The big new feature on the Apple Watch Series 5 is its always-on display… From the outside, it’s hard to distinguish the Series 5 from the Series 4, unless you flip that bad boy over to see the “Series 5” printed on the bottom.
On the back of the display assembly, we hoped to get a closer look at what makes the always-on display tick. Apple stated that the Series 5 uses advanced display drivers, an improved power management chip, and an improved ambient light sensor compared to last year’s Series 4. But the real improvements are baked into the display tech invisible to the human eye, as detailed in our in-depth blog post on LTPO technology.
The improved, if not altogether new, ambient light sensor is visible in our X-rays, embedded under the OLED panel. But the built-in compass is new, and supposedly uses a very tiny gyroscope (and presumably some very fast math) to compensate for interference from the magnets inside the watch.
The battery is a hair bigger (1.4% in the 44 mm model) than in the Series 4 — which isn’t much, so the always-on display probably owes its existence mainly to the aforementioned efficiency improvements.
MacDailyNews Take: As most Apple Watch users will agree, a bigger battery, however slightly increased, is always welcome!
