COMON GARMIN, 15 seconds?

5546455 said:

3rd party watch faces

Garmin has no control over whether the third-party developer allows the second hand to be displayed continuously or deactivates it after a certain time.

You should contact the developer in question.

That’s the reason for my message, I have been in contact with different developers, and they’ve asked me to suggest it to Garmin because it’s a Garmin issue with these watches and how they’re developed with the software, the developers try to make the seconds longer, but can’t because of Garmin‘s Limitations

5546455 said:

I have been in contact with different developers, and they’ve asked me to suggest it to Garmin

ok, if that's the case, I suggest the same. Here you are in a user forum.

I suggest using the “share ideas” form:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/forms/ideas/ 

5546455 said:

in the medical field, I use this for patients aking their pulse... I need more than 15 sec. How about 30 or 1 minute timeout please?????

I recommend starting an activity in the background. The seconds on the watchface do not time out as long as an activity runs in the background. I am not sure about 3rd party CIQ watchfaces, since I do not use any, but it works in this way with built-in watchfaces.

Or just use the built-in Stopwatch feature, it does not time out either (at least not on my Instinct 3). Resp. the entire screen may time out after several minutes of inactivity and no AOD mode used, when the stopwatch runs.

5546455 said:

Ok, I downloaded a few 3rd party watch faces from Garmin Apps IQ, and everyone of the Analog second hand last about 7 seconds and dissapears

Yes, this is to preserve battery by avoiding a content 1hz refreshing of the screen.

You're in the medical field, you're above average IQ so we'll be able to work through this one. Take a deep breath, let's lower our allostatic load and then let's set a timer for 30 seconds or a minute so that you're able to take your patients pulse, right after checking your own.

Heck, you can even start a timer via voice command on the 8.

bluefish said:

Garmin has no control over whether the third-party developer allows the second hand to be displayed continuously or deactivates it after a certain time.

Incorrect - actually the complete opposite of the truth. As 5546455 said, this is a built-in limitation of Garmin AMOLED watches.

TL;DR What OP is asking for (*continuous* once-per-second watchface updates) is possible with Garmin MIP watches, but not Garmin AMOLED watches [*]

As 2529455 said, Garmin's stated reason for this discrepancy is to preserve battery life, which is why it's unlikely to me that Garmin will reverse course on this decision (which has been effect since the very first Garmin AMOLED watch was released).

[*] This has actually come up over and over again in the forums, especially with regards to differences between MIP and AMOLED watches, so it's funny that this hasn't sunk in yet.

Why does it matter that this is possible with MIP? Because it demonstrates that Garmin has made a conscious decision to not allow this behaviour - for AMOLED. It also suggests that this will *never* be possible for (current) AMOLED watches.

To specifically address the apparent 15 seconds built-in timeout vs 7 second CIQ timeout on Fenix 8 AMOLED devices: this is also something that Garmin imposes, and is completely out of the control of the dev. If I had to guess, Garmin probably does this because they know CIQ watchfaces inherently burn more battery life than native watchfaces.

Disclaimer: there's no need to read any of this comment unless you care how and why this stuff works, how Garmin MIP and AMOLED devices behave differently, and why Garmin probably won't change this behaviour for existing AMOLED watches.

I apologize in advance to anyone who's offended by large amounts of text. All I can say is that misinformation or vastly oversimplified information - which doesn't give you the whole picture - requires much less text [and effort!] than explaining how things actually are. This can be seen in the very first reply to this thread - you don't even need to know wtf you're talking about to spread misinformation, let alone use lots of words.

These are technical issues, and sorry to say, but technical issues are rarely as simple as we'd like. But, hey, anyone is free to ignore this entire post, and I'm sure the question of why the seconds hand is disappearing on your AMOLED watchface will come up over and over again in the forums. That's fine with me, I gave it my best shot.

Just to make things easier, I'm going to say "constant 1 Hz updates" instead of "continuous once-per-second updates". Hopefully the meaning is still clear.

I'm pretty sure Garmin will never change this via a software update, as it's deliberate design decision with a clear rationale (basically what 2529455 said):

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/user-experience-guidelines/watch-faces/

Devices with AMOLED displays typically disable the display when not in use to save power, but they do allow the user to enable an always-on mode. Because long-term display use affects the battery life and can wear down the display, Connect IQ has special rules for AMOLED always-on mode. When the watch face enters always-on mode, the watch face will only update every minute, and each update is limited to using 10% of the available pixels of the display. In addition, a burn-in prevention mechanism will further guide the use of the display on some devices.

It's *possible* Garmin may update their AMOLED display hardware to allow constant 1 Hz watchface updates in future models, as Apple did when releasing a recent new generation of watches that allow constant updates. (Apple's rationale was that the new display is much more energy-efficient, which implies that the reason for previously *not* allowing constant updates was to save battery life). Even if this happens, no users of current Garmin AMOLED watches would benefit.

MIP vs AMOLED:

[**] Note that these newer MIP devices have special hardware which reduces the battery impact of refreshing the screen, and this hardware was said to be a prerequisite for enabling constant 1 Hz updates for CIQ watchfaces. This implies that:

- battery was still a concern for MIP devices with regards to this feature

- even though older (pre-2017) MIP devices allowed constant 1 Hz updates for built-in watchfaces, this was not allowed for CIQ watchfaces, which implies that Garmin also takes into account the well-known energy overhead of using a CIQ watchface as opposed to a native watchface

[***] note that the first Garmin AMOLED device was released in 2019, 2 years after the first MIP device which supported constant 1 Hz updates for CIQ apps, which suggests that - again - it was a conscious decision to forbid constant 1 Hz updates for AMOLED watches, and it has everything to do with the differences between AMOLED and MIP displays.

Note that even modern MIP devices (released after 2019) still support constant 1 Hz updates, which again is further evidence that support for constant 1 Hz updates has everything to do with the display type (AMOLED vs MIP).

More Details

MIP watches:

- native (built-in) watchfaces may display the analog second hand (or digital seconds display) constantly (so it's always visible and updated once per second). Before anyone else jumps in, I am aware that *some* native watchfaces and *some* MIP models do not do so. However, every MIP Forerunner I've owned in the last 10 years has supported constant 1 Hz updates for most or all built-in watchfaces, for what it's worth. If other devices - such as Instinct 2 - do not support this on built-in watchfaces, I can only guess this is for battery life reasons. (i.e. battery life is deemed to be more important for the instinct line than the forerunner line)

- (For all MIP watches released roughly around 2017 and later): Connect IQ watchfaces can display the second hand (or digital seconds display) constantly (so it's always visible and updated once per second). In this case, there's no limitation by Garmin except that the Connect IQ developer has to write additional code to update the display constantly which adheres to a strict power budget. To put it simply, when the user is not looking at their watch ("low power mode"), only a small part of the display is allowed to be updated. The entire display can only be updated once per minute, or for a few seconds after they turn their wrist to look at their watch ("high power mode").

AMOLED watches:

- native watchfaces do not display the analog second hand (or digital seconds indicator) constantly 

- Connect IQ watchfaces cannot display the analog second hand (or digital seconds indicator) constantly (same behaviour as native watchfaces). It's simply not allowed by the CIQ framework. There's no way to work around it

I know that some have also argued that the restriction against constant 1Hz updates actually makes more sense for MIP than it does for AMOLED, and all I can say to that is "tell it to Garmin". It's their decision, and it's obviously deliberate. We can also see that Apple had the same restriction until they upgraded the display hardware on their watches to make it more battery efficient. (The point is that this decision seems even more reasonable if it was made independently by two different vendors.)

If anyone cares about the technical details (including limitations) regarding how CIQ watchface updates work for MIP and AMOLED devices, it's all here:

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/user-experience-guidelines/watch-faces/

I have the same problem, especially if we do first respond emergency’s with the fire department. On the ambulance we always take the C3 with us. 

I help myself through flicking the wrist at about 8 seconds and using wrist gesture to turn the watchfaces on again before the 15s are over. This also allows me to count to 20s when the Puls is really slow. 

doesn't solve the 3rd party Connect IQ watch faces, but in case it was missed, a few of the stock watch faces can have a _tiny_ data field showing seconds at 1hz (Bold Face, Deep Sea, and the unnamed analog face come to mind).

It's like asking Congress for a balanced budget.  Makes perfect sense, but good luck in getting it.