Battery LIfe

olymay

@steff please do not take this the wrong way, but there is definitely something specific to your watch (caused either by software problem, hardware problem, or user problem) that is causing you to have such poor battery life.

Please see my example above that I can also get under 6 hours battery life during an activity, but this is caused by me running the watch in high power mode for significant portions of the activity.
It seems to me that something similar is happening on your watch.
(I have done many other activities keeping the watch in low power mode and average 6-7% battery drop per hour).

During the activity, does the data screen revert to a thin font style? If it stays thicker, this means it is stuck in high power mode.
Do you check the map screen often? Are you using multiple waypoints? Streaming music? Are all apps updated? (some users advocate turning off auto update of apps) Do you have any other devices conected to the watch? During activity, does the watch remain connected to the phone? Or do you use aeroplane mode? Is the phone killing the connection at any point due to aggressive power optimisation modes?

All forum members here want to help you get the most out of your S7 and enjoy using it the same as we all do. There is something clearly not working correctly in your situation however your attitude of blaming the watch for everything and it clearly having a poor battery life are simply not true and understandably frustrating some forum members.

The Suunto 7 can and will last you over 12 hours of an activity, if you are willing to get to the bottom of what is causing this abnormal battery drain. If not, no skin off my nose, we tried to help.

Steff

@olymay thanks for help, for sure I’m willing to find a fix, if the problem is fixable.

(I have done many other activities keeping the watch in low power mode and average 6-7% battery drop per hour).

Just to be clear, you get 6-7% battery drop per hour in Best GPS mode ? Not in Good GPS + FusedTrack ?

All my bellow responses are based on using Best GPS mode.

During the activity, does the data screen revert to a thin font style? If it stays thicker, this means it is stuck in high power mode.

yes, I know how it looks when is getting out of low power mode. Is doing this only when I receive the auto-lap notifications

Do you check the map screen often? Are you using multiple waypoints?

no, I did tests when I didn’t even touched the watch and there was no route loaded and I got 14-15% battery drop per hour.

Streaming music?

Never

Are all apps updated? (some users advocate turning off auto update of apps)

Apps are always updated and also Play Store auto-updates are disabled, I only update the appa manually.

Do you have any other devices conected to the watch?

No

During activity, does the watch remain connected to the phone? Or do you use aeroplane mode? Is the phone killing the connection at any point due to aggressive power optimisation modes?

All hikes I did until now were in airplane mode.

The Suunto 7 can and will last you over 12 hours of an activity, if you are willing to get to the bottom of what is causing this abnormal battery drain. If not, no skin off my nose, we tried to help.

Again, are we sure that we are speaking about the same thing ? Best GPS mode with walking/hiking profile ?

Steff

@brad_olwin said in Battery LIfe:

@steff eight hours of I sec would be pushing very hard. Why do you have to have I sec recording?

Because Good GPS + FusedTrack was very inaccurate in walking/hiking profiles.

See my experience here

olymay

@steff phew! I’m glad i didn’t come across as aggressive, I just wanted to make sure all the obvious bases were covered.

Firstly, we are not comparing the same activity types, but I don’t see that it should make all that much difference.
I do most of my running with GPS set to best (my runs aren’t long enough to worry about battery life running out!).
I was getting the 7% per hour on good GPS, but can still get 10% per hour or under on best GPS (when not checking the watch every couple of minutes like I was at the weekend).

It seems like most of your user settings and methods are similar to mine, although if i have my phone on me i do not turn on aeroplane mode (as I like to use my watch to see and control the music from my phone).
Do you have any third party apps installed?

When not tracking an activity, what sort of battery life do you get from the watch? (and do you have the 24/7 HR and sleep tracking on etc?) I’m wondering if it is something maybe outside of the activity that is draining the battery?

I’ve done a fair few walks with my S7 and used the ‘walking-basic’ mode. This uses the good GPS mode and i’ve had no issues with either battery life or accuracy of the track, is there a reason you are using best GPS?
(i may be wrong but i don’t think fusedtrack works in walking mode, but 10s GPS seems to do well enough for walking speed).

I will add. I am not a developer, or associated with Suunto. I’m not even experienced athlete. I’m just an average user who wants to help and to see others get as much joy and use out of their Suunto 7 as I am

Brad_Olwin

@steff That was not a direct link, obviously it won’t be quite as good as 1s fix but in my experience it is quite good and distance estimates are as good as 1s fix. How many times have you tried this and are you sure that it just wasn’t a bad GPS day. I can show you side by side tracks and data if you like with other Suunto watches. I now have 2 S7s so I can run them side by side as well. Happy to do that.

olymay

@brad_olwin according to the watch settings and the Suunto website, FusedTrack only works with running or cycling, so if it does not work with walking/hiking etc then if the watch doesn’t get a good enough GPS signal maybe this could be throwing off @Steff’s track?

I’ve used good (10s) GPS for many walks and the track has been fine, I’m just thinking that maybe without FusedTrack if the GOS fix isn’t great it could cause more of an issue?

@Steff, have you tried the same route with good GPS more than once? and have you tried it with best GPS as a comparison?

This still doesn’t solve the battery drain though?? (unless there is a weak GPS fix causing the drain??

Brad_Olwin

@olymay Could be but I think the S7 is different. If not, record as trail run and change afterward

olymay

Thanks @brad_olwin

@steff maybe try what Brad has suggested and convert to hiking afterwards, just as a comparison.

Also, I’ve had a thought regarding GPS fix. If possible, do the same route you have done before, on both good and best GPS modes and screenshot the difference. Before and after each activity, maybe use an app on your phone to check how many GPS satellites are visible from that spot.
Also compare this to doing the method Brad suggests.

I understand this is asking you to do a lot of work, but I feel it could help to rule out some potential issues.

What do you think?

Steff

I think I found a workaround for my battery problem.

Yesterday I made a test in the same conditions (walking, same route, phone connected) using Google Fit and I got 9.6%/hour battery drop.
This is because Google Fit is sharing the phone’s GPS.
During that hour, Google Fit app used 2.7% of battery on the phone.
Also, the GPS track looks perfect, 0 difference from Strava corrected distance, even cleaner than when using SuuntoApp with watch GPS.

In these conditions, I can get 9 hours with 86% battery on the watch and 25% battery on the phone.

Of course, the problem is the lack of customization of the Google Fit app and the fact that I must use 3rd party sync services to get my data into Suunto.
Today I will try the same thing with Ghostracer app, which is more customizable and even have an offline map option the paid version.
But, I paid 500$ on this watch for the Suunto services, if I wanted to use Google Fit or other 3rd party app, I would have get any other 200-250$ WearOS watch.

I don’t understand why Suunto is not adding the option to share the phone GPS in their app.
This is what almost all smartwatches are doing: Apple, Samsung, GFit on all WearOS watches.

Most people will always take their phone with them during long activities, especially into the wilderness.
At lest users will have an option, if they want to use only the watch GPS they can use airplane mode, if not they will share the phone GPS, and be able to get 9-10 hours of 1sec GPS.
I know that most of the fitness watches are not sharing the phone GPS but, as you also pointed out, S7 is a smartwatch with some fitness capabilities, not a pure fitness watch.

@Brad_Olwin , @olymay thank you for your suggestions, I will keep making tests if I have time, but I bought this watch to use it, not to try to fix a problem which seems unfixable. I already lost too much time doing this.
It’s clear, as many users also reported on this forum, that the best you can hope for 1sec GPS with slow activities is 6-7 hours.

isazi

@steff said in Battery LIfe:

I don’t understand why Suunto is not adding the option to share the phone GPS in their app.
This is what almost all smartwatches are doing: Apple, Samsung, GFit on all WearOS watches.

Suunto already offers that, for the Suunto 3.

olymay

@steff i may be completely wrong here, but it is starting to sound to me like there is a problem with the GPS chip in your S7…?

I haven’t compared my S7 to my phone GPS, but I have compared it against my gf’s phone (Pixel 3a and then a Pixel 4a5G) when she had a Fitbit and now against her Garmin Venu and the tracks are very similar with the S7 usually being the better one.
This has been done on runs with best and good GPS modes, as well as walking (although not hiking) with good GPS mode.

Also, the Suunto App should be using significantly less battery than Google Fit, regardless of settings, because Google Fit does not use the low power co-processor.

I understand you want to use the watch and not have to fix a problem, but if you aren’t going to use the Suunto features of a Suunto watch then you may as well buy a cheap and cheerful Fossil or similar.
The Suunto App knocks the spots of Google Fit, Strava, and all of the others (in my opinion) and is worth persevering to get it working (again, in my opinion).

I would suggest trying some tests to check the GPS chip in the watch (although I have no idea how to do this).

Your final statement however, is factually incorrect. I for one can get more than 6-7 hours using best GPS, and there are many others who can too.

aeroild

I found this discussion intriguing and the procedure to get the estimated battery consumption very interesting. So I checked several of my runs and walks. When I use my Suunto 7 I always use best GPS and I never turn off bluetooth or notifications so the number of notifications will affect the battery consumption.

On two different Suunto 7 watches I typically get an estimate of between 7 and 8 hours on both runs and walks. Best estimate being as much as 9 hours 25 minutes on a trail run. I also checked a mountain bike ride I did yesterday and the estimated battery life is over 12.5 hours!

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@aeroild walking is more challenging and biking less for sure.

Also indoors / obscufated sky will raise the consumption.

Steff

@olymay I doubt that there is something wrong with the GPS chip in my watch.
Actually the biggest power consumption is done by the GPS chip, not by the processor to process the data.

This is why there is such a big difference in battery between Best and Good GPS modes, and why on indoor activity without GPS Suunto is claiming 30 hours of battery.

So, the fact that Google Fit with using phone GPS is getting better battery life, even though it may not use the co processor is totally explicabile.

There is also another important fact, all these battery estimations are assuming you start with 100% and end up with flat 0%, which in practice is not possible.
In best case you start with 95%(assuming you don’t go with the watch on the charger to the start of the activity) and at 5% you save the activity to prevent the watch to shutdown by itself during activity and lose data, like it happen to me here.

So, if you see a battery estimation of 7-8 hours, the actual you can get is 6-7 hours.

@olymay don’t get me wrong, but, to be honest, you kinda are the only one here who is claiming that you can get more than 6-7 hours, in slow moving activities (walking,hiking) with best GPS.
Even in the above post, @aeroild is saying that on 2 different S7 he typically got between 7 and 8 hours, which in reality are 6-7 hours as I explain above, and only on fast moving activities like run and bike he got better results.
If you want I can show you posts from other users also.

Stiniva

I read about yours numbers and i dont know how you all reach that. Last three days i didnt have any sport activity and i still need every day charge my Suunto 7.
When i put watch in Cinema mode + disabled WiFi BT i get 1.5 day???
For me this is bad very bad. When my friend told me with Suunto 9 Baro battery life is 6-7 days… commmon. Give me 2-3 days without charging.

Egika

I think it is time for a battery FAQ pinned in the S7 forum.

It should contain something like:

In activity:

map use consumes more energy

Not in activity:

if BT is not connected watch will revert to Wifi -> more energy
auto update for apps enabled -> more energy
some watch faces with additional data -> more enrgy

etc.

who can start this? @isazi ?

isazi

@egika if someone writes it can add it to the sticky post. I have one S7 but it is not my main watch, so I am not the expert (although I get decent battery stats).

olymay

@stiniva said in Battery LIfe:

I read about yours numbers and i dont know how you all reach that. Last three days i didnt have any sport activity and i still need every day charge my Suunto 7.
When i put watch in Cinema mode + disabled WiFi BT i get 1.5 day???
For me this is bad very bad. When my friend told me with Suunto 9 Baro battery life is 6-7 days… commmon. Give me 2-3 days without charging.

Again, this seems abnormal to me.

In normal use with no activities tracked i get 48-50 hours of life from the battery.

I have AoD off with power saver tilt on. I use the Solstice watch face.
Play store app auto update is ON.
I use cinema mode at night purely to disable the screen and put the watch into DnD.
Bluetooth is always ON and WiFi is always set to auto.
I get a lot of notifications through the day and every single one alerts on my watch (I do need to sort this but haven’t done it yet).
24/7 HR is ON, as is sleep tracking.

As of today I am not aware of any full smartwatches giving more than 2-3 days battery life (some claim the TWP3 can do this, but I haven’t seen it and am dubious, and I don’t consider Samsung full smartwatches as their app store is so limited).

However, as with all smartwatches I’ve owned, I pop the S7 onto the charger whilst I shower and brush my teeth in the morning. By doing this it tops up more than it depletes, until I do my longer activities. Battery health seems to be absolutely fine doing it this way. And I am never sat around waiting for my watch to charge

olymay

@egika said in Battery LIfe:

I think it is time for a battery FAQ pinned in the S7 forum.

It should contain something like:

In activity:

map use consumes more energy

Not in activity:

if BT is not connected watch will revert to Wifi -> more energy

auto update for apps enabled -> more energy

some watch faces with additional data -> more enrgy

etc.

who can start this? @isazi ?

I think this could be a good idea. However, battery life is so dependent on individual usage - what causes more drain for some could cause less for others - as settings and app combinations are pretty much unlimited.

For example, I see no battery savings by turning off app auto update. The only time this is of use is if your watch and phone are separated, your watch is not in aeroplane mode, and your watch is not and can not connect to a network. If during that time an app tries to update the watch will continuously hunt for a network (in the same way a phone will do so when out of cellular range and munch through battery).

Tilt to wake and AoD will be compared forever and are mostly dependent on how many times someone lifts their arm etc.

As I said I love the idea, I just can’t see how it could be something that would be relevant to all the people all of the time

Jamie BG

@steff - I generally got an estimated 12hrs for all my walking activities (do it every day), and that is connected to phone and using Best GPS mode rather than good mode.

There is also no way that GFit should be giving you better battery life than Suunto app. If it is there is something wrong with your watch/how suunto app has been loaded. I assume your watch is set up with latest firmware update - if so you should definitely get far better tracking battery life with suunto app. Have you tried the walking activity instead of the hiking one - that is the one I usually use and I am at worst 10hrs best 15hrs tracking life.
Settings - suunto app, walk activity / watch settings AOD on, touch to wake (tilt to wake and power tilt off) / gesture navigations off / generally connected to phone.

Also if you go back to September in the forum you will probably come across lots of posts discussing our tracking battery life - that is if I remember correctly the update that gave us Good/Best GPS option and a lot of us were discussing our results.