Apple Watch Series 5 Display: Inner Workings that made Always on Display a possibility + iPhone 11 Pro Display

[DrMacintosh]

10 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Apple watch is water resistant to just 50m. I'm not gonna push it

50m is a significant depth (~164ft). The water pressure from your shower head isn’t going to overpower the water resistance. 

10 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

soap doesn't help gaskets remain well with time and it's a perfect time to charge it anyway since I don't need it that moment

I’ve had my Series 2 for almost 3 years. 2 of those years involved daily swim workouts in chlorinated water and I shower with it on almost every day. So while sure, you could conceivably wear down the gaskets with harsh soaps, I don’t really think it’s something to be concerned about. 

[Origami Cactus]

Idk, that whole thing sounds like apple being apple. Wanting to sound very smart, but not actually doing that much at all.

 

OLED always on displays have existed on smartwatches for atleast 4 years, and the battery usage caveat? I wouldn't consider 15% more battery usage over display being off "massive".

 

If apple had actually innovated they would have had always on seconds etc like the fossil 5th gen,  not first gen wear os level always on display.

 

Heck, i had a sony smartwatch 3, and it managed an always on display with an LCD, and it easily lasted over 2 days with it on, and j t had the nice feature of being able to use watch faces with white backgrounds because of it.

[RejZoR]

Yeah, LCD has that luxury since power consumption is the same with white or dark image. As for always on on other watches, there has to be some catch that Apple Watch couldn't do it all this time. If it's just Apple being lazy they'd look incredibly dumb if everyone else could do it but not them. Would be interested in seeing what is the real reason. Coz it's not like other watches have 1500mAh batteries or something...

[Fnige]

1 hour ago, Origami Cactus said:

Idk, that whole thing sounds like apple being apple. Wanting to sound very smart, but not actually doing that much at all.

 

OLED always on displays have existed on smartwatches for atleast 4 years, and the battery usage caveat? I wouldn't consider 15% more battery usage over display being off "massive".

 

If apple had actually innovated they would have had always on seconds etc like the fossil 5th gen,  not first gen wear os level always on display.

 

Heck, i had a sony smartwatch 3, and it managed an always on display with an LCD, and it easily lasted over 2 days with it on, and j t had the nice feature of being able to use watch faces with white backgrounds because of it.

ok, but they made a variable refresh rate from 60? to 1 refresh rate.

 

Let them be proud

[LAwLz]

I wish someone had kept updating this:

Spoiler

It's always like this. Apple fans swear they would not have any use for a specific feature Apple devices doesn't have, and then when Apple finally get around to introducing it they act like it's the best thing since sliced bread.

I can probably find dozen of posts on here talking about how smartwatches doesn't need an always on display because the gestures Apple implemented were flawless and never had any issues, etc. And now that the Apple watch has an always-on display it's the best thing ever etc... It gets tiring after a while.

[Blademaster91]

3 hours ago, Origami Cactus said:

Idk, that whole thing sounds like apple being apple. Wanting to sound very smart, but not actually doing that much at all.

 

OLED always on displays have existed on smartwatches for atleast 4 years, and the battery usage caveat? I wouldn't consider 15% more battery usage over display being off "massive".

 

If apple had actually innovated they would have had always on seconds etc like the fossil 5th gen,  not first gen wear os level always on display.

 

Heck, i had a sony smartwatch 3, and it managed an always on display with an LCD, and it easily lasted over 2 days with it on, and j t had the nice feature of being able to use watch faces with white backgrounds because of it.

I agree it annoys me other watches have had OLED always on displays for years, now Apple does it people are claiming its new. And it seems like an always on display feature could've been added to the watch 3 and 4, but they have to come up with a reason to get people buying a new watch every year, which is also a huge waste IMO as a watch shouldn't be something so disposable.

[TechyBen]

17 hours ago, BuckGup said:

It still boggles my mind they couldn't figure out wireless charging but they can do this.

You might find this they just buy of another company as the tech improves bit by bit. Where as the charger was all in house. (Think about it for one second, how many actual Apple employes are OLED experts vs experts in finding the OLED expert manufactures).

[TechyBen]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Yeah, LCD has that luxury since power consumption is the same with white or dark image. As for always on on other watches, there has to be some catch that Apple Watch couldn't do it all this time. If it's just Apple being lazy they'd look incredibly dumb if everyone else could do it but not them. Would be interested in seeing what is the real reason. Coz it's not like other watches have 1500mAh batteries or something...

Patents or just good old power usage of the tech/chips/panels.

[RedRound2]

 

6 hours ago, Origami Cactus said:

Idk, that whole thing sounds like apple being apple. Wanting to sound very smart, but not actually doing that much at all.

 

OLED always on displays have existed on smartwatches for atleast 4 years, and the battery usage caveat? I wouldn't consider 15% more battery usage over display being off "massive".

OLED has been on AW since the very first one. Where did you get the 15% figure? Any sources. The AW battery is tiny, so an AOD would hit it hard. A tiny always on clock on the S series smartphones makes a huge impact on battery life, especially considering this phone has about 3500 mAh

6 hours ago, Origami Cactus said:

If apple had actually innovated they would have had always on seconds etc like the fossil 5th gen,  not first gen wear os level always on display.

They could've easily added a second hand? But what's the point? Like how is the trade off of having a second hand outweigh a much better battery life due to low refresh rate? You're just finding reasons to harp on Apple. It's sad.

6 hours ago, Origami Cactus said:

Heck, i had a sony smartwatch 3, and it managed an always on display with an LCD, and it easily lasted over 2 days with it on, and j t had the nice feature of being able to use watch faces with white backgrounds because of it.

Yeah, but AW also does heart rate monitoring, GPS, 4G (on cellular models), constant Inertial data, workout tracking, etc constantly while in sleep mode. There's a lot more than maintaining a bluetooth connection that an AW does.

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I wish someone had kept updating this:

 

It's always like this. Apple fans swear they would not have any use for a specific feature Apple devices doesn't have, and then when Apple finally get around to introducing it they act like it's the best thing since sliced bread.

I can probably find dozen of posts on here talking about how smartwatches doesn't need an always on display because the gestures Apple implemented were flawless and never had any issues, etc. And now that the Apple watch has an always-on display it's the best thing ever etc... It gets tiring after a while.

Any particular person in specific? I have never said AoD is a useless feature. While I am one of the people who can get by without it, i know a lot of instances and people who always want the watch face to be on. It's a welcome feature that had a technical hurdle up until this point,

 

What I like about Apple in specific is they usually come up with a much more practical implementation in so many features and aspects. Just today, they found that the matte finish on the new iPhone is dubbed as 'Metal Glass" apple patented a while back, that prevents it from being susceptible to scratches, unlike the Pixel (check out jerry rig everything and it's surprisingly durable)

 

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

I agree it annoys me other watches have had OLED always on displays for years, now Apple does it people are claiming its new. And it seems like an always on display feature could've been added to the watch 3 and 4, but they have to come up with a reason to get people buying a new watch every year, which is also a huge waste IMO as a watch shouldn't be something so disposable.

It's not new. Apple never said it was new. This is problem with haters. You guys just make up shit. AW is objectively the best smartwatch by a mile in terms of features and functionality. And till series 4 they could maintain the same 1-2 day battery life with all those great features. Now, they somehow, added an AoD and promise the same battery life as before. That's not slapping on a technology. They legitimately did something to achieve that. And their implementation, doesn't come at any cost, unless you count the second hand. 

[RejZoR]

@RedRound2

Do you have any info on heart rate monitoring, noise monitoring and fall detection/gyro is what drains battery so much with Apple Watch compared to others that also have Always-On display but last for days with one charge on same battery capacity?

[Origami Cactus]

28 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

 

OLED has been on AW since the very first one. Where did you get the 15% figure? Any sources. The AW battery is tiny, so an AOD would hit it hard. A tiny always on clock on the S series smartphones makes a huge impact on battery life, especially considering this phone has about 3500 mAh

They could've easily added a second hand? But what's the point? Like how is the trade off of having a second hand outweigh a much better battery life due to low refresh rate? You're just finding reasons to harp on Apple. It's sad.

I literally used multiple generations of wear OS watches, researched them all etc.

 

I just don't get it why they jump on their big research, when there isn't anything new.

The oled android Wear watches also slowed down their refreshrates in ambient mode.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, RedRound2 said:

Any particular person in specific? I have never said AoD is a useless feature. While I am one of the people who can get by without it, i know a lot of instances and people who always want the watch face to be on. It's a welcome feature that had a technical hurdle up until this point,

 

What I like about Apple in specific is they usually come up with a much more practical implementation in so many features and aspects. Just today, they found that the matte finish on the new iPhone is dubbed as 'Metal Glass" apple patented a while back, that prevents it from being susceptible to scratches, unlike the Pixel (check out jerry rig everything and it's surprisingly durable)

I think @LAwLz just means people in general passing off features as being useless because Apple hadn't decided to add it, like the Apple fans laughing at iPhones having large bezels when people used to say their iPhone with bezels and a home button was the best thing ever.

And as JerryRigEverything said "Glass is glass and glass breaks".  A phone with a glass back is still dumb no matter how much a company wants to brag about its scratch resistance, it's still going to break in a drop which is much more likely than scratching so long as you don't put your car keys in the same pocket. The Pixel 3 is also significantly cheaper than the iPhone 11 Pro Max that JerryRigEverything tested so the two aren't even comparable.

1 hour ago, RedRound2 said:

It's not new. Apple never said it was new. This is problem with haters. You guys just make up shit. AW is objectively the best smartwatch by a mile in terms of features and functionality. And till series 4 they could maintain the same 1-2 day battery life with all those great features. Now, they somehow, added an AoD and promise the same battery life as before. That's not slapping on a technology. They legitimately did something to achieve that. And their implementation, doesn't come at any cost, unless you count the second hand. 

No you're just overreacting, valid criticisms aren't finding reasons or hating on anything. Yeah the keyword there is objectively, it might be the best watch for you, but not everyone wants to buy an iPhone just to have an Apple watch. Plenty of watches have had OLED displays for years, now that Apple is using always on display tech you're saying it's the best, an always on display isn't really a reason to upgrade unless you have to show off you've got the latest watch. Is there an option to turn off the always on display? If there is the battery life would be even better and would actually be a reason to upgrade if you own a series 3 or 4.

[Commodus]

11 hours ago, 79wjd said:

The Gear line is still an excellent Android alternative. Pretty comparable to an Apple Watch imo.

You mean Galaxy Watch (the Gear name has been phased out)!

 

I'd say they're good, but they still have some significant gotchas, like tiny storage (4GB versus 32GB on an Apple Watch S5), finicky control on some models, a shallow app ecosystem... and, well, Bixby.  Google Assistant and Siri are elegant geniuses by comparison.

[BuckGup]

3 hours ago, TechyBen said:

You might find this they just buy of another company as the tech improves bit by bit. Where as the charger was all in house. (Think about it for one second, how many actual Apple employes are OLED experts vs experts in finding the OLED expert manufactures).

Yeah this isn't just exclusive to Apple though. Any company big enough will buy the competition and integrate it than try to develop their own

[RedRound2]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

@RedRound2

Do you have any info on heart rate monitoring, noise monitoring and fall detection/gyro is what drains battery so much with Apple Watch compared to others that also have Always-On display but last for days with one charge on same battery capacity?

It constantly has its microphone on, listening for siri and making sure sound levels are low. It periodically keeps checking your heart rate. Gyro is also always monitored and running in the background. GPS, cellular and bluetooth are always on. What makes you think that none of these things consumes any battery? Please link me to another smartwatch that actually beat the Apple Watch in most if not all respects. You won't. And it's pretty much a universally accepted fact at this point that AW is miles ahead the competition in smartwatches.

2 hours ago, Origami Cactus said:

I literally used multiple generations of wear OS watches, researched them all etc.

I just don't get it why they jump on their big research, when there isn't anything new.

The oled android Wear watches also slowed down their refreshrates in ambient mode.

It's not about OLED. Where do you people get the idea that Apple was talking about OLED that resulted in this power savings. Did you even read the original post. It says precisely how Apple was able to achieve this without affecting battery life too much. Do you have any sources for other watches going to 1Hz refresh rate, in ambient mode? It's not as easy as downclocking the refresh rate

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

I think @LAwLz just means people in general passing off features as being useless because Apple hadn't decided to add it, like the Apple fans laughing at iPhones having large bezels when people used to say their iPhone with bezels and a home button was the best thing ever.

Nobody said that uge bezels in iPhone 7/8 were good. Maybe one or two but you're not allowed to generalize. And if they did, there's a good chance they still want the same kind of design back, with touch ID.

Even iPhone 11 in the front looks dated. I understand the notch due to face ID, but the side bezels are too big for today's standards.

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

And as JerryRigEverything said "Glass is glass and glass breaks".  A phone with a glass back is still dumb no matter how much a company wants to brag about its scratch resistance, it's still going to break in a drop which is much more likely than scratching so long as you don't put your car keys in the same pocket. The Pixel 3 is also significantly cheaper than the iPhone 11 Pro Max that JerryRigEverything tested so the two aren't even comparable.

So I presume you didn't watch the video. Yes it's not indestructible. But it's pretty much scratch resistant to anything below 6, which keys, coins, razor blades, nails fall below. The Pixel 3 on the other hand scratched very easily. At what're you talking about that they aren't the same class of phones. Pixel launched at 899 i believe and iPhone costs 999, that $100 difference isn't going to bring on wonders in material science.

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

No you're just overreacting, valid criticisms aren't finding reasons or hating on anything. Yeah the keyword there is objectively, it might be the best watch for you, but not everyone wants to buy an iPhone just to have an Apple watch.

Apple Watch is the best. There's no question about it. Link me a better watch, or link me to a review that says X watch has so much features and functionality than the AW. Yes, it needs to be paired with iPhones, but iOS vs Android is a whole different conversation, and has nothing to do with the watch itself. 

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Plenty of watches have had OLED displays for years, now that Apple is using always on display tech you're saying it's the best, an always on display isn't really a reason to upgrade unless you have to show off you've got the latest watch. Is there an option to turn off the always on display? If there is the battery life would be even better and would actually be a reason to upgrade if you own a series 3 or 4.

There isn't any noticeable battery improvement in turning off the AoD. And that's a testament to Apple's technology here. That is the whole fucking point of the post. To show that Apple found a way to do it without killing the battery. And an AoD maybe isn't important to you and hence not worth the upgrade, but for people like Linus, that was the deal breaker of the AW uptil series 4

[RejZoR]

@RedRound2

I mean, I already own the Apple Watch 5 and I love it, but I haven't had any other "smart watch" so far to know the differences that could result in such difference in power consumption. Especially with likes of Huawei GT2 that also has AoD and lasts up to 2 weeks. I'm just wondering what those lack so they can last so long with essentially same battery capacity compared to Apple Watch.

[Commodus]

34 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

@RedRound2

I mean, I already own the Apple Watch 5 and I love it, but I haven't had any other "smart watch" so far to know the differences that could result in such difference in power consumption. Especially with likes of Huawei GT2 that also has AoD and lasts up to 2 weeks. I'm just wondering what those lack so they can last so long with essentially same battery capacity compared to Apple Watch.

The Huawei Watch GT 2 isn't really a smartwatch in the sense that it's an entirely closed platform that doesn't do much..  You can't add apps to it; it's more of a fitness band on steroids.  To borrow from Top Gear: you don't need a rocket motor to power a soufflé.

[Poofu]

19 hours ago, 79wjd said:

Out of curiosity, what's the battery life with the AOD?

Seems just fine to me, I get to bed with about 25% remaining. 

[Drak3]

On 9/26/2019 at 6:06 PM, Suika said:

I mean, the Apple Watch still has a relatively large caveat in the fact that you need to own an iPhone.

The screen runs at 1Hz to manage it, and there are multiple threads on MacRumors talking about the Series 5 having worse battery life than the Series 4 (some speculation that watchOS 6 is partially to blame).

Both are rated at 18 hours, but maybe Apple isn't underselling the Series 5 as much as they did with the 4.

20 hours ago, 79wjd said:

Out of curiosity, what's the battery life with the AOD?

Best case scenario, a bit worse than the Series 4

[RedRound2]

9 hours ago, RejZoR said:

@RedRound2

I mean, I already own the Apple Watch 5 and I love it, but I haven't had any other "smart watch" so far to know the differences that could result in such difference in power consumption. Especially with likes of Huawei GT2 that also has AoD and lasts up to 2 weeks. I'm just wondering what those lack so they can last so long with essentially same battery capacity compared to Apple Watch.

A basic Google search will give you the answer to your question. They quote 22 hour battery life if the GPS, hear rate and exercise monitoring is turned on continually. There's no mention if Always on Display is enabled , but I could gather that it isn't enabled by default (probably to save the aforementioned battery)

 

And third, manufacturers quoting battery life and real world performance are two different things. There's no reviews out about the watch anywhere and its stupid to claim that this watch is amazing based on some figures the company put out.

[Suika]

3 hours ago, Drak3 said:

The screen runs at 1Hz to manage it, and there are multiple threads on MacRumors talking about the Series 5 having worse battery life than the Series 4 (some speculation that watchOS 6 is partially to blame).

Both are rated at 18 hours, but maybe Apple isn't underselling the Series 5 as much as they did with the 4.

Err... did you quote the wrong person?

[RejZoR]

8 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

A basic Google search will give you the answer to your question. They quote 22 hour battery life if the GPS, hear rate and exercise monitoring is turned on continually. There's no mention if Always on Display is enabled , but I could gather that it isn't enabled by default (probably to save the aforementioned battery)

 

And third, manufacturers quoting battery life and real world performance are two different things. There's no reviews out about the watch anywhere and its stupid to claim that this watch is amazing based on some figures the company put out.

 

I don't know why you act so defensive, I'm just asking if you know the specifics for differences in general. If I had intention to bash Apple Watch I wouldn't own one...

 

Btw, do you know how is with LTPO displays? Do they have any burn in issues since they are some sort of OLED type? Asking coz now display is always on and showing basically the same dial most of the time.

[RedRound2]

18 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I don't know why you act so defensive, I'm just asking if you know the specifics for differences in general. If I had intention to bash Apple Watch I wouldn't own one...

When did i get defensive? I just stated the facts. The quoted 2 week battery life is only achievable when most of the functions are disabled, and hence you can't compare that to the Apple Watch. You asked me if GPS, heart rate, etc consumes a lot of power and Huawei themselves say that it will only last 22 hours if you do enable it. And all these figures are quoted by the first party, which has historically been never accurate.

Probably even Apple Watch would last a week or two, if all it did was show the time, and it only actively tracked your activity 1.5 hours during an entire week

Quote

Btw, do you know how is with LTPO displays? Do they have any burn in issues since they are some sort of OLED type? Asking coz now display is always on and showing basically the same dial most of the time.

The fundamental technology is still OLED. They still use organic compounds between the two conductors, which is the reason for the burn in. But Apple prevents this from ever happening by employing software mitigations by shifting the pixels occasionally and thereby turning off the pixel that remained turned on before. 

Also most OLEDs found in high end devices like will only burn in after really really long hours, even if the image was static. So I really wouldn't worry about it at all.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, VegetableStu said:

so MKBHD wasn't too hot on the battery usage impact on the always-on display ._. (although it'll have to wait till he posts the review video to see how he uses it)

So all this masturbation about how "Apple are the only ones who managed to bring this feature without any battery impact!" and yet it doesn't seem to fare that much better than the competition. 

 

A shame but also kind of expected. At least people got the choice now if they want it out not. 

[Commodus]

29 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So all this masturbation about how "Apple are the only ones who managed to bring this feature without any battery impact!" and yet it doesn't seem to fare that much better than the competition. 

 

A shame but also kind of expected. At least people got the choice now if they want it out not. 

I have an S5 and it's been comparable to what I was getting with an S3 when it was still fairly fresh.  I suspect the always-on display can be more taxing depending on the particular face or complications, but I haven't had to worry about getting through a day (and then some) with the feature enabled.