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Default watch face - but remove the seconds - save battery

8126984
over 3 years ago

I prefer the default watch face on the Instinct.

Not being able to remove the seconds display, however, causes that watch face to consume much more battery than using a digital display without seconds.

I would like to request Garmin to release in a new firmware a version of the default watch face that does not have seconds displayed.

This will allow a much longer battery life for those who find that important - and still allow the preferred and most useful display.

Thank you Garmin.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Hi,

    I'd also like to be able to control this. Note however that when you stop moving your hand for a while seconds will disappear to preserve battery Slight smile

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    In the battery saver mode of my Instinct solar there is an option to display a special watch face to save energy. This is the normal watch face but contains only battery, time without seconds and the date. Would be nice to have this as a default watch face skin, not just with battery saver enabled.

    As a workaround you can enable battery saver and just use this watch face and ignore every other saver settings.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    It would be nice if the watch face turned itself off when you take it off after say a few minutes. I take mine off every night and there's no need for the battery wastage of it displaying to itself. My Ambit3 turns the screen off and wakes up when you move it. Saves a lot of battery if you only wear it for sports and not as a daily watch. I can not use my Ambit for a few weeks and it's barely lost any charge when I come to put it on. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Tom
    Tom said:
    It would be nice if the watch face turned itself off when you take it off after say a few minutes.

    Instinct uses a MIP (Memory-in-pixel) display type. It only needs power for state changes. The display draws only a completely negligible power for keeping a static image (units of µW). Turning the entire screen off and on would cost more energy (2-3 orders of magnitude more) than keeping it on permanently.

    Since the battery capacity of Instinct is around 700 mWh, you could power the display alone in static mode for hundreds of thousands of hours (tens of years) before draining the battery. Other elements of the device have many orders of manitude higher consumption.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to trux

    Is there a difference between using the same watchface with the white background or the black background? I guess the one with the black background is draining more battery?

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Jannis

    LCD crystals are switched to either 'black' or 'white' (on or off) and they do not consume any electricity once switched.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    The seconds display will make no practical difference to power consumption or battery life. I've owned plenty of "dumb" watches with an LCD display that shows seconds continuously and their battery life is measured in years, not days. On watches like the Instinct the GPS receiver, Bluetooth and the various sensors are the things that drain the battery. 

    I actually found this thread because I was trying to find if there was a way to keep the seconds on.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to jdbcomo

    It did made significant difference on my pebble watches with the same screen technology. You also have control over GPS and other sensors and can disable them when not needed. Problem is that currently we are forced to have seconds enabled. Screen have to use energy to refresh 60 times more often while most of people don't need precision of seconds when checking what time is it. I’m also opting for letting the user to decide if he like (or not) to have second on watch face. Easy change to implement to be honest and would be welcome by a lot of users.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 1111924
    1111924 said:
    It did made significant difference on my pebble watches with the same screen technology.

     I am sorry, I cannot believe that. Tell us what watches exactly. Either it has another screen technology, or the difference you have observed was caused by something else.

    1111924 said:
    Screen have to use energy to refresh 60 times more often

    But 60 times "almost nothing" is still almost nothing.

    But you are right, I would welcome if I could set something different, namely longer timeout for seconds. Original 5 minutes were ideal, 15 seconds used now (from firmware version 6.x I thing) I do not like.

    https://youtu.be/JbuK7YbY3Jg

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 1111924

    Pebble used epaper. That is a different technology, and every state change uses a lot of energy. Garmin uses MIP-displays, basically LCDs with memory, in all watches apart from the Venu. The changing seconds, however, do still use more energy, because refreshing the display every second means constantly waking the watch from a low power state. In the Vivoactive HR there was one special watchface which used specific hardware just to update the seconds. It was pretty cool, but Garmin unfortunately discontinued that principle.