How did they make the watch brighter?

[Gmouse]

Am wondering about the increase in brightness. I bought a Gen0 Space Black watch, and have now bought a Gen2 Space Black watch, and it is definitely brighter.

I know one issue with brightness on the Gen0 was that the sapphire crystal used heavily darkened the display compared with the glass crystal. Since there is an ongoing controversy over the thickness or percentage of sapphire used in the camera cover, I was wondering if they did something to the sapphire crystal like make it thinner, make it two-part glass and sapphire, or something else to help the brightness--or, is it JUST a brighter OLED display?

Thanks.

 

[jermy4]

They could have changed the sapphire crystal on the stainless watches but there is definitely a brighter display on the series 2 watches because I don't think it's possible to double the light output by just changing the sapphire crystal and the doubled brightness is also on the ion-x/aluminum models too.

 

[Julien]

Most likely the OLED is being driven by a higher peak voltage ('brute force'). The display is only driven to 1000 nits when in bright sunlight. Doubling the light output (450 nits to 1000 Nits) requires about 10x as much power to do. So it is probably only done in extremely bright lighting conditions since it would sufficiently eat into battery life.