Malcolm Owen
The Apple Watch Series 10 will get a new display, with a report claiming changes will be made to the OLED panel that could extend the battery life.
The advanced display of the Apple Watch has helped reduce the power consumption of the wearable over time. For the Series 10 device, it may get a newer one that could save even more power.
Tuesday's report from The Elec claims that Apple will be using a new low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) thin-film transistor (TFT) technology in the OLED display of the Series 10, which the report believes will be out later in 2024.
The use of LTPO TFT so far has only been applied to some switching TFTs in the Apple Watch display panel, with the older LTPS used for other switching TFTs and driving TFTs. Under the new version, LTPO will be used on more of the TFTs, including the driving TFTs.
LTPS will apparently still be used, but only on remaining TFTs and circuits outside the viewable pixel area.
The change is being keenly observed by display producers, due to the potential for the increased use of the newer technology to be expanded to other devices, such as the iPhone. Apple previously used LTPO on the Apple Watch before applying it to the iPhone, and it could follow the same pattern again.
For the iPhone 16, the Pro and Pro Max models are expected to use LTPO TFTs, but all four iPhone 17 models could use the technology.
While The Elec isn't that strong when it comes to product feature rumors, it does tend to do well when it comes to supply chain stories. Given the subject matter, it seems more likely than not that Apple would investigate increased LTPO TFT usage in this way.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
William Gallagher
5 Comments
Even if true, Apple will just add more functionality (a good thing) to eat into that power budget, with a net change of zero.
I miss-read the title, I thought it was saying it sips more power. Anyways, RE4 on Apple Watch when?
why don't they do what Google is doing with hybrid os. which will easily double battery life this is already on one-plus watch which already gives 4days of battery life . this has a separate os for app based interaction and rr very low power os which is for basically takes no battery. like how Amazfit runs for a week but that is very very basic.
this uses the low power co-processor to handle the less tasking stuff
this will come to pixel watch 3 and could also be updated to pixel watch 2 but this was done with big time help from one-plus . 100 one-plus engineers worked on this and then integrated with Google