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,
Related
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.
Only had the Frontier several days and using the Minimal Watch Face (dark)
I haven't experimented with many watch faces.
I would like it to be on all the time, but I have no experience to know whether to set the watch to be AOD.
I would hate to ruin the battery in a short space of time e.g. 6 months.
Also, I assumed as soon as I saw some of the watch faces, that I could delete them, but doesn't seem to be the case. Pity because some of them I will never use.
AOD doesn't affect battery too much. I have everything maxed out, full brightness, AOD, location, GPS, wifi, sound, vibration, everything. And I get 2 days use, from 6am-5pm
I'm using my Gear S3 just with Bluetooth and GPS on an can use it for mor then 72 hours!
AOD has many factors that can and will affect battery life. I have found that I can make 3 solid days with AOD off and just make 2 days with AOD on. The type of watch face you use can change that.
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. ☺
Hello,
Gear S2 is here for about a year - what is the battery experience?
For example, someone charging the battery every day for a year - do you experience battery capacity drop?
My coworker owns Moto - after about a year of daily charging the battery lost most of its capacity making the watch unusable.
Does Samsung put better batteries?
I bought S3 recently and hope for a good news...
I have had my watch for over a year. Gear S2 classic non 3G. I charge it at night and use it all day and it is still at 60 to 70% I haven't noticed any real drop in the battery capacity
Same here. Not noticeable degradation after a year.
I received mine for Christmas 2015 and been wearing it every day since.
In fact, with the firmware upgrades, it may be better than when I first received. I do keep my brightness at 3, Always On, and Bluetooth only. No Wifi, no NFC.
I can get around 2 full days with a charge, but it takes some settings tweaking to get it. Normal stock settings, I'm lucky for 18 hours. Worse if I am running an overly elaborate watch face.
I enable Do Not Disturb when sleeping.
Delete Running widgets that you don't use (steps, heart rate, water /caffeine), stuff like that.
On the Gear Manager, go in and modify what notifications you receive on your gear.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems the more apps that send notifications, it drains both my gear and S7 battery faster.
I also like to look in the information screen, and look at the Memory Usage. CPU / Memory hogs will show there.
My setup
Style
Watch Always On - Disabled
Device
Wake Up Gesture - Off
Auto Open Apps - Disabled
Display
Brightness - 3 or 4
Auto Low Brightness - On
Screen Timeout - 15 seconds
Call
Voice Answer - Off
Messages
Send as Audio - Disabled
Connection
Bluetooth - On
WiFi - Off
NFC - Off
Alerts (Receive BT disconnection alerts) - Off
Gear Info
Report (Diagnostic and Usage) - Off
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.