Getting Some Color on My Watch
So, I was fiddling around the other day, looking at my wrist. Got this smartwatch, had it for a couple of years now. Still works fine, tells the time, counts my steps, the usual stuff. But honestly? It looked kinda boring. Just the same old numbers, same background. I saw some ads for the newer watches, all bright and colorful screens, looked pretty sharp.
That got me thinking. Could I get a bit more color onto my own watch? Didn’t want to buy a new one just for that. Seemed like a simple thing to try. So, I started digging into it.
First stop, the watch settings itself. Went through all the menus. Display settings, watch faces, themes, whatever they called it. Found the built-in options. Yeah, there were a few choices, maybe change the main color from white to blue, stuff like that. But nothing really exciting. Not the vibrant look I was hoping for.
Okay, next step. The app store for the watch. Fired up the phone app, went to the store section. Started searching. Typed in things like:
- color watch face
- bright display watch
- custom color theme
Got a whole load of results back. Lots of third-party faces. Some looked amazing in the preview pictures. Really colorful, detailed designs. Great, I thought. This is it.
Downloaded one that looked particularly cool. Lots of reds and blues. Installed it onto the watch. Took a minute or two. And boom! There it was on my wrist. Looked pretty good, definitely more colorful.
But then came the catch. Holy cow, the battery drain. My watch usually lasts easily through the day, sometimes two. With this fancy face? I could practically see the battery percentage dropping. By lunchtime, it was already complaining about low power. No way. A watch needs to, you know, watch the time all day. A dead watch is just jewelry.
Uninstalled that one. Okay, maybe it was just a badly made face. Tried another one. This one promised battery efficiency and color. Installed it. The battery was definitely better, not great, but better. But the colors… they just looked washed out on my screen. Muddy. Nothing like the preview image. Guess my older screen technology couldn’t really show off those bright colors properly. It looked cheap, frankly.
Tried a couple more. Same story. Either drained the battery like mad, or looked dull and disappointing on the actual watch. It started to feel like a waste of time. All this effort just to get some brighter colors? It’s funny how we chase these things. Back in the day, we were thrilled with a basic digital display. Now we expect tiny little HD screens on our wrists.
Back to Basics
So, I gave up on the fancy third-party stuff. Went back to the built-in watch faces. Took a closer look. Found one that was pretty plain, but it had an option to customize accent colors. Like, I could change the color of the hour numbers, the minute numbers, maybe the little icon for the date.
Played around with that for a bit. Set the background to black. Made the time display a nice bright green. Maybe the step count in yellow. Simple stuff. Not the explosion of color I first wanted, but you know what? It worked.
It gave the watch a little bit of personality. Made it feel less generic. And the best part? Battery life is exactly the same as before. Solid. Reliable.
It’s kinda funny. You go looking for something flashy, complex. You try all the new things. And in the end, you often come back to something simple that just works well. A little bit of color, chosen by me, that doesn’t break the basic function of the watch. That felt like a better result than some power-hungry, washed-out mess. Sometimes, less really is more, even when you’re just trying to add a splash of color.