Database Info

Hourly drain poll & discussion

Let's investigate the hourly battery drain!
To start it, mine after 5 days of usage is close to 3% per hour.

Your results will be varied. You really need a lot of information to compare usage and battery drain.
1. LTE vs no LTE
2. If LTE what is your signal strength (can be negligible or a huge battery drainer)
2. BT state
3. Wifi State
4. Location Setting On/Off
5. AOD state (the number 1 battery drainer)
6. Tilt to wake state
7. Amount of notifications/calls/text
8. Screen Brightness
This is a tough are to analyze unless you have everyone state what their setup is like. You will have people that use minimum settings and report 4 days. The people that use all features and get 1 day will wonder why they are not getting 4 days use. Until you compare similar setups and usage don't get overly concerned with what others are getting.
My setup:
1. Version LTE (T-Mobile)
2. Mobile Network set to Auto (I am in a strong coverage area) ( I leave my phone on my desk and go into stand alone mode several times a day)
3. Call Forwarding On
4. AOD On
5. Tilt to wake Off
6. Location On
7. Wifi Off
8. emails~25, text~15, calls answered on watch~2 (1 minute calls)
With those setting I get 3 - 3.5% battery drain per hour. Full day use 7am - 11pm I put it on the charger with about 50% battery remaining.

Frontier BT version
Aod off
Brightness 2
Dark watchface
Wifi off
Location on
BT always on
~50 messages/d
~10 phone calls/d
1 hour/d playing with new apps and stuff
1 hour/d running or exercising

GS3 Classic BT
1. no LTE
2. N/A
2. BT connected
3. Wifi when BT disconnects (never)
4. Location Setting Off
5. AOD on
6. Tilt to wake state enabled
7. Amount of notifications/calls/text - 30 notifications/hour
8. Screen Brightness - level 3
Close to about 4%/hour with the AOD. I wish we had a way to disable seconds display in AOD because that would probably save some power.
Really kinda roughly the same energy drain of my Moto 360, Huawei watch, and Gear S2. I expected better. Still a sweet watch tho.

1. T-Mobile LTE
2. If LTE is on I use about 10% battery/hr because of crap signal
2. BT auto (primary method of connection)
3. Wifi auto
4. Location On
5. AOD off
6. Tilt to wake on
7. Notifications from phone only if not using the phone
8. Screen Brightness at 8
With that I get about 3 to 4 days of battery life on average (excluding using any LTE).
With LTE enabled I would expect a lot less, where I intended it to be on, at my place of work, it's constantly searching for a signal or has a horrible connection possibly helping to drain the battery. Not sure how it would perform where I have a good signal strength though.
**Edit**
Also, now that I don't use LTE while at work, I use airplane mode and I lose about 1% max every 3 hours.

I get around 3.5 - 4% per hour. But I have EVERYTHING maxed.
non LTE version
max brightness
max volume
AOD
vibration
location on
gps
wifi auto
bluetooth connection to phone
All s health tracking (steps, HR etc)
weather sync every hour
all notifications (email, SMS, Whatsapp, Google, Facebook, Instagram etc)
tilt to wake on

Another observation, at night, lying on the table, it consumed 5% in 11 hours giving 0.45% drain.

My first week with the S3. Came of charge at 7am on Monday and lasted until Saturday 7am. This represent a drain of less than 1% per hour.
AOD and tilt wake-up off
Brightness at 7 with dark watch face
Bluetooth on for notifications and weather
Wi-Fi off
Tracking sleep at night
Not tracking anything else
Location off
Amazing watch. I love the size. I miss the s2 classic impeccable build quality but battery and GPS tracking are too good to skip.
My main issue with the s2 battery was the drain when listening to mp3 on Bluetooth headset. The s3 still drains quickly but not as fast.

From 100% to 84% - 24h so, less than 1%
Non-LTE
AOD off
tilt wake-up on
Brightness at 6 with relatively dark watch face (Alpha Dark)
Bluetooth on for notifications and weather
Wi-Fi off (on if BR disconnect)
Tracking sleep at night
S-health - tracking steps, floors, etc
HR on
Location off
S-Voice off

blackspp said:
Another observation, at night, lying on the table, it consumed 5% in 11 hours giving 0.45% drain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It consumes about 1% / hour whilst I'm wearing it during sleep, so about double that.

I have to say this watch is totally not consistent with a lot of things. I can live with it for now but for example I walked about 20 floors today (12x3 meter + 5 or 6 times 4 meter at work plus just now 2x4 meter at home) and the stuoid watch counts 3 floors. What a mess. It also keeps insisting I live eiher 18 meters below sealevel or 20 above and hilariously I did a run yesterday showing an elevation of -112 meters.

Just got my S3, so I'm not goin to chime in yet. The first week or two will be brutal for the battery because I'll be in "ooooh new toy" mode. Once my usage settles down to casual, I'll have a good idea of battery life.

Factors influencing watch face power consumption?

Hello, what factors influent watch face power consumption?
I am aware about AMOLED pixels issue. What about app. functionality?
For example: stock chronograph face is touch enabled - when touched is switches on the chronograph.
The same about faces with widgets on them.
Does app. functionality increase power consumption?
Do disabled widgets consume power?
I presume that functionality power consumption is minor regarding pixels value.
Of course, I presume that stock faces are well debugged and power savvy.
Am I correct?
Thanks!

Until a couple of days ago I had a daily battery consumption of about 20% a day (couple of calls, some email, 5/6 Whatsapp notifications, no AOD), which means a battery duration of almost 5 days. I used a pretty simple watchface (called "Submariner") with seconds hand and date.
Two days ago I switched to the Samsung Outdoor Watchface (free on the market) dark version, showing steps, day of the week and month, barometer weather and battery percentage all at the same time; I made a short trip for work (about 350Km) where I got some weather update notification and some mail; at 15:00 the batter was almost empty (i started at 5:00 AM with full charge) and the phone shut off. So with the new watchface the battery apparently last half a day. Watch was connected BT with the phone, no GPS, no audio, n AOD.
I will make another attempt in the weekend but I suppose that choosing the right watchface could mean a lot.
S

sandrinopi said:
Until a couple of days ago I had a daily battery consumption of about 20% a day (couple of calls, some email, 5/6 Whatsapp notifications, no AOD), which means a battery duration of almost 5 days. I used a pretty simple watchface (called "Submariner") with seconds hand and date.
Two days ago I switched to the Samsung Outdoor Watchface (free on the market) dark version, showing steps, day of the week and month, barometer weather and battery percentage all at the same time; I made a short trip for work (about 350Km) where I got some weather update notification and some mail; at 15:00 the batter was almost empty (i started at 5:00 AM with full charge) and the phone shut off. So with the new watchface the battery apparently last half a day. Watch was connected BT with the phone, no GPS, no audio, n AOD.
I will make another attempt in the weekend but I suppose that choosing the right watchface could mean a lot.
S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh no doubt. Even light color faces use more and the more going on the more power it uses. It sounds like that new face has a lot going on. I've looked at that face and you maybe unsold it to me. ☺

watchmaker battery drain

I have big concerns of consumption of battery with this application
Am I the only one?
You have can be trick?
Thank you

Some watch faces are too bright or consume too much battery in their always-on state. Try a watch face that has a dimmer always-on state, or take your favourite watch faces, and change their always-on state to have higher opacity.

I made a dial I same, quite black
I am going to try a reset of the watch, seen that nobody confirms me the same problem

I use this app(watchmaker) and consumption with always on display is approximately 25/30 % per day.
Wifi is switched off , Bluetooth used when needed.

krca5 said:
I use this app(watchmaker) and consumption with always on display is approximately 25/30 % per day.
Wifi is switched off , Bluetooth used when needed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Either some functionality on your watch is disabled or something is wrong here. No way, watchmaker can beat stock watchface. I loose 45-55 percent a day with stock gear dashboard watchface. AOD, wake-up gesture, shealth features and bluetooth on. Wifi auto. NFC, bt connection notifications off. Using GPS occasionally. Without AOD i can easily get 3 and a half day. I've never saw anyone claim to can get more than 2 days with AOD on on the forum before, so this is really confusing.

You can believe or not, but for me the battery consumption with watchmaker is lower than with stock Watchface. it is also true that some Watchface consume a little more, but we are talking about up to 10% more per day, i start to use Watch at 10am and remove Watch at 23pm,all' shealt notification on,wifi off,gps off, Bluetooth when needed,AOD always on,screen brightness 7. When use stock Watchface i lose 45/55% of battery per day.

I think I may have worked out what is going wrong, perhaps one of the developers can confirm,
under ‘my watches’ I have a number of other whatchfaces that I have downloaded, these aren’t selected on my watch but are there as an option, where as the chosen one only has basic functions, the others all have fancy meters, data sourcing apps - after deleting these from my phone and checking they are not available for selection on my watch the battery life seems to be normal, I wonder if the other watch faces are in some way working in the background and therefore draining the power even though I am not actually viewing them

It is Wi-fi connection what drains LOT of power. Be sure it is turned off when not in use to keep your power as long as possible.

Do the various watch faces consume about the same battery life?

Hi,
I have several watch faces installed on my S3.
I prefer to have it always on but I see that this causes a serious battery drain, especially with the latest OS.
Assuming about the same usage mode every day (eg lifting the hand to check the time X times per day, the same number of notifications received (FB, whatsapp, emails...), the same amount of fiddling with the watch etc), AND the screen being turned on only by the hand lifting gesture.
Is there any accepted metric that measures how much battery the watch face should eat up per hour?
For example yesterday I used one of the faces and about 3 hours after full charge - I was down by about 10%.
Today I'm using a different face and it's down "only" by 4% (which seems great compared to previous days).
Most of the faces I use are rather dark, only the HHMM is (in some of them) in a bright color.
No fancy dials turning about on the watch face.
GPS is off, I don't use the watch for sports tracking expect steps/distance/floors.
For example, today I'm using the Digital Sport Red Automatic from AP Watches - Andrea Pascolo.
Thanks.

It's now 19:15 and my battery level has dropped 25% only (11 hours), after receiving many notifications and quite a lot of fiddling with the watch setting throughout the day.
This is with the Digital Sport Red Automatic from AP Watches - Andrea Pascolo.
So in my opinion this is a very good watch face regarding battery life (not to mention that in my opinion it's both beautiful and useful for my needs).
In the next days I'll check the other faces I've purchased, regarding battery usage.
By the way, I have location=ON.

Another update.
Using the same face today but with GPS=OFF and display always on.
Began usage at 06:30 with 100% battery and now at 20:00 have only 56% left. So it's average of ~3.3% battery per hour.
Again, received many notifications from various sources, fiddled with Watchmaker and installed the updated companion app,

Huawei Watch 2 Performance tips

I read some reviews where was taken as an issue that HW 2 has sometimes sluggish performance. I can confirm this issue, and here are few tips how to fix it.
Google Fit vs Huawei Health
Google Fit might be more usable for people who own multiple different Android Wear watches.
Huawei Health is more suitable for watch native widgets, and isnt so much "google centric". You might display your week workout statistics without phone or cloud.
Which one of these two is more efficent app, and consumes less battery life would be an interesting thing to test, but you definitely have to use only one of those two.
1. Use it or lose it
Because I prefer workout apps provided by Huawei, i disabled:
- Google Fit (however it seems to be started after reboot)
- Runtastic
Therefore certain sensors are not accessed by multiple apps at the same time, or more often as necessary. You can do it other way around and disable Huawei Health apps instead.
Because i dont use Google/Google Feed at all on the watches, i uninstalled its upgrades (as the app cannot be removed completely). Also i had to disable its notifications so it will not pop up with new update.
I disabled and stopped also:
- Google Text-to-speech engine (and disable notifications as well)
- Google Handwriting input.
2. Watchface choice - The more simplistic watchface and more static data, the better.
Accessing compass, barometer, pedometer and weather just over watchface might be convenient, but it may require an update from all watch sensors and GPS. Also it reduces battery life, especially when watches try to update Weather widget by current location, when GPS is not reachable.
3. Time synchronisation
Choose either sync from phone, or sync from network, but never both at the same time.
4. Continuous heart rate monitoring.
Disable it by default, turn it on when you workout.
Hope this helps.

Tips regarding battery life:
Mobile/Cellular - On (as I dont own another phone)
Wifi: Off
BT: Off
NFC: Off (so far)
GPS (Allow apps to get position): On
Watchface : Line Watchface with shortcut to Phone app, Messages app, Date complication, and Pedometer indicator.
(Least resource consuming watchface seems to be "Blank", which appears to me as an ideal "Display always on" watchface.)
Display always On: Disabled
Wrist Gestures: Disabled
Tilt to Wake: Disabled
Touch to wake: Enabled (not sure if it affects battery life, but waking watches with button would keep the display more clean)
"Ok Google" : Disabled
Magnification Gestures : Disabled
Talkback (experimental): Disabled
(this feature should be more important in upcoming update)
Except pedometer, Watchface does not have any active widgets, or widgets which attempt to take GPS location (Such as Weather app widget). After 24 hours since the watches were configured as described above, Battery app reports:
Mobile standby 27%
Watch idle 5%
Android System 2%
Google Play services 1%
Huawei Health 1%
Line Watch Face 1%
Also watches were charged up to 100%, and then after 24 hours (with 4g network still available), battery had 63%. During this time, watches were used to check time and battery status few times.

Mir1189 said:
Tips regarding battery life:
Mobile/Cellular - On (as I dont own another phone)
Wifi: Off
BT: Off
NFC: Off (so far)
GPS (Allow apps to get position): On
Watchface : Line Watchface with shortcut to Phone app, Messages app, Date complication, and Pedometer indicator.
Display always On: Disabled
Gestures: Disabled
Except pedometer, Watchface does not have any active widgets, or widgets which attempt to take GPS location (Such as Weather app widget). After 24 hours since the watches were configured as described above, Battery app reports:
Mobile standby 27%
Watch idle 5%
Android System 2%
Google Play services 1%
Huawei Health 1%
Line Watch Face 1%
Also watches were charged up to 100%, and then after 24 hours (with 4g network still available), battery had 63%. During this time, watches were used to check time and battery status few times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What?? You can get two full days when always connected with 4g? When on 4g, is the watch remotely connected to a smartphone or something to get notification?
When i am connected to 4g my battery drain is about 10% an hour at best. Most of the time even a lot more... im gonna try your scenario, would be great if i could manage at least a full day standalone...

Just 4g means no connection to "master phone".
In my case it means no notifications from Google/Youtube/Gmail, regardless watch clearly has internet connectivity - Google Play Store works. Google feed returns "no connection".
Google Maps and Weather works, but watch needs to check position using build-in GPS - which may cause increase battery usage if you are not in range of satellites.
Browser apps might work as well, but to get notifications which are usually directed on your phone and then redirected to watch... might be troublesome. To find it out you might need to use console from the watches and explore networking between watches and mobie network provider. Heard some rumours you need specificly access to google DNS servers, so it might be provider-specific.
In general its not an issue for me, as i want to use the watches instead of mobile phone and... well as a watches

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBzWmuz1ws4
So update for Google Wear (google assistant) is on the way. I am about to update first and second post with some more settings, which should reduce battery consumption.