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Can anyone give me some examples why an always-on display is a good idea?

Always-on display?

  • Yea

    Votes: 23 33.3%

  • Nay

    Votes: 30 43.5%

  • Indifferent

    Votes: 16 23.2%
  • Total voters
    69
TheGreenBastard

TheGreenBastard

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 1, 2012
361
109
Halifax
I've been ripped apart multiple times on /r/applewatch for asking this question.

What is the benefit of having an always-on screen?

You can't see the screen when your arm is at your side. Do they want other people to notice their pretty Apple Watch watch face or something? I feel like if Apple made the wrist detection a little more reliable that would be great, because in my mind raising your wrist to view the time is perfectly natural.

Perhaps this would also be interesting if I made this into a poll..
 
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I honestly don't care either way. I'm sure one day we will have the option, so everyone can be happy. At least we don't have to press a button to read the time :rolleyes:

il_fullxfull.755739962_qsai.jpg
 
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With a traditional watch, or a smartwatch with an always-on display, you can always glance down at your wrist and see the time. With the Apple Watch you have to move your arm in a certain way, and that doesn't necessarily always trigger. Right now I rotated my arm while my hands were resting on the keyboard, and the screen didn't turn on. Motionless, I can see the watch, but there's nothing on the screen. Would be nice to glance at it and see the time without making a large motion.

I'd love an always-on display, as long as 24-hour battery life could still be guaranteed. Anything past 24 hours is a bonus, imo.
 
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Part of if is an ocd type of thing. People have obsessed about scratches on the bottom which will never be seen.

If the raise to wake was guaranteed to be 100% perfect, it might take away some of the argument. A simple always on clock would be fine to me. Some will want always on just because a regular watch is and you won't change their mind. Time changes everyone's thinking. At one point in time, people hated the iPhone when it came out and said it was a niche. No one would want apps on their phone. It will never last.

People need time to accept. Happens in real life as well sadly.

When I lay back in a recliner with my hands behind my head and feel a vibration and look, it often doesn't light up but I really don't care to touch or twist my arm. Others may become obsessively angry.
 
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Well with an always on display you tremendously reduce battery life. Traditional watches just tick which requires almost no energy but when you have an Apple Watch it has to perform calculations for the time and to display upcoming events and weather, so with the network going crazy and thousands of LEDs being lit it puts a drain on the battery. This can best be answered by using a MacBook Pro as an example, if you leave it always on it dies in ~12 hours, if you shut the lid and it sleeps, it's good for ~30 days.
 
Think about why people buy watches, it's as much of a fashion statement as it is for functionality right?

Wouldn't it be cool to have a smartwatch always-on screen? It'd look better as a fashion item, rather than you having a black square on your wrist all the time, you'd have a cool looking something in there.
 
I don't know about y'all but I bought mine for the functionality, I really could care less if one more person goes "oh wow so cool an Apple Watch!" or "do you like your Apple Watch?" when I'm trying to get seated at the restaurant table. Much more interrupting me when I'm trying to fill my drink after using Apple Pay with it by trying to have a conversation about my time with it.
 
Voted nay but could have voted indifferent IF it didn't affect the battery or burn into the screen. I'm not one to constantly be checking time. Anything important to me will send a notification. I hate to see people checking their phones or watches when they are socializing with others in person. Not bothered by raising my wrist or touching the screen to see the screen. Basically don't see this as a big issue for me.
 
mildocjr said:
Well with an always on display you tremendously reduce battery life. Traditional watches just tick which requires almost no energy but when you have an Apple Watch it has to perform calculations for the time and to display upcoming events and weather, so with the network going crazy and thousands of LEDs being lit it puts a drain on the battery. This can best be answered by using a MacBook Pro as an example, if you leave it always on it dies in ~12 hours, if you shut the lid and it sleeps, it's good for ~30 days.
Click to expand...

And yet, somehow, there are digital watches that show time on a transflective dot matrix display for years on a coin cell. There are activity trackers with always on displays that last weeks, some with notifications.

I'm willing to give up oled for perpetual display of the info I choose.
 
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trifid said:
Think about why people buy watches, it's as much of a fashion statement as it is for functionality right?

Wouldn't it be cool to have a smartwatch always-on screen? It'd look better as a fashion item, rather than you having a black square on your wrist all the time, you'd have a cool looking something in there.
Click to expand...

I actually feel quite the opposite. One of the things that stands out to me about the Apple Watch's design is that it looks better than the competition when turned off. The round smartwatches out there that try to look like analog watches look weird when the screen isn't turned on. The round smartwatches that do leave the screen on still don't look like analog watches, because of the bright little screen, which leads me to another point. I don't like have the light of the screen flashing around all of the time, so I wouldn't want the screen to always be on. Sometimes I even turn off the wrist raise feature.
 
Passive LCD Displays on you kitchen clock, your fridge, your climate control etc. are a great thing.
You can gather information from these without needing to act upon them or even be near them.

Active display are a different matter.
I hate flashing or changing displays. Even if its just two dots on a radio clock to indicate seconds.
These things can be very very distracting.

Look at the car industry. Most luxury brands try to limit the displayed information as much as possible and only
change the display to indicate. Which is a word that should tell you what the main task of an always-on display should be.

Like a heart rate monitor in a hospital displaying vital signs, active display should not just be a feature.
They should be needed.

I could accept a very dim watch face, similar to a passive LCD, but I do not really want active displays or blinking LED's
in my room at all.

By the way, I re-learned to sleep in a pitch black bedroom.
No standby lights, no wall-powered devices that have a power LED.

I sleep so much better. Your mind just knows it is dark.
It might sound stupid, but try it out. It works great.
 
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The only time so far I've wished for an always-on screen is when I'm carrying something in my left hand, like my coffee, and can't turn my wrist to check the time.

This is a problem with my G-Shock, too, but mainly when it's dark -- it has a backlight with an auto-on feature, and it's more finicky than the AW about the angle at which it'll light up its display.
 
Mr. Buzzcut said:
And yet, somehow, there are digital watches that show time on a transflective dot matrix display for years on a coin cell. There are activity trackers with always on displays that last weeks, some with notifications.

I'm willing to give up oled for perpetual display of the info I choose.
Click to expand...

Yep and those don't require near the energy as an Apple Watch, Bluetooth is an energy hog and when that is how it's talking to your phone throughout most of the day, yeah it's going to hurt battery life, I'm just impressed that the battery life lasts as long as it does.

So those digital watches, all they have to do is send a small charge from a battery to a quartz crystal that vibrates creating an electrical current to the watch that lasts for as long as that battery lasts.

Apple watches use lithium ion batteries with no quartz because a quartz will not generate enough electricity to power every feature of the watch.
Now you have to add the Apple Watch components
Processor - high energy requirement
A color LED display - High energy requirement
Bluetooth - high energy requirement
Wi-Fi - High energy when searching for a network, moderate when connected to a network
heart rate monitor - high energy usage needed every 10 minutes
hard drive, moderate energy usage when reading or writing data
accelerometer - low energy but used all the time.
Speakers - low energy when in use
And this doesn't include the power needed for the RAM, logic board or other small components that are included on the logic board such as the northbridge and southbridge chip.

So when you complain that Apple doesn't provide an always on feature, this is why, because if they gave it to you, you'd just complain that the battery doesn't last long enough.

Also if you've ever messed with an app for a long period of time you might notice the watch itself gets a bit warm after a few minutes. Not that it will overheat but heat is the natural discharge of electricity after it has been used by a device. (Law of Conservation of Energy).

When you compare a digital quartz watch to the Apple Watch you are comparing a 12" MacBook to an entire datacenter.
 
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mildocjr, nice write up,...

But quartz does not power a watch. The oscillating crystal is made of quartz -- as electric current is fed into the crystal, it vibrates thanks to the piezoelectric nature of quartz.

The crystal is shaped like a tiny tuning fork, fine-tuned with a laser, and vibrates at a certain frequency, around 32 kHz. A small IC counts the vibrations and advances the clock appropriately.

Btw, the AW contains a quartz timekeeping circuit, too. Thermocompensated and tightly monitored, it keeps great time even if it never connects to one of Apple's time servers.
 
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mildocjr said:
Yep and those don't require near the energy as an Apple Watch, Bluetooth is an energy hog and when that is how it's talking to your phone throughout most of the day, yeah it's going to hurt battery life, I'm just impressed that the battery life lasts as long as it does.

So those digital watches, all they have to do is send a small charge from a battery to a quartz crystal that vibrates creating an electrical current to the watch that lasts for as long as that battery lasts.

Apple watches use lithium ion batteries with no quartz because a quartz will not generate enough electricity to power every feature of the watch.
Now you have to add the Apple Watch components
Processor - high energy requirement
A color LED display - High energy requirement
Bluetooth - high energy requirement
Wi-Fi - High energy when searching for a network, moderate when connected to a network
heart rate monitor - high energy usage needed every 10 minutes
hard drive, moderate energy usage when reading or writing data
accelerometer - low energy but used all the time.
Speakers - low energy when in use
And this doesn't include the power needed for the RAM, logic board or other small components that are included on the logic board such as the northbridge and southbridge chip.

So when you complain that Apple doesn't provide an always on feature, this is why, because if they gave it to you, you'd just complain that the battery doesn't last long enough.

Also if you've ever messed with an app for a long period of time you might notice the watch itself gets a bit warm after a few minutes. Not that it will overheat but heat is the natural discharge of electricity after it has been used by a device. (Law of Conservation of Energy).

When you compare a digital quartz watch to the Apple Watch you are comparing a 12" MacBook to an entire datacenter.
Click to expand...

Just no. Read the post I quoted and what I wrote. There are polar watches that have GPS and Bluetooth that last much longer than A watch. I get that it does more but what is truly useful? And of all the stuff you listed, it's all happening except the screen. So why not use e-ink and have pretty much the same functionality with an always on low power screen?
 
Aesthetics are always a personal thing, but I prefer my watch to always have a face, not a big blob of black.
Even if this were not the case, the way Apple has the wrist activation going is poor. It often does not activate or activates with a split second of slowness to make checking it while doing other things difficult.

The way to do it, IMHO is the way the TAG connect watch does (from what I've read): dim but on all the time and bright when activated. Battery life will get hit, but for those who don't like the idea, Apple can make Always On a setting that can be toggled. You'll also need to add an easy way to turn it off in places like a movie theater.

I remain frustrated by Apple's decisions on this and a number of other things like custom faces. When will we see the changes we want? Sadly, it probably won't be until android watches start getting more popular and force Apple to catch up.
 
Many sports watches are mountable on handlebars for cycling and so are able to display speed/pace/distance etc without having to move or touch the screen. The Apple watch isn't really for cyclists that want to be able to do that.
 
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