Watchface problem on my new Marc Athlete Gen2 compared to my Gen1

Hi all,

I own a Marc Athlete Gen 1, 3 years old and still working fine. Indoor readability was always kind of an issue for me after eye surgery. So I used to apply an SC8 watchface to white background, black and red digits on my Gen 1, IMHO the best setup for reading the watch at all times ( no wrist movement ).Display was always on and even when dimmed, still perfectly visible even indoors, all sensors and GPS active all the time, this resulted into about 5 days of battery life. Not bad.

Last week I have bought a Marc Athlete Gen 2 and I can't get this same watchface ( and other, like f.e. Dinstinct ) to keep displaying the configured layout when dimmed. Instead of dimming, it's falling back to a minimalistic version of the watchface. Terrible on SC8, because the dimmed version displays no colors, only hours and minutes in black/grey.

It feels like downgrade. Anything you can do about this ? ( I guess it's a way to prevent burn-in of the oled display ? )

Anybody who has advise on this issue, could this be changed with a firmware upgrade ( where do you even request this ? )

Thx. for your help.

FYI : the image below is from my Gen 1, the permanent display I would like to have on my Gen 2 also :'(

0 PallMe over 1 year ago

In short no. Garmin has put in some limitation for watch faces in AOD mode to minimize burn-in and battery drain. If developers don’t conform, the display will be turned off. Especially you shall not expect white background in AOD, since this is the most power hungry color. Best is to find another watch face with better AOD mode. The number can still be quite big and readable, if they are outlined. My eyesight is also struggling and personally I prefer analog faces. I have the oppisite problem though, I find it annoying that some elements of the stock face are hardcoded therefore too bright and indiscrete in AOD mode.

0 MARC#2 over 1 year ago in reply to PallMe

Thx. FYI : On my Marc Gen1, battery time was not impacted by the white background, but that watch has older LCD tech in it.

0 PallMe over 1 year ago in reply to MARC#2

Yes, that is because MIP (Memory In Pixel which is used in your old model) reflects incoming light and/or has a single backlight. So there is difference in power consumption between black or white. But with AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diodes used in your new watch) each single pixel emit light. That is why more pixels emitting light means higher power consumption. Black is off and therefore consumes no power and therefore most battery friendly.