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Do a lot of people use AOD?

Zaft

Zaft

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 16, 2009
4,579
4,058
Brooklyn, NY
Just curious how many android users here use the always on display? I’m on iPhone and always found it nice.

is it actually useful or more like a gimmick? How’s the battery life effected?
 
I always use it on a daily basis. Difference in battery life is very minimal. IMO, it's much better than a notification light, and much cooler. I only have experience with AOD on Samsung phones though. Can't speak on battery life from other manufactures.


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I use AOD on mine basically to show the time. I’m sure there’s some hit to battery life, but today’s Android phones have large enough battery that AOD probably won’t make a significant difference.
 
I had a third-party AOD on my Galaxy A01 during the short time I used it, but I still prefer the Galaxy S4's 'Air View' glance. You wave your hand over the phone and it lights up similar to the AOD, showing battery, notifications, missed calls, messages, and the time. I prefer that since it lessens burn in, looks nicer, and is cool to show off. Doesn't require touching or the battery drain. Sadly, only my Note II and S4 support it. My S4 Mini, S Relay, and SIII do not.

Still prefer the LED notification over an AOD, since I know at a glance what the blinking light means by color (apps help with this, expanding the capability). I don't have to be close to my phone either, like with an AOD. I can see what I'm missing or not, or the charge status of my device across the room.

The A01 didn't have an OLED display, but the third-party app wasn't hitting battery nearly as hard as I'd had thought, but it was infinitely customizable, can be turned off at a certain % battery or time of day, or show for x minutes after last notification received, and had a 'fake' LED notification light as well.
 
Yeah i have mine on from 8am til 11pm. I did have it off on my note ultra as battery life was bad but it stays on my fold 2. I will welcome it to the iphone but with the Apple Watch the reasons why it’s useful on android isn’t as important on IOS.

I’ve stopped using the galaxy watch with my fold so AOD is useful for this reason.
 
I had the 2018 Galaxy Watch and it was indeed awesome (helps Samsung Pay works better here where I live than Apple Pay--the latter keeps tripping the fraud detection on my Amex) but with my only going to work or walking at the park, I have very little chance of actually needing a 'smart' watch so I've put back on my Casio watch. I only need to tell time and date lately.

I kept both my Apple Watches since they work quite well and iCloud+wifi keeps them pretty standalone.
 
I'm using the app aodnotify that enables aod for notifications from apps that you choose within the app and then it disables it after I've turned on the screen.
 
I have AOD on all the time on the Note 20 Ultra and Pixel 4XL
I wish my 11 Pro Max had AOD too.....
Then i bought the Apple Watch 5 because it had AOD.
 
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I have set it to turn on when I pick up the phone. I do not know if my screen burns in when viewed continuously?

I have an emergency LED - Xperia - a dying species :)

Edit:
Maybe if I did not use the wristwatch, I would turn it on, but the watches are around me - in the computer, on my wrist, in the car ...
 
I use mine a lot, I just wish it were more useful. Ideally I'd like to see every notification on there, not just those icons that I can rarely tell apart, but the full notification.
 
I dont.

I dont want my screen on all day, especially at night when im sleeping.
Im ok with it just turning on for 30 seconds when i get a notification.
 
Zaft said:
Just curious how many android users here use the always on display? I’m on iPhone and always found it nice.

is it actually useful or more like a gimmick? How’s the battery life effected?
Click to expand...
I use aod and I love it and I don't see it hurts my battery life for me is very useful I just unlock my phone when I wanna read a message or any notification I'm interested in, that saves a lot of battery I have the Samsung S8 I come from an iPhone 7 for me a huge upgrade
 
I always use it, find it really useful, but set a time schedule for it to go off around time I go to bed until I wake up
 
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BTW the name of the third-party Android AOD app is "Always On Edge". Actually a great app for those who miss it on an unsupported phone or miss notification LEDs. It really doesn't take much battery (even on LCD) and is quite customizable. You can have it enabled only for charging, or when battery is above a certain %, or whenver you want. Out of the box it resembles an S8 AOD, with a 'fake' flashing notification LED.
 
Whenever the option for AOD is available it is on for me.. that includes the S20+ and the Watch3.

AOD is amazing.. I always miss it when I dabble in the iOS ecosystem.

I generally leave all settings on and on maximum! Get my monies worth of the feature set of the specific device (I can live with the hit on battery life)! Hehe!
 
Just be wary of burn in. Especially on OLEDs. I got a LG Watch Urbane (nicest and most stable WearOS watch I got) and even with the AOD doing all the shifting around, soon as you see an app with an all-white background or see the charging screen on the dock, the burn in is quite obvious. I only had AOD on since I recently started using it again, so that's just about a month and already the watch face is burned in the display.

While I didn't have a Galaxy S8 very long, it didn't take that long for the navbar buttons to burn into the screen either. Especially the soft home button icon, since it displays 100% the time in AOD mode. Made me glad the older Sammy phones had actual physical keys.
 
Vegastouch said:
I have never experienced a burn in on any of my Samsung phones.
Click to expand...

I have on the S8. But that was a work phone and the display was regularly on for many hours at a time. I never experienced burn in on any of my personal Samsung phones.
 
It was just the home icon that burned into mine. That's partly due to the way the AOD was implemented (was it changed in One UI?) on Android 8.0. It always kept the home virtual key active on screen during the AOD mode even though it wasn't actually useful.
 
nickdalzell1 said:
It was just the home icon that burned into mine. That's partly due to the way the AOD was implemented (was it changed in One UI?) on Android 8.0. It always kept the home virtual key active on screen during the AOD mode even though it wasn't actually useful.
Click to expand...

Samsung and Google fixed both the AOD and the navy buttons by the time the S9 was out. The AOD moves around every little while and the nav buttons do ever so slightly too. But I personally didn’t experience burn in on either Samsung devices, or my LG Urbane LTE (agree it’s still the most beautiful Wear OS watch). These days I’m on iPhone, and I’m really irritated that three years after switching to OLED (at least then on the iPhone X), they still haven’t implemented optional AOD. It is very useful to be able to glance quickly to see the time and notifications, and it may have impacted my battery life by .5% at most.
 
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