Garmin's next smartwatch could feature a cheaper and more efficient OLED display with solar-powered charging
Last week, it emerged that Garmin could bring ECG functionality to the Venu 2 Plus, one of its latest smartwatches. Additionally, a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) filing appeared to confirm last month that the company was also developing a solar-powered smartwatch with an OLED display.
However, it turns out that Garmin has registered another patent with the USPTO, as discovered by TechRadar. According to the website, the second patent describes reducing the cost of producing OLED displays. In short, Garmin hopes to use as few materials as possible to produce these panels for smartwatches. Apparently, Garmin will improve the efficiency of photovoltaic regions between OLED sub-pixels. If the company can achieve this, it would not need to use thicker metal electrodes or a gold layer to improve connectivity.
TechRadar adds that Garmin could also combine these more efficient OLED displays with its solar charging technologies, which it reserves for its transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP) displays. Currently, it is unclear when or whether Garmin will make this technology commercially available. The two patents that have recently appeared suggest that the company is working towards something, though.
