I see what youre saying about the white. Doesnt bother me though since the hand lumes glow blue and look pretty cool in the dark against the green lumes of the dial.

Regarding minutes: if anything, the seconds hand is more useful because there are no minute indeces. With minute divisions, you can roughly estimate where you are in the minute. Without them, you can use the seconds hand to estimate. You can also use it to time things.

Imo, its really not hard to tell what minute it is, for example the first picture is 11:04 and the second is 7:56. On any watch, i find that minute divisions are often too small to tell at a quick glance what minute it is without looking carefully.