [more than 30 seconds]
As a runner, I think of Forerunner as being the "main" Garmin line. Almost every runner I know either has a Forerunner or Fenix.
I can see why Instinct would be different, since battery life might be more of a concern. To me it's the exception that proves the rule.
But regardless of what Instinct's native watchfaces do, all of the MIP Instinct watches supported by Connect IQ (Instinct 2 through 3) support always active mode in Connect IQ. This is important because to be absolutely clear, zero AMOLED watches support always active mode in Connect IQ
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On MIP displays, it makes much more sense than on AMOLED models, because the consumption of an MIP display is close to zero when it is static.
Be that as it may, that fact does not explain why:
- zero Garmin AMOLED devices support "always active" watchfaces (built-in or CIQ)
- more than zero Garmin MIP devices support "always active" watchfaces (built-in)
- all Garmin MIP devices since 2017-ish support "always active" watchfaces (CIQ), including recently released devices
Based on your argument, Garmin should be allowing/implementing always active watchfaces on AMOLED, but not MIP. In fact the reality is completely the opposite.
I didn't want to get too far into the technical weeds here but:
- Always active watchfaces are a feature in Connect IQ that require hardware support, in the form of a special MIP display which supports partial addressing / updates. This tells me that at least part of the concern from Garmin's POV is not just the energy consumed by the display itself, but also the energy used to update the display.
This is why very old watches like FR235 (2015) don't support always active watchfaces in CIQ (they lack the hardware). Despite this fact, iirc, even FR235 had native watchfaces where the seconds never disappeared. This goes back to how native watchfaces have inherently always been able to do more than CIQ watchfaces (and not the other way around, as suggested). Again my explanation for this is that there's an inherent energy cost due to use of CIQ for anything.
- onPartialUpdate() is the Connect IQ function which facilitates developing always active watchfaces. It is *explicitly* documented to be only available for MIP devices (and not AMOLED). You can see the full list of devices here - it covers everything from FR935 (2017) / Fenix 5 (2018) to Fenix 8 Solar (2024) (and it includes Instinct watches - note that the original Instinct did not support CIQ, which is why it's not on the list):
Speaking of whether this makes more sense for AMOLED displays, I do know that recent Apple Watch models actually support 60 Hz watchface updates (all the time), and this is supposedly due to a new display which consumes less power.
To summarize all of this and come to a conclusion:
- Obviously a MIP watchface that never changes (or changes rarely) consumes less power than a MIP watchface that changes constantly. This doesn't necessarily mean that a MIP watchface which changes constantly consumes more power than an AMOLED watchface which changes constantly.
- A 10-year old watch like FR235 still supports always active mode for built-in watchfaces (iirc), even though it supposedly lacks the MIP hardware to support always active mode in Connect IQ. So again, certain battery life concerns which are relevant for CIQ are not deemed to be relevant for native watchfaces (which is explained by the fact that CIQ is generally more inefficient)
- Most (or many) Garmin MIP watches support always active mode in built-in watchfaces (at least for digital seconds)
- All Garmin MIP watches since 2017-ish support always active mode in Connect IQ.
- Zero Garmin AMOLED watches support always active mode in built-in watchfaces
- Zero Garmin AMOLED watches support always active mode in Connect IQ (the api support is not there)
Note that new MIP devices have been released concurrently with AMOLED devices, and even the new MIP devices are allowed to use always active mode in CIQ (and Fenix 8 Solar is said to have "permanent seconds" for built-in watchfaces). So it can't be argued that there's some new Garmin policy to limit energy use, otherwise it would be applied equally to new MIP devices and new AMOLED devices.
So, regardless of the fact that a constantly changing MIP display consumes more energy than a static MIP display (which consume no energy), Garmin obviously believes that on the whole, the energy cost of constantly updating an AMOLED display is greater than that of constantly updating a MIP display. Whether this energy cost is mostly due to physical display update itself, or the act of sending the data to the display is something I can't answer.
If Garmin actually believed that it's more expensive to constantly update a MIP display compared to an AMOLED display, then the situation for always active mode in CIQ would be reversed - Garmin would allow it for AMOLEd and not for MIP.
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TL;DR by their own actions, Garmin demonstrates that they think it's acceptable for a MIP watchface to continuously update (or be "always active"), and that they also think it's completely unacceptable for an AMOLED watchface to do so.
Whether or not this makes sense to us, it obviously does make sense to Garmin.
The fact that Apple added this feature to their newer watches (which they call 60 Hz update or whatever), and the explanation is that the newer watches use a more power-efficient display, tells me that Apple decided the displays on their old watches were *not* power efficient enough to support constant updates. This also tells us that Apple thinks there is a significant cost to updating their older AMOLED displays all the time. And it suggests that the CPU time used to update those pixels cannot have been a major concern here. Yeah, it's kind of a tangent but it suggests that - in general - Garmin and Apple were in perfect alignment on this issue until Apple sourced a more a power-efficient AMOLED display.
Can it be possible that Garmin simply doesn't care about battery life on MIP watches? No, that can't be it, since battery life is arguably the sole remaining selling point for their new MIP devices. And even 8-10 years ago, Garmin would not support always active updates for MIP devices in Connect IQ, until they got their hands on new MIP hardware which allowed them to do so while consuming less energy.
No, that can't be it, since battery life is arguably the sole remaining selling point for their new MIP devices.
For me the main selling point of MIP displays is its excellent readability under strong sunlight, where AMOLED fails. And I do have both Instinct 3 AMOLED and Instinct 3 MIP. Although I generally prefer the AMOLED model, on sunny summer days I use the MIP variant.
For me the main selling point of MIP displays is its excellent readability under strong sunlight, where AMOLED fails.
Yes, for me that is also (part of) the main selling point of MIP devices. But we are part of a tiny minority of Garmin users who actually like MIP. I'm sure most current MIP Forerunner users will happily upgrade to AMOLED when they decide to get a new watch. (I already see more and more AMOLED Garmins at races, for example)
What I meant was from Garmin's point of view, the only remaining selling point for MIP is battery life. (More on that below)
To be clear, I like MIP because it's glanceable / "always visible" (I made that term up). In sunlight, you can instantly glance at a MIP screen without making a deliberate gesture (or pressing a button) and waiting for the display to light up. At night, you can configure the MIP backlight to be on indefinitely, at the cost of battery life, so it's still always visible.
Garmin will not allow AMOLED devices to indefinitely operate at full brightness (full visibility), because of both battery life and burn-in concerns. So whether it's day or night, you'll have to make a deliberate gesture (or press a button) and wait a fraction of a second for display to light up.
(Polar has a trick where they keep the AMOLED display at full brightness during activities, by quickly flipping between "bright" and "super bright" modes, which avoids burn-in according to them, but also chews up a lot of battery life. Apparently they did this because they recognize that some users want to mount their watch on a bike, where it would be impossible to use the gesture and impractical to press a button, when you want to see the display)
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To return to this statement of mine:
"No, that can't be it, since battery life is arguably the sole remaining selling point for their new MIP devices."
I should've clarified: from Garmin's point of view, the only remaining selling point for MIP is battery life.
- Venu never had a MIP model (although the original Venu Sq was LCD, not AMOLED).
- As soon as Garmin was able to get AMOLED battery life to be "good enough", they dropped MIP from their mainstream fitness and running watches (Vivoactive and Forerunner). If Garmin thought that they could market MIP for something other than battery life, then why did they remove MIP from so many lines (except the ones where battery life is a selling point)?
- They cannot say that MIP objectively looks nicer than AMOLED indoors (because it's not true)
- They cannot publicly say that MIP somehow performs better than AMOLED in sunlight, even subjectively. Not because it isn't true, but because they spent the last few years telling people to upgrade to AMOLED. (AMOLED is the better display, according to them, due to its brightness and colour. AMOLED is fine outdoors, according to them.). All the reviewers said AMOLED is good and MIP sucks, and the only thing you have to get used to is turning your wrist to make the display light up, but that's ok because Apple Watch users are ok with it. (Never mind that Apple is better at the little UX things than Garmin, like gesture detection).
They can hardly turn around and claim that AMOLED is the inferior display now, or that MIP performs better under certain scenarios, even if it's true.
- As a matter of fact, years ago, before Garmin entered the AMOLED market, they had a whole marketing page for MIP where they said it performs better under sunlight than other displays, and it lacks "distracting color and brightness". Of course, when Garmin started selling AMOLED devices, they turned around and used "color and brightness" as selling points. https://www.garmin.com.sg/minisite/garmin-technology/wearable-science/chroma-display/
I don't think you'll find any current Garmin marketing materials where Garmin claims that MIP is better because it performs better under sunlight or lacks distracting color and brightness. I think they think the only possible reason to offer MIP is because of increased battery life. And that's why they've dropped MIP for every watch except Instinct, Enduro and Fenix (the outdoor adventure watches, some of which are explicitly marketed as having superior battery life). But even Instinct and Fenix have AMOLED models now. Who knows how long MIP will last for those lines?
DCR has also repeatedly said that the demand for MIP displays simply isn't there, which is why Apple never had them, and Garmin is dropping them as fast as they can.
this is a fantastic thread and a couple anecotes/observations coming from a long time MIPS guy (since 2010) and only 3 day Fenix.8 AMOLED owner:
- the portal watch face on the F8 does have continuous digital seconds (albeit very small type/font) even in dimmed state
- my FR955 (and predecessors) worked well indoors during the day for my use case of glancing and seeing info and continuous seconds without backlight. I only set the backlight work with gesture between sunset and sunrise.
- I would have gone F8 Solar if it weren't for : 1. higher weight, 2. thicker body, 3. reported falling way short of Garmin specs even after 7-8 months from release.
- I am pleasantly surprised that even though the brightness of the AMOLED was initially jarring, I've gotten excellent visibility under full sunlight setting AOD for 1/3 brightness, and do find that I can see the dimmed AOD quite well indoors where I'd want to see things at a glance while working on the computer. for driving in the car, I might want to glance at the data on my watch face (Big Easy) but that's hard to do in the sun.
Back on track (Somewhat), I think it's a crime that Garmin didn't include any great watch faces on the device, let alone create some "1hz seconds" ones for the MIP based F8.