A couple questions regarding the always-on display

ivarhill

Hello,

I'm new to this community and to both GrapheneOS and Android altogether. I've been using iOS for a few years, but have been wanting to distance myself from reliance on big tech so I got a Pixel 7 this week and installed GrapheneOS on it. So far it's worked fantastically for the most part, and it's been an absolute joy to use.

I have a few smaller questions about the always-on display feature - I believe this technically pertains more to Android/AOSP overall rather than GrapheneOS specifically, so if this is outside the scope of these forums, I would appreciate directions to a place where it might be more relevant.

In general I really appreciate this feature, coming from an older iPhone where this is not a thing at all. More specifically it's really nice to be able to have the phone lying on my desk and always be able to glance at it to check the current time.

I did find, however, that whenever there is a pending notification, currently playing music, and so on, the design of the AOD shifts to a much smaller clock in the corner and mostly empty space everywhere else. I would much prefer if the AOD always displays the big vertical clock regardless of what the actual lockscreen displays, since that makes it much easier to check the current time at a glance. Is there any way to do this? I searched for a while online but all I could find is people wanting to do the opposite - only show the tiny clock - so I haven't had much luck there.

On a related note, can someone confirm that the always-on display does some form of pixel shifting to prevent OLED burn-in? I haven't been able to spot this with the naked eye so I'm unsure and would rather turn if off if this is a factor.

Again I apologize if this is outside the scope of these forums since it's less strictly related to GrapheneOS - nonetheless, would appreciate answers! Thank you all for your time, and special thanks to everyone in the Matrix room who has been hugely helpful in helping me get started! GrapheneOS has been a fantastic experience so far and I really appreciate how helpful the community is :)

matchboxbananasynergy

Hey there! Good to see you on the forum too. :)

I briefly looked this, and as far as I can tell, when notifications are present, either something like music playing or a message coming in, the clock shifts up instead of being front and center.

If you notice the setting for the double-line clock, it says "show double-line clock when available". It seems to me that they haven't really designed the double-line clock to work well alongside any kind of notification, so it defaults to being smaller and on the top. I suspect the exact same behavior would be present on Stock OS. It would be nice to be able to configure this further, but I don't think it's currently possible.

ivarhill On a related note, can someone confirm that the always-on display does some form of pixel shifting to prevent OLED burn-in? I haven't been able to spot this with the naked eye so I'm unsure and would rather turn if off if this is a factor.

I believe it does. I can try to look into it and further and I will circle back to confirm and deny once I have.

ivarhill

Thank you for the quick response! I did figure that maybe the current AOD clock behavior is probably hardcoded, and of course it's not really a huge deal. I'll just keep the default behavior which works alright.

On the pixel shifting, yes, I would very much appreciate a closer look at that - that is far more important than the clock design :)

Thanks for all the help!

ivarhill

Remained a bit curious about whether there is any degree of burn-in protection by shifting pixels around, and came across a link to this part of the AOSP source code:

https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/master:frameworks/base/services/core/java/com/android/server/policy/BurnInProtectionHelper.java?q=BurnIn&ss=android%2Fplatform%2Fsuperproject

Assuming GrapheneOS doesn't change that and does indeed implement it, seems like it should indeed be making a difference!

Elk9877

By the way, is there any way to schedule the Always On Display? On my old Samsung this was possible, so I just had it on at night to use it as a clock in the dark, but not during the day to save battery.

Viewpoint0232

Does the always-on display turn off when you put the phone in your pocket or with the screen down? I read online that Android does that but I'm not sure if it's really part of Android or something that other vendors like Samsung add. I put the phone with the screen down on the table but I don't think the clock on the always-on display disappeared...

other8026

Viewpoint0232 mine does. You can test by covering the top of your phone with something like your hand. I guess the sensor is next to the selfie camera.

Viewpoint0232

other8026

You are right! Thank you @other8026

It takes a while to turn off (15 seconds?) and then turns on immediately so I wasn't able to confirm it by putting it on the desk. A bit like "does the light in the fridge really go off when I close the door?"