Suunto 7

Miguel Peralta

@isazi Thanks for your reply, yesterday I received the last wear OS update i think, I have Wifi Disabled, Body Resources and Heart Rate active, I only enable the display with a touch, do I have to disable device location? I would like to know what your setup is, I will test the S7 this Sunday on a MTB ride.

isazi

@miguel-peralta one thing people usually do is disable automatic updates, to avoid that your apps get updated when you are on the way. Also, some apps are more battery hungry than others.

herlas

@miguel-peralta I asked about this long time back,right now it’s a vibrate all or no notifications at all.

https://forum.suunto.com/topic/6110/s7-notification-vibration-setting?_=1630086188301

Aleksander H

Looks like we might be missing out on a few apps/updates in the future .

https://www.tizenhelp.com/strava-ends-support-for-wear-os-2-x-running-watches/

So both YT Music and Strava will require Wear 3.0.

Jamie BG

@miguel-peralta wear os has a heurstic battery formulae, so the longer it stays up (no restart) the better it gets at estimating your remaining battery life by how you use it. After restart always ignore it for the next 7-8hrs as its always based on too little usage.

Then overall battery life as per @isazi point - it takes a while for battery life to settle in. Would suggest no adding any apps for a week or two until you are happy battery life is settled. Then add any you need one at a time to check impact to battery life.

Note that non suunto watch faces can increase battery usage, especially facer ones.

Also check your wake settings - I found that touch to wake was my best option, as tilt to wake woke the watch far too often. If using a suunto watch face, and AOD off, then would put on the power save tilt, as that combo was slightly more efficient than AOD on with touch to wake only. However we are all different and others can have different results (some find touch to wake triggers due to clothing they wear (seldom if ever had that issue), and tilt to wake works better).

olymay

@miguel-peralta i would just like to echo what @isazi and @Jamie-BG have said.

When you first get any WearOS watch, there will be various system updates in the background.
Then, the watch will take a few days to monitor your usage and adapt the battery optimisation to best suit you.

Regarding what setting get the most efficiency, this will depend on how you use your S7.

Mine are similar to Jamie’s for the most part.

AoD OFF
Power saver tilt ON using the Suunto Solstice face (good looking watch face and power efficient)
Tilt to wake OFF
Touch to wake OFF (clicking buttons turns display on, but touching screen does not)
Bluetooth ON
WiFi ON AUTO (it is off when connected to phone. wifi only turns on when it loses connection to phone or goes on the charger)
Body resources ON
24/7 HR ON
Sleep tracking ON

I put mine into cinema mode when sleeping, to stop the display lighting up or notifications buzzing my wrist. This does not stop the alrm going off, which is great.

Speaking of notifications, I allow pretty much all notifications to come through.

If I am not tracking any activity, I typically get 48 hrs battery life from the watch, which I am more than happy with.

Any other questions or help needed, please do ask

Jamie BG

@olymay and I confirm with that set up (except for having touch to wake on) I got around 48hrs (and usually included around 30mins of activity).

Its around 36hrs if AOD is on, and doing about 1hr of tracking.

My issue was never with watch loved it, my issue is that my needs with insisting on having AOD on, and tracking most days approx 2-4hrs, and generally only having 15mins in the morning to recharge and no real opportunity during the day meant I was always worried about running out during a tracking session (been there and done that on previous watches). Hence change to something that has similar features but much better battery life.

olymay

@jamie-bg that’s good to know. So it seems that 48rs is easily achievable without having to restrict any of the smart features of the watch.

Out of pure curiosity (and honest curiosity, i’m not questioning your reasoning) why do you insist on AoD being on? I get that it looks nice and all, but it does mean the screen is lit while you are not looking at it.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have it on if it didn’t affect the battery (and the brightness could be lowered as I find it too bright in a dark room) but I can more than easily cope with the screen set to power saver tilt. The screen is responsive to activate and does so quickly enough.
I thought I might struggle not having AoD after coming from a TicWatch Pro, but I got used to it really quickly.

And I tried the touch to wake function, but I found I got too many accidental activations, thus impacting battery life (or even menu/app activations too).

Steff

@olymay there are many reasons for someone to want to use AoD, design being the least important in my opinion:

the raise to wake is slow and have many hiccups especially in Wear OS. Even the Apple Watch which has the best raise to wake is far from perfect
maybe you carry something heavy with your hands and want to see time
maybe you are in a meeting and want to have a quick glance to see the time without the others to noticed

And the list can continue.

I never considered to buy a smartwatch which doesn’t have the main function of a watch, to see the time without gesticulate with your hands.

olymay

@steff fair, I was only curious as to why it was a deal breaker.

I thought I would miss it but I honestly don’t at all. But I know everyone is different, hence me asking the question.

On your first point, I don’t think it is slow at all, in fact I think the raise to wake on the S7 is really fast and accurate. Way more so than my old TicWatch Pro, or my gf’s Garmin Venu, or a friend’s Apple Watch 6.
I do get about 1 in 20 raises where it won’t activate properly, but it is definitely something I can live with , as the rest of the time it is near perfect.

Is checking the time really that important when carrying something heavy that it cannot wait until you have put it down?

During a meeting it is easy to stretch, or move your arm in a way that activates the screen. Or glance at someone else’s watch. Or look at clock on the wall. Or simply don’t be embarrassed to let people know that meeting is dragging on and you have better places to be (my preferred method and works to speed things up more often than not ).

Again, I would have it if it wasn’t battery drain, wasn’t too bright in dim rooms, and was guaranteed not to burn in. But to me it is a nice to have and not an essential. (honestly, it is the brightness that is the main reason I don’t use it).

Steff

@olymay if you go on the path “do you really need to check the time” it’s a different discussion

I prefer to choose my devices which can help me, not restrict me

If a device force me to change my habits maybe it’s not the right device for me.

Anyways, these are subjectives things, everyone values different things in different ways.

Jamie BG

@olymay

A watch’s purpose is to tell the time - if it is blank it isn’t doing that whether I or someone else looking at it can’t see it - it just looks broken (I know, i know - it just looks).
I will often just glance down at watch to ensure I am managing my time (do this hundreds of times a day), so if no ambient screen with time, I now have to adjust/tilt my wrist at +80 times a day just to check the time…So I find it annoying if I glance down and can’t see the time…
I don’t know what it was, maybe my arm/wrist movement was never purposeful enough, but didn’t find it that quick to respond as it didn’t always respond to wake.
Annoys me when it would flash on with a wrist movement when I didn’t want it to…For me tilt to wake is a power saving function not a feature, and if it doesn’t save power as it casual wrist movements always wake it when you don’t want it to wake, that is an issue for me (note that I do feel the S7 gets around this a bit with power save tilt, but wasn’t in all the watch faces I liked)

However even with all of the above it would have been ok, and I could and did manage without issues, if my overall requirements and needs hadn’t changed. Even with AOD off and power save tilt on I was still always worrying about battery and whether I had enough for the next tracked activity as I hadn’t had a chance to recharge…Watch should be assiting me, not causing issues/concerns.

A prime example was this long weekend. I charged the watch last monday, forgot about it on Monday bank as too busy, forgot about it yesterday again as busy and noticed it this morning so topped it up during my morning routine and will easily be fine until Monday (or later) again.

Note was 40% after 9 days with pulse ox sleep tracking, at least 1hr tracked per day, and in addition to 1hr per day, I also tracked a 4.5hr hike on Sunday which included a lot of map use (no route so always checking map for next step/turn) and I also did 1.5hr hike on Monday which included on the fly route (done on phone and synced to watch while being driven to the start of the route), so was heavy on map use (especially as I made a slight mistake on the route starting point - Garmin connect route creation isn’t as good as the suunto app) and as we had 2 climbs so used the climbpro screen a lot too - so were on heavy graphic screens
a lot of the time.
And at no point was I worried about battery whereas on S7 that wouldn’t have been the case, in fact completely forgot about it until I noticed on wednesday morning (estimated battery complication is near the weather now temperature- so was looking at that when I noticed the battery and realised I had forgotten to charge on Monday).

olymay

@steff ha ha, yeah true (although do we really need to check the time as much as we think we do??)

I’m not sure a smartwatch with tilt to wake instead of always on is something that will restrict anyone though.

But this is why I like to ask to ask these questions, to see how other people use the same, or similar, devices to what I have. Maybe there are new ways to use them, or tricks I didn’t know. I’m always looking to learn new things, no matter how small or silly they may seem.
I’ve already learned a great deal from asking questions on this forum

olymay

@jamie-bg

It may only be looks, but if it is something we use and wear every day then we should be happy with how it looks
Hundreds of times a day? Wow! Fair play, that is a lot!
I went a few years without wearing a watch a while back (actually, a long time ago now!) and seemed to develop a pretty accurate inbuilt clock. My gf can’t figure out I always seem to know when the cooker timer will go off, despite not using a timer. It’s something I’ve been able to do for a while and I didn’t set out to do it. Essentially, this means I don’t check the time very often, as I can usually take a stab at what it is and be within ten minutes or so.
Everyone is different, so i guess it won’t activate at the same point for everyone.
Yeah, I do get the occasional false activation, which is slightly annoying. Especially when in a dim room watching TV/movie and it lights up like a miniature sun! But I find it happens no more frequently than if I had the screen touch to wake on.
The power saver tilt is great, but as you say limited to Suunto (and a few other) faces. I’m actually happy with the Suunto faces. When I tried Facer it annihilated the battery life, so pretty much stopped using 3rd party faces after that.

However, at the end of the day if the battery life wasn’t enough for you then it wasn’t enough.

Maybe a Suunto 7 mkII will have better battery life? Who knows…

Jamie BG

@olymay
2) 100 times divide by 12 hours (actually more hours probably) means looking once every 8-10 minutes which really isn’t that often (well I don’t think it is - probably actually look more often). Have pretty built in good timer too, but a sailing and work habit (sailing from continous checking and timing windshifts and other boats etc)- work from focus and ensuring managing times and deliveries. So yes got into a bit of a habit making sure I am always on time. Note sometimes may check every couple of mintues then may be an hour or two until I next check. I seldom check the time on my phone, even if I am using it, I will often still just glance at watch due to built in habit.
4) Marine Commander - love that watch face due to its level of customization and abilty to change shape and colour of hour markers & hands and background colour - and the level of other customizations like the dual complications, the the ability to customize the ambient screen…Other one I really liked to was Marine Digital - great looking old school digital watch face.,

Quite like my current Garmin one with is big digital time in the middle with small seconds - solar charge icon above and solar charge graph below and around the face I have 6 complication - date at top, then current temp, then battery esimate with steps at the bottom ,then recovery hrs, then weather.

olymay

@jamie-bg

Yeah, it fully depends on what you are doing with your day I guess.
I guess I do check my watch more when sailing, but that was mainly to ensure the trainees are rotating round the jobs at regular intervals, and filling in the log at the correct time.
I work at a laptop pretty much all day, so there is a clock in the corner I can glance to if I need it.
I do love Marine Commander! If it supported the 3100 chip and power saver tilt I might revisit it some day
Haven’t tried Marine Digital, but I will check it out

I do like some of the Garmin watch faces (a friend has an F5) but they all look washed out and low resolution to me. I know that is down to the transflective screen etc, but it still looks naff to me, especially on a device that costs so much.

Jamie BG

I do like some of the Garmin watch faces (a friend has an F5) but they all look washed out and low resolution to me. I know that is down to the transflective screen etc, but it still looks naff to me, especially on a device that costs so much.>

I don’t think its the screens, well at least not on the F6xPro - I think its Garmin’s colour palette choice, which I think they do on purpose due to battery life, as I have some IQ watch face, while not as brilliant and as bright as the S7 is a lot, a lot brighter with barely any muting of colours- the reds, blues, yellows and greens are all super bright and viabrant with/without backlight (in fact when looking at hte sun and then comparing to the calorie icon which is a flame which is a darker yellow orange it just shows that it really isnt the screen - its Garmin watch faces - note you can see that a lot of the widgets are also a lot more viabrant than the watch faces). Some watch face examples - which have minmal muting form what you can see on this pictures: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/c2f2b648-ab65-4329-991a-b9f240bcb92f / https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/3210c772-f840-41a1-be50-81ef709b1b12 which as you can see is a lot brighter then stock ones).

olymay

@jamie-bg the pictures in the links you shared are not real photos of the screens though, they are renders and so will always look brighter.

I’m not saying the screens on the Garmin are bad, but after being used to the frankly gorgeous OLED screen on the S7 pretty much anything looks bad in comparison. There is no way that the F5/6 will match the S7 bor brightness, contrast, or resolution. They do win on power efficiency though, which is why they were used

Jamie BG

@olymay I did say they were slightly muted from there, but not far off it:

as you can see from the the heart, calorie and battery icon its not that far off the picture on he website
ps - no flash, no backlight, just what it can pick up from my overhead lights. Is a quite a bit brighter with backlight, even when only 10% of backlight.

olymay

@jamie-bg Not bad, but still no OLED

But honestly, considering the tech used, they are pretty good. I’m just used to high resolution OLED on both my watch and phone (and TV), so anything less looks off to me now.