Choosing Your Precision: 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 Decimal Places?
Precision, in an age counter, is how many digits you see after the decimal point, and the right setting depends on what you want the number to do. Two decimals give you a number that is effectively still; ten give you one that never stops moving. There is no correct answer, but there are clear trade-offs, and knowing how fast each digit moves makes the choice easy.
How fast each digit moves
Age in years is elapsed time divided by a year of 365.2425 days, which is 31,556,952 seconds. One step in the nth decimal place is therefore 31,556,952 ÷ 10ⁿ seconds. That gives:
- 2 decimals: one step every 3.65 days
- 3 decimals: every 8.8 hours
- 4 decimals: every 53 minutes
- 5 decimals: every 5.3 minutes
- 6 decimals: every 32 seconds
- 7 decimals: every 3.2 seconds
- 8 decimals: every 0.32 seconds
- 9 decimals: every 32 milliseconds
- 10 decimals: every 3.2 milliseconds, about 317 times per second
Every setting shows the same underlying value; higher precision just shows more of it. The maths article goes deeper, including which of those digits actually carry information about your birth.
Two decimals: the calm number
31.67
The number changes while you are not looking, roughly twice a week. It reads like a statistic rather than a counter. Choose this if you want the reminder without the motion, if you are using a widget that updates infrequently, or if you find a moving number distracting.
Battery cost is nil; the counter can draw once and sleep.
Four decimals: a daily change
31.6712
The last digit moves roughly once an hour, so the number is different every time you unlock your phone but never visibly changes in front of you. This is a good default for a widget: it looks alive over the course of a day and never skips, because Android’s widget refresh schedule is comfortably faster than one step an hour.
Six decimals: a visible tick
31.671205
Now the last digit changes every half-minute. If you look at the home screen for a moment, you will probably see it move. This is the setting people tend to describe as “a clock that shows something other than the time”: clearly a counter, clearly running, still fully readable.
Six is about the highest setting that still works well on a widget. The wallpaper handles it without effort.
Eight decimals: the flow begins
31.67120533
The last digit changes about three times a second and the one before it every 32 seconds. This is where the number starts to feel like it is flowing rather than ticking. It is readable if you look at the leading digits and let the tail blur.
At this rate a wallpaper needs to redraw several times a second while visible, so battery cost starts to be measurable, though still small, and it is only while the home screen is in front. On a widget, this setting will visibly skip, because widgets cannot refresh three times a second.
Ten decimals: the blur
31.6712053327
The last digit changes hundreds of times a second, faster than the screen can show. The wallpaper redraws at the display’s refresh rate, and the last two or three digits become a moving blur with the occasional readable frame. People either love this or find it too much; there is not a lot of middle ground.
This is the setting for “watching time pass” as an experience. It is also the most expensive setting for battery while the home screen is visible, roughly comparable to a light game. It costs nothing while the screen is off or you are in another app. The widget does not offer it, since a widget could never keep up.
Widget and wallpaper together
A common arrangement is a widget at 2 to 4 decimals for glancing, and the wallpaper at 8 to 10 for the motion. The two agree on the leading digits and differ only in how much of the tail they show.
A few practical notes
- Width. More digits means a wider number. A ten-decimal counter for someone in their thirties is thirteen characters. On a narrow face or a small widget it may need a smaller size, or a face designed to wrap the decimals onto a second line.
- Tabular figures. All good counter faces use fixed-width digits so the number does not wobble as digits change. If a face jitters horizontally at high precision, that is a font problem, not a precision problem.
- Try it before deciding. Precision is a preference. Set 10, look at it for a day, and turn it down if it wears on you. Or start at 4 and turn it up. Nothing is lost either way.
Setting precision in TimeBorn
TimeBorn’s wallpaper offers 2 to 10 decimals and its widget 2 to 7, with the redraw rate following the setting so low precision costs nothing and high precision flows. Every one of the twenty-four faces supports every precision, and the home page has a counter you can scroll to your own age to see what each setting looks like before you install anything.