Competition for Garmin's solar smartwatches: Leak points to Amazfit solar watch

Smartwatches like the Garmin Fenix 8 Solar ($849 on Amazon) combine a very energy-efficient MiP display with solar cells integrated into the display, which can extend battery life in power-saving mode from 48 days to 107 days. However, Garmin is gradually moving away from this technology and now offers the Fenix 8 Pro, for example, only with AMOLED or microLED displays; the latter version achieves a battery life of just 14 days, even in power-saving mode.

Amazfit could fill this market gap. In fact, Gadgets & Wearables was able to find several references to such a smartwatch in the code of the Zepp Health app, version 10.5.0. The data fields “lux,” “panelType,” and “status” in the “SolarBatteryChargeRecord” category were already present in older app versions. However, the latest app version significantly expands the solar functionality. For example, the code includes “solar intensity,” complete with a description stating that this value indicates the light intensity to which the device’s surface is currently exposed.

With “watch_face_input_power” and “case_back_input_power,” the app apparently can already distinguish how much energy was charged via solar cells or via the charger. "SolarIntensityAction" allows users to control a solar function that has not yet been defined, while "SolarIntensitySyncJob" synchronizes the "SolarIntensity" data between the smartwatch and the smartphone app. These clues indicate that Amazfit is working on at least one smartwatch with solar cells, though it is not yet known if or when it will be released.

Since solar cells would only minimally extend the battery life of a smartwatch with an AMOLED display, it’s reasonable to assume that Amazfit, just like Garmin’s solar models, will opt for a more energy-efficient display, likely a transflective LCD, often referred to as MiP or ePaper. With the Amazfit Bip S, the manufacturer already launched a smartwatch with such a display back in 2020, which was able to achieve a battery life of 40 days even without solar cells.