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Series 5 Screen Flicker Problem

Nonentity

Nonentity

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 11, 2007
91
15
Anyone else with a Series 5 had problems with the screen flickering when raising your wrist? Or do I have a dud unit?

Only seems to happen in bright direct sunlight, I noticed it yesterday when out for a walk at lunch (ohone to capture it) and again this morning when walking the dog (did try to record it but you can’t really see anything).

It looks almost like the screen is stuck trying to get the refresh rate or brightness back up.
 
I think it's just animation that stuttered. It could be that the watch was doing something in the background then.
 
I noticed yesterday sitting with the screen dimmed but bright sunlight on the watch that it flickered a white screen every few seconds. Only seemed to happen in bright sunlight. I dunno what it’s doing.
 
Here’s my experience so far: I’ve gone through THREE different S5 Watches and all of them have suffered with this at least once in bright sunlight but there’s no consistency and does not happen all of the time.

It’s distracting when it happens but it fixes itself by lowering and raising again. I’m somewhat guessing it’s a software issues seeing as 3 different watches have all exhibited this behaviour and Apple just needs to iron out some of the creases with the new ambient sensor/display driver.

Here’s a video of what I’m referring to (please ignore the dog butt...):

https://imgur.com/a/JbfVmRz
 
Nonentity said:
Here’s my experience so far: I’ve gone through THREE different S5 Watches and all of them have suffered with this at least once in bright sunlight but there’s no consistency and does not happen all of the time.

It’s distracting when it happens but it fixes itself by lowering and raising again. I’m somewhat guessing it’s a software issues seeing as 3 different watches have all exhibited this behaviour and Apple just needs to iron out some of the creases with the new ambient sensor/display driver.

Here’s a video of what I’m referring to (please ignore the dog butt...):

https://imgur.com/a/JbfVmRz
Click to expand...
Still waiting on my Nike version, but that flickering would absolutely drive me crazy if it occurs.
 
I noticed something similar for the first time today with my series 5 when I was outside walking into my garage. AOD was on and the screen was dim but flickering. But when I turned my wrist and display turned fully on...it stopped. I noticed I can get it to flicker if the AOD is on and I turn the watch at a certain angle almost directly facing the sun. Grabbed my other series 5 and that did it as well. Weird as I played 18 holes on a bright sunny day for 5hrs last week and didn’t notice it. Nor the other times I was out doing yard work for hours. It’s like the direct sun causes the light sensor to bug out?
 
N54TT said:
I noticed something similar for the first time today with my series 5 when I was outside walking into my garage. AOD was on and the screen was dim but flickering. But when I turned my wrist and display turned fully on...it stopped. I noticed I can get it to flicker if the AOD is on and I turn the watch at a certain angle almost directly facing the sun. Grabbed my other series 5 and that did it as well. Weird as I played 18 holes on a bright sunny day for 5hrs last week and didn’t notice it. Nor the other times I was out doing yard work for hours. It’s like the direct sun causes the light sensor to bug out?
Click to expand...

Gotta admit, I’m relieved to hear it’s not just me seeing this 😅

I’m inclined to agree with you, it looks like the ambient sensor struggling to figure out what to do or the display driver struggling to ramp up the refresh rate.

What ever it is I hope it can be fixed via software.
 
I think this is more of a subtlety of the Apple Watch that someone has to notice, but they all seem to have some type of frequency of where they do have some screen flicker. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly common, but it probably depends if you can pick up on what to look for specifically.
 
Had a Nike series 5 for a week and just noticed this while sitting outside....seems to be in very bright sunshine ☀ and sometimes depends what application it’s displaying, hope it gets sorted with an update. Not sure I want to go through the hassle of an exchange as I’ve seen posts on the internet where people say it happened on second or even third watches. :rolleyes:
 
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