I was a late adopter of cell phones. Mrs. Scotch had them for years before convincing me to get one. I'd say "Why do I need a cell phone? I'm either at home, or at work, or driving from one to the other. And I can't answer a phone while I'm shifting". When I finally did get a cell phone, I only wanted 2 things: I wanted it to be small, and I wanted one that had the external display showing time and missed calls. The first couple of phones I had were like this, with a color screen inside, and a monochrome LCD display outside.
The outside display used very little energy, but it was always on. On my later flip phones, of course they fucked it up and put a color display on the outside too; one that you had to activate to see.
So now I'm happy that they put an "Always On Display" on the Samsung Galaxy phones. But of course, they have to fuck this up too.
It would seem that - by definition - an "Always On" display would be on at all times. But now they have options to make the display
not always on.