Battery LIfe

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.

Jamie BG

@olymay TWP3 can do it, but only by including LCD screen use (sort of cheating when comparing), also don’t forget its battery has 25% more capacity.
GW3 watch is similar to S7, and so are most of the GW models - they had a version which did have better battery life, but can’t remember which model - was an older one.

Jamie BG

@Steff I must use 3rd party sync services to get my data into Suunto?
Why - there is no need to - if you have correctly set up your watch and are using the suunto app this all flows through properly with no issues.
What firmware version are you on? Only the very first initial firmware versions had this sync issue and had higher battery drain on activities.

“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.”
Accuracy issues - from when a wifi signal can move the track quite significantly. Also all of these services seem to smooth out their tracks, and or show them in very zoomed out, so they look good at a quick eye check, but can’t really see the detail. And that is fine, as most people using these watches don’t really care about how good their track is as long as it about look right.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@steff he is not the only one claiming this. Among other users there are test reports and automations

Steff

@jamie-bg said in Battery LIfe:

@Steff I must use 3rd party sync services to get my data into Suunto?
Why - there is no need to - if you have correctly set up your watch and are using the suunto app this all flows through properly with no issues.

I mentioned that I need 3rd party sync services if I’m using GFit instead of Suunto, not the way around.

What firmware version are you on? Only the very first initial firmware versions had this sync issue and had higher battery drain on activities.

I’m on the latest firmware, PXDZ.210326.002.A2

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.

Yes, I tried both walking and hiking activities.
There was no noticeable difference in terms of battery life.

The only thing that I did not tried is to factory reset the watch.
I will try that today.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@steff I dont get some of the arguments here

Why import back from Google FIT is a Suunto responsibility in a way of “demand”

Regarding connected GPS (using the phone GPS) its about accuracy issues and connectivity issues. S7 is a watch as well and that decision is in the specs of the device.

Steff

@dimitrios-kanellopoulos I think I was misunderstood.
I said that using GFit to track activities has the disadvantage of needing 3rd party sync to get the data into Sunnto, not that is Suunto fault that GFit does not upload activities into Suunto.

Jamie BG

@steff thanks for the clarification - I certainly wasn’t reading your original comment that way.

I think you need to consider a reset as your battery lfe consumption definitely isn’t standard and what most of us experience.

Steff

I factory reset the watch, configured it without installing any 3rd party app or watchface (installed updates for all preinstalled apps, set up GFit and Suunto App).

I first made a 1h18min walk (Best GPS, DND, airplane mode, keys locked) and I got an estimation of 10h4min
Today I made 3h52min hike with the same settings and I got an estimation of 9h01min

I’m pleased with these results.
I think it was something wrong with the SuuntoApp from the watch, probably because I went though 2 system updates since I got the watch.
Thank you all for your suggestions.

Unfortunately, now I have other 2 problems:

The GPS track looks terrible even though I used Best GPS.

Here is what it looks on S7

and here is how it looks on a Samsung Watch Active 1, also from today:

here is how the same area looks on a Samsung Gear S3, from last year:

I’m starting to believe what @olymay suggested, that is something wrong with my GPS chip.
Not sure if I will send the watch to warranty they will want to do anything, being something difficult to check.

The watch has a very hard time to pick up my HR.
I noticed this on several occasions on the past hikes, but I didn’t paid to much attention.

Today I was more attentive:

here is after 10min of starting the hike, climbing, barely breathing and with my heart pumping like crazy.
I don’t have 96 bmp not even walking slowly on flat surfaces

only after another 2 minutes the watch picked my HR and it jumped to 160

This happened several times during the hike, especially after resting.

I tried moving the watch up on my wrist, tighten the strap but not too tight, but with no results.

I finding strange because I didn’t had such problems with none of my previous watches.
Seems to be more a software problem than a sensor problem.