Just curious

[Mannbrad]

Screen wake auto or screen wake manual. Which is your preferred way?

[Rich_Laue]

The preferred way for you is the way that you preferr. 

Sorry but the answer is that simple. I am not you and you are not me. 

[Guy_]

Personally I would recommend Auto for normal usage, as its less tedious and can be done single handed.

However, there are times, eg at night [though that's another issue] or when doing a lot of arm movement where you don't want the screen to wake on sudden movement of the wrist.

There are also questions of battery usage.

• With Auto you can be sure to see the screen when you quickly raise your wrist but there can be instances where it comes on accidentally which uses a little energy from the battery but as long as you have the screen timeout set to the minimum it will make little difference.

• With manual, you have to have a free hand in order to wake the watch. Though I would switch to manual if you are constantly raising your arm, eg during manual labor.

"Always On" was introduced on some watches but that uses much more battery.

So those are some of the issues to consider for your personal preference as @Rich_Laue says.

[Mladen90]

I like the "always on" for the time and automatic wake up.

If the automatic one fails, i'm going with the hard double tap. 

During night, "sleep mode" with "always on" and automatic wake up deactivated. 

[Guy_]

@Mladen90how often do you charge your watch?

[Mladen90]

@Guy_

Charged it yesterday and after 24 hours i'm at 70/71%.

This is with normal usage and without GPS activities.

As watch face i'm using "Trace" from fitbit. 

[Guy_]

Without "Always On" I charge my Sense about once every 5/6 days, and by using Auto wake am not worried about hard double tap damaging the sensitive mechanisms over time [or annoying the neighbors! lol], as it always works with the correct movement, I can see the time single handedly each time.

Also the watch face I use tells me everything, including the time with seconds, its what I want to see when I look at the watch.

So my personal preference is to see the information I wish to see, not a subset of just time, and as a benefit get a longer battery life, so charge less often. Win-Win

Without "Always On", if the display blanks, it has the advantage for a short period of time, that a mere touch of the screen [or a single tap] will bring back the display, so one can use the shortest screen timeout freely.

[Rich_Laue]

For me the screen wake works so well that if I setup the always on, I am never able to view the AOD screen, it switches to the normal screen to fast. 

[Guy_]

I agree - so what is the point of Always On, except to run your battery down and deny access to normal features. Some people like it though all the same. Personally can't find a good reason for it.

[Mladen90]

It's a watch.

Having a black screen most of the time is not nice.

If i'm doing something and i can't move my wrist it's nice to see the time and date immediately(no, it's not happening every few minutes but it's happening to me and it's probably up to me to decide if it's worth or not)

I don't want always to rotate my wrist to see the time.

At the end it's just preference? If you think it's useless, you can keep it off and other people can keep it on.

I loved my cheap mi band for few years and i never had the "always on" screen but with a bigger screen i like to have it.

Also, one of the main reason that i loved my cheap mi band was the battery(2/3 weeks) and when i decided to switch, and had to choose between garmin, fitbit, polar, etc the battery was one of the critical features.

I wanted to go with Garmin but heard that they are bad with some health features(especially with sleep tracking) and, at the last minute, decided to go with the sense.

I tried it without "always on", with "always on", with and without auto wake up and liked it more with "always on" active and auto wake up.

Also, i discovered that i don't need 1 week+ battery but i need flexibility...i want to be able to choose when to charge it and also if i skip a day or two i'm still ok.

Being able to reach 3/4 days with the actual configuration is perfect for me.

And i agree with you that the wake up is working very well(especially compared, again, to my old cheap mi band) and one of the reason to have it active, also with the "always on" feature, is that when i stop to look at the watch the screen is going in low battery usage mode immediately and not after 10 secs.

Maybe in future i'll change my mind and switch it off...who knows 😄

[Rich_Laue]

@Guy_ I agree with you, for me this feature is useless

@Mannbrad I have to disagree, yes it is a watch, but since the invention, 50 years ago, of the LED digital watch the display was never on all the time.

It was only only LCD screens with always on. 

So why do we have an all ways on mode, users have been request in this feature since early 2004. This is why the Surge has an LCD screen.