How come there's no Watch Face that shows everything including HR? (or did I miss it?) Just seems like it would make sense to have that right there up front.
How come there's no Watch Face that shows everything including HR?
I will assume you mean the user's current heart rate, as opposed to simply the last known heart rate from a sample taken an indefinite interval earlier, which could be milliseconds or minutes before the user glances at the watch face.
At the risk of being accused (again) of commenting on things with which I have no first-hand experience – so, let me be upfront about not being a Connect IQ developer myself – watch faces have access to graphics, bitmaps, fonts, current activity tracker status, current battery status, and the user’s activity profile, but cannot access the compass, GPS, or other sensors.
Just seems like it would make sense to have that right there up front.
It would only make sense if you draw a logical equivalence between the watch face, and a dashboard presenting all manner of current, up-to-the-moment information – even when you don't care and aren't looking.
Wish Item!!
Even now, you can develop (or commission someone else to develop, if – like me – you aren't a developer) and install a Connect IQ app that implements such a dashboard and run it. Or you can simply put the factory-installed Heart Rate widget into Broadcast Heart Rate mode, if you just want the current heart rate and the time of day to be shown always, ready for you to retrieve visually at a glance with no intervention or delay. In either case, you will knowingly compromise the watch's battery life and run the operational risk of draining it before you're ready and able to charge the battery again.
How come there's no Watch Face that shows everything including HR? (or did I miss it?) Just seems like it would make sense to have that right there up front.
Wish Item!!
As ASmugDill below mentions, this is simply a limit of watch face functionality. They are very basic items and don't have direct access to sensors and thus can not get the heartrate.
There are connect iq apps which you can use for this, they look like watch faces but are simply apps running continuously. This will impact battery life of course in quite a bit (which might be the reason they limit access to sensors by watch faces).
There are basically 3 levels:
1. Watch face = limited
2. Widget = more possibilities, but limited time
3. App = full access
If you look at the reviews of SC8 watch face there are a few people asking for HR functionality.
"Love the watch face, hoping you can add the HR data to the forerunner series like you did for the new vivoactive hr. Thanks!!"
Which seems to imply this is possible on other devices. So perhaps this limitation will be lifted. Even adding seconds is not trivial apparantly and will drain battery, so I'd imagine this wouldbe the same. Some watches have the wrist turn for seconds so perhaps that could be done for HR also.
Edit: In fact you can see this on the left watch on the main pic. Maybe worth a mail to the developer.
I noted the Optimus watchface works pretty well with displaying HR. Even with the 1 minute refresh rate. Currently Testing the non 1 minute refresh rate to determine battery impact
