Always-On Display
If you’ve been wearing an Apple Watch for years, you’ve probably gotten so used to raising your wrist to simply check the time that you don’t even think much of it any more. However, traditional watch users know that this is not the way it’s supposed to be, and there are lots of situations in which it would be handy to glance at the time without calling it to everybody’s attention or risk spilling the cup of coffee that you’re carrying.
It may sound like a really small thing, but after using the Apple Watch Series 5 for only three days, I can say that the always-on display is a complete game changer. It not only allows you to tell the time at a glance without having to make socially awkward gestures, but when used with one of the more traditional analog watch faces, it also makes the Apple Watch look like a much classier timepiece.
To be clear, the new display isn’t fully on all the time; Apple still has to make concessions to maximizing battery life, but in the Apple Watch Series 5, the display goes into a dimmed standby mode where it only refreshes once per minute in order to keep the time updated. Notifications still won’t appear until you raise your wrist, and you can even choose to hide complications that contain sensitive information, but you’ll still be able to tell the time by simply glancing at it, which is the most important thing.