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Watch face to be shown all the time?
- Thread starter Townboy2323
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This has been known for quite some time now. There is no setting to keep the watch face on, you can't even change the time out settings.
What advantage would this offer over wrist activation? With wrist activation every time I look at my Watch it's on. Why would I care if it's off the rest of the time?
If apple allowed us to control this setting, we would have thousands of people whining about their poor battery life after they set the display to always-on.
It'll take a few more years before technology is at the point where an always-on screen of the Apple Watch sort is possible.
The Pebble Time will manage it, but with a much simpler screen and many fewer colours and features.
The Pebble Time will manage it, but with a much simpler screen and many fewer colours and features.
Which is why they don't.
I think people who desire the always on functionality are simply used to having a traditional watch where the watch face is viewable 100% of the time. With a smartwatch such as the Apple Watch, it's unnecessary due to wrist activation. It''ll take time for this paradigm to shift.
It will never shift. From what I've seen, Apple Watch is the only proper smart watch without an always on display. I am wearing a smart watch right now which easily goes through 1-2 days, always on, with wrist activation too!
You and many others are trying to say that watches should not be viewable at all times, and that you should have to do a gesture, only because Apple haven't done it yet.
(BTW, always on with on OLED display has next to no effect on battery life.)
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That's not at all what I'm saying. What I am saying is that an always on display doesn't serve any practical function. Aesthetically it may be more pleasing, but from a functionality standpoint, it's useless.
It does have an effect on OLED screens. Are you talking about e ink or e paper?
Objectively speaking though, an always in screen is better than one you have to activate. Is it a necessity? Probably not.
See thats purely subjective. I dont care if the display is always on....especially if Im not looking at itnor do I think it looks better to be always on. I actually think it's weird. Plus there is potenital to run down the battery. Other smatwatch displays arent nearly as nice to look at. Id rather have a beatuful display to look at when I am looking at it than an always on display no matter how you slice it. Other people may prefer e-ink level or other significantly degraded always on displays. There are places you can get those.
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Well we're supporting the same point, ultimately both saying an always on screen is not essential.
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There's also a point of privacy to consider. If the face is always on, there's a potential for others to see personal information such as text messages. The way the device works now, only you can see that and when you put the watch down, it disappears. Even if there was the option to have the screen on all the time, that reason alone would have me using the raise to activate setting.
As I said earlier, this will require a paradigm shift for people to become accustomed to. It is NOT a traditional watch and therefore the presentation of its face will be different than one.
This. Nobody needs to know my doctors appointment. The face shows a lot of personal information meant to only seen by yourself.
Yes it does. I don't want to have to do a gesture to see the time. Just then, in fact, I checked the time by glancing down at my watch, while reading something with perfectly stationary hands.
I can't see exactly what I said from this page but I meant 'nearly no effect'. On OLED display only needs 5% percent of the pixels activated while showing only the time.
That's absurd. The Apple Watch currently only displays your message if you raise your wrist. Hypothetically, in the case the the Apple Watch had an always on display, the time would be visible only, unless the user raised their wrist.
The result? Time that is always on and viewable to everyone; notifications that are gesture based and viewable to no one, unless you raise the watch to your wrist (in which the animation begins, it shows the icon from the application, then the content.)
To be honest that would a pretty boring watch face with tiny text. So user experience would sub par.
However it'll be interesting to see that as a power saving option.
I read where someone always looked at their watch while typing at the keyboard (to keep track of when they had to leave). There must be lots of situations where it'd useful to look at your watch without waving your arm around.
By the way, you can keep the watch face on as long as you keep twiddling with the crown or if you lightly keep a finger on the corner of the screen. After you stop touching the crown/screen, the watch also stays on longer than if you did the gesture (over 15 seconds as opposed to about 5).
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I think using the timer or alarm is a more elegant solution for most of those tasks. As it allows you to concentrate on the task at hand, rather than on the watch.
I was reading on here about an LG watch. It has a always on screen and the battery lasts two days. Why can't Apple manage that?
Understand that I am coming from the side that would like the time to be displayed permanently.
But I know that even showing only 5% of pixels all the time is an infinitely higher power draw than if the display is off, so it is not going to have "next to" or "nearly no" effect on battery life.
Current OLED displays vary between 40%-300% of the energy consumption of a typical backlit LCD depending on what's being displayed. If I my watch hands are white (and they are set to white on my personal watch), that energy use can be 3 times than if they are red. And by comparison to LCDs, we can infer that because LCD-bearing devices save energy by disabling the backlight, OLED devices also save energy by shutting off the display.
Why else would the display shut off if it were not for saving energy?
Well, I can answer that one. I don't believe current OLED technology (that has been deployed) has fully addressed the short life of some of the colors, and the associated color shift as the color elements wear unevenly. So running a watch hands display at white with variable brightness will probably cause the center pixels of the display to fail earlier than some would be willing to retire their hardware.
Thus, I believe the blanking of the display serves two purposes: Longevity of display and battery.
If turning the display off didn't help, there'd probably be an option to allow it to stay on, and blank it at night or in necessary situations like at a theatre.
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I believe the LG uses a polymer OLED which is a different technology and extremely efficient. I can surmise that it didn't meet Apple's requirements for a display in its current technological state... there are probably limitations to color range, production volume, etc. EDIT: Oh, it seems the pixel density is lower than even the 42mm Apple Watch. But I don't know if Apple has publicly stated why they used the currently more traditional AMOLED.
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But most of the display is off anyway, while not displaying the graphics like a butterfly, or Mickey.
Longevity of the display is an interesting point, although well thought out in other operating systems. Android Wear, for example, is designed to move the watch face ever so slightly in each direction, every so often. This protects against burn in and other effects that you described., leading to the longevity of the display being unaffected.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, P-OLED only affects the materials used in the display. The general principal and efficiency is thus the same.
From what I've heard, the battery in the Apple Watch is only just above 200mAh. The LG G Watch R contains a 410mAh battery. The G Watch R is only slightly bigger.
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I'm not sure why everyone here always feels that Apples decisions are the best. Early iphone days, fanboys said there was not need for enterprise email/unique signatures (notice how until these were included BB was still going strong). When the Samsung Note series were out, the phone was too big, and apple would never go that big because of the thumb reach issue.
I would like to see 2 updates to this apple watch OS:
1. Give me the option to leave the watch face on all the time (maybe force the second hand off, when this option is on).
AND
2. when this feature is turned off, give me the option between 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60 second for the screen to stay on after raise motion.
By providing the CHOICE, the user can make the decision to forfeit battery life for the convenience of either the watch face always being on, or a happy medium of picking a comfortable remain on time for the users choice.
It would be very easy for apple to simply to indicate an Optimal setting for battery life (simply indicate to the user).
I would like to see 2 updates to this apple watch OS:
1. Give me the option to leave the watch face on all the time (maybe force the second hand off, when this option is on).
AND
2. when this feature is turned off, give me the option between 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60 second for the screen to stay on after raise motion.
By providing the CHOICE, the user can make the decision to forfeit battery life for the convenience of either the watch face always being on, or a happy medium of picking a comfortable remain on time for the users choice.
It would be very easy for apple to simply to indicate an Optimal setting for battery life (simply indicate to the user).