Apple Watch may get an always-on screen mode, suggests patent

Always-on screen feature, exclusive to OLED screens, keeps a certain portion of the display on even during the sleep mode.

The feature, seen on several devices, is used to show details like time, date, battery status, notifications among others.

However, the feature comes with two challenges: deterioration of battery-life and OLED display's susceptibility to burn-in.

It's the latter that Apple is working to resolve.

To address the issue of burn-in, Apple is patenting "burn-in statistics - which record historical usage information associated with a given OLED display."

These statistics can then be "used to artificially adjust the operation of the OLED display to substantially restore visual uniformity throughout its operation."

These statistics will be in form of a high-resolution, multiple-channel image that will require some amount of storage.

Given the fact Apple has patented a way to overcome burn-in, we might eventually see an always-on screen mode on Apple Watch.

This feature may also come to new generation iPhones with OLED panels - like the iPhone X and upcoming iPhone XS.

However, this is still a patent and there is no surety if it will come to production anytime soon.