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The Apple Watch Series 5 is the first of Apple's smartwatches to offer a permanent display, so you do not have to lift your wrist to see the time – one of the few features offered by Wear OS. This upgrade is made possible by a change of screen technology on the Apple Watch, and we will explain how it works.
First of all, though, a brief history of the intelligent timepiece: the first Apple Watch appeared, you may remember, in 2015, and it was … not fantastic. It comes with an excellent OLED display and impressive hardware design, but we found it slow, tedious to use, and slow – and that includes the time it took the watch to lift your wrist to look at it.
After all, is not it the main work of a watch? To tell the time? You can say that a wrist shot is not an exercise too painful to see what time it is, but it's often when your hands are busy doing something else – driving a car, taking the subway, wash clothes dishes – when you need to take a look at the time.
Either that or you have to check the time surreptitiously. When you're chatting in a bar or attending a meeting, it's not the best way to lift your wrist in front of you to wake the screen of the Apple Watch – people will inevitably think you have a better place to to be.
Among the Apple Watch upgrades we've seen since 2015, very few of them involve the display, which has remained virtually unchanged until now. We've seen added cellular connectivity, improved speed and performance, and more and more monitoring dials, but the design has not changed much.
The brightness has been increased with the "second generation" OLED display of the Apple Watch Series 2, but the size and screen technology have not really changed since the # Apple Watch Series 4 from last year. 44mm (from 38mm to 42mm), as well as the introduction of display technology whose permanent functionality is now being exploited: LTPO OLED.
That's right: the flagship functionality of the Apple Watch 5 was in fact also integrated with Apple Watch 4, but Apple did not take full advantage of it. This is probably because the battery life was not efficient enough or there was a technical barrier that prevented the technology from being fully utilized until 2019, or Apple would need to refine the equipment.
Whatever the reason, it's here now thanks to something called LTPO – low temperature polycrystalline oxide, or, in the case of Apple, polysilicon and low temperature oxide (a special variant developed by Apple).
While Apple did not overly detail how the Apple Watch 5 screen is assembled, iFixit experts have provided an excellent explanator: like any screen, this one is composed of layers, including the pixels themselves. and the circuits that control them (called backplanes).
What Apple is doing here is mixing two types of screen circuit technology and making the most of both. First, there is low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS), the energy-saving technology found in many high-end OLED (including iPhones) phone backplanes, which essentially controls whether a pixel is on or off.
Secondly, we have the most innovative IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) technology, which dictates the voltage supplied to each pixel, its brightness and the particular blend of red, green and blue it uses for its color. IGZO circuits are already used in some Apple products, including iPads and MacBooks.
One of the end results is a variable refresh rate, as low as 1Hz (one refresh per second). Obviously, this is not enough to keep the second hand moving, but you only need to tell you the time and number of steps you have made in a day. This reduced refresh rate also reduces power consumption and, combined with the dimmed brightness, the battery life all day can be preserved.
It's something that Apple has already done; the feature is implemented differently from the Apple Watch, but the iPad Pro feature ProMotion technology, able to change the refresh rate on the fly to improve responsiveness or save energy.
The excellent energy efficiency of the LTPS and the way IGZO handles bass frequencies very well also help to make the Apple Watch 5 screen special. Of course, it is easier to manipulate this type of display circuit on a smaller scale. It must wait a while before it appears on Apple phones and tablets.
LTPO does not work alone, according to Apple. "Several advanced technologies are working together to deliver this new feature, including the industry's only LTPO (polysilicon and low temperature oxide) display, an ultra-low-power display circuit, an integrated power management IC, and a new ambient light sensor, "explained the company.
It's a combination of these technologies that allows for permanent display and goes beyond what the Apple Watch 4, which is sporty for the LPTO, has been able to do. As iFixit points out, space is also a consideration. Anything that Apple does to improve the performance or functionality of its notebook must fit into the chassis dimensions that are imposed on it.
As noted by IHS Markit analysts last year, the LTPO has its challenges, including manufacturing complications and problems related to increasing the resolution to be up to standard LTPS displays ( without IGZO). In the end, the investment could be worth it in terms of energy efficiency – and Apple will probably have at least one eye on collapsible screens a little later.
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