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Screen often dimming, sometimes completely black

DarrenPick
over 1 year ago

I am currently having two issues with the display on my new Forerunner 965

  1. Intermittently, my display will dim so much it is unusable outdoors. I can see the screen indoors and when I go to the display brightness settings it does adjust the brightness but the brightest setting is still too dark to be readable outdoors. The only thing I have found to return the display to normal brightness is to power off and on the watch.
    1. the watch can go for a few days between this happening and there is no pattern that I have noticed
    2. it doesn't recover by itself after waiting for > 2 days
  2. Less frequently my watch screen will be completely black. the only way I have found to resolve this is to press and hold the power button for > 30 seconds, wait a while and then power the watch back on.
    1. the watch doesn't automatically cure itself, it was left for over 24hrs once and it remained in the faulty state
    2. there doesn't seem to be any pattern to when this happens, However it has not yet happened during an activity. 

I am currently trying to upload videos and pictures for support to check this out, pretty miffed that I bought this watch for an event later this month and it is highly likely I will not be able to trust the device to be able to use it.

Anyone else having these issues? found. way to cure? some rogue setting hopefully?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to avikoren1

    This is the exact same issue I had.  While biking, in full sun, the screen dims but it actually is so dark it looks like it's off.  The screen would turn on intermittently for no reason, and it wasn't because of a bump or a turn of the handlebars.  Some owners had reported in addition to "short, medium or long" duration, there is an "always on" for the display timeout, but I did not find that on my device.  I agree, in this case, you would need an Edge to view the maps and your metrics while riding.  This watch is not for biking if it requires a gesture to see the display.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to RunJeffRun!

    I had the same experiences with my Epix and addressed this issue to Garmin. No response unfortunately. And according to experts there is no more need for prevention of pixel burn in as this should be no more a matter with the actual Oled technologies. So Garmin, please give us the freedom for the usage of our displays finally.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Rafa

    "according to experts there is no more need for prevention of pixel burn in as this should be no more a matter with the actual Oled technologies"

    Could you give some links to those expert claims, I'd love to read more if that's really the case?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Bitti

    Eg. DCR did explain so. Where this was I can't remember as I read quite a lot.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to avikoren1

    I don't believe that's the issue reported by the post. The issue is that the display randomly gets very dim to be seen outdoors, even after gesture. My screen eventually will be so dim that even with full brightness on, it's still barely visible. If I keep restarting the watch, eventually it comes back to the 'normal' state, which is very visible outdoors after a gesture.

    That been said, I do agree with you that biking, the amoled display is useless.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 9737538
    9737538 said:
    That been said, I do agree with you that biking, the amoled display is useless.

    I do a lot of biking and gestures to try to make the screen brighter when you have your hands on handlebars is not ideal

    A workaround for me is to wear it on my inner wrist facing me rather than outer wrist facing away as tye dinner screen is easier to see pointing towards you.

    For outdoors though in brght sun, MIPS is clearly superior as you don't have the dimming issues you get witt these screens.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to 5135968

    in my case i had the watch mounted on the handlebars (much like i had with the F6). On the barsv there are no gestures so the display is always dim. so i need to touch the display to get it brighter for a few seconds.  However, when following a map you want to see the map continuously to know when to turn, etc. In that use, the amoled fails unless the kept the map page (at a min) fully bright all the time. 

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I feel like this is a must have option, always full on during activities. Apple watch ultra is too close to what the garmin line can do, and the market share is responding. They also have the benefit of third party apps. Not having a true always on in activities is so annoying and a big oversight imo. I'm worried by the time garmin adds it, apple will already have gen 2 ultra.

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    I have the exact same behaviour, first few weeks everything worked as expected and then one morning the watch was very dim and after a while it got completely black. I had to do a blind restart and the screen stayed black even after the reboot (15 sec of power down). Only way to see that the watch was on again was the hr green lights on the underside. It doesn't matter what you try, it stays black. After power down and waiting for a few hours and power up again the screen came back on. I also tried to connect the power cable but screen stayed black. I am starting to believe this is a hardware error, but hopefully it is software related.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to SvenneBerka

    This is the first response that reflects what I was experiencing. 

    my watch has gone back to Garmin and I am awaiting a replacement. 

    Fingers crossed it isn’t a widespread issue with the watch.