COMON GARMIN, 15 seconds?

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/