Battery LIfe

olymay

Something definitely doesn’t seem right with your battery life.

In activities that I have done, I typically get 7% battery drop per hour when using GPS GOOD and 10% drop per hour on GPS BEST.
Even if I factor in some extra battery use due to smartwatch features or my actions, I would still expect to get 8-10hrs of GPS use on BEST mode.

If you are tracking I believe GPS defaults to GOOD (I may be wrong so please check this) and this should give you plenty of battery life.

Do you use the map screen on the watch much during your activity? As activating the map screen brings the watch out of the low power mode and puts it into full power mode. This will have a big hit on battery life. Occasional checks are negligable, as I sometimes do this when on a new route, but the more you check it the more it hits the battery. And if you have it set to map always on, kiss goodbye to battery life.

Are you following a route? If so, do you have waypoints? As again, the (excessive) notifications around waypoints bring the watch into high power mode.

Finally, please excuse my ignorance here, but you have bought a smartwatch and then turned off all of the smart features to try and turn it into a sports watch? Why not buy a sports watch in the first place? If you do not need or want the smart features then the S7 is maybe not the watch for you.
But if you do want a smartwatch and all the features that come with it, then the S7 has one of the best batteries of any smartwatch on the market.

hello,
first post, first trail run with the S7.
Thank you so much for all the helpful tips I have read in this forum.

6 hours,
gps 10" + FT,
airplane mode,
several quick glances at the map

battery went from 100% to 63%.

best,

rooldaa

Hello,

Yesterday I noticed the very strange behavior of the battery.

During a shower, I put my watch on the charger and got from 3 to 30 percent of battery. It was around 10 pm. When I went to sleep at 1 am it was still 30%. And during the night the watch took ONLY 3% - 8 hours sleep.

The settings:

Pulse 24/7 - ON
Sleep - ON
Airplane mode - ON
AoD - OFF
Tilt-to-wake - OFF
Powersaver tilt - OFF

Basically, these are my usual night setting. So, nothing was different.

And now see the battery graph from the Wear OS app on the phone.

It tells that during the night the watch somehow was being charged)))

olymay

@rooldaa Is it possible that the watch lost connection with WearOS at the end of charging it? So when it did re-establish connection the battery was a little higher than it had been at the point of last connection and therefore it simply drew a straight line between the two? In a similar way to losing and re-establishing GPS and drawing a straight line between the points?

Either that or you are a human charging pad

rooldaa

@olymay Hi,

As I remember during the whole charging process connection with the phone was still there. And during the night airplane mode was ON, so there is no chance that the watch was somehow connected to the phone and made that straight line you mentioned.

So, it could be that right after charging the watch showed me the wrong number. Maybe it was 35% instead of 30% It happens sometimes and I am aware of that. But I checked the battery status during the evening at least a couple of times because I noticed that I still have 30%))

And it doesn’t explain why only 3% were consumed during the night.
And for the record - that shower was not too long)) I couldn’t charge the watch too high anyway.

I wish It happened more often))

olymay

@rooldaa looking at the graph the max charge point jumps straight across to the new peak, so it looks like there was no connection to the phone post charging. Which device had aeroplane mode on? I guess it doesn’t really matter as this would explain the lack of connection from the watch to the phone and likely explains the apparent jump in battery life.

On a side note, if you put the watch into aeroplane mode at night, why don’t you use theatre mode instead? It maintains the connection to the phone but puts the watch into do not disturb, and turns off any tilt/touch to wake for the screen (buttons still activate it though).

rooldaa

@olymay I don’t use theater mode because when the alarm starts working I have to open the alarm app manually in order to shut it off. It drives me crazy. And why do I need to maintain the connection during the night in the first place? Doesn’t it consume more battery?

olymay

@rooldaa Weird, I use theatre mode and when the alarm goes off I simply have to press a button on the watch to turn the screen on and the alarm is showing on the screen straight away. If I press the button too many times in my tired state (I always press the home button to wake it up) then I just have to swipe up the notifications and it is in there.

Maybe this is because I use the alarms on my phone and they are simply repeated across to the watch? If you want a silent alarm you can still do this by setting the phone to no alarm tone and no vibration

Honestly, I don’t think it uses much more battery at all, maybe 1% overnight at most. The Bluetooth connection is very low power and as the screen and vibrations are off they don’t use anything. The biggest drain is sleep tracking and HR, but again they don’t use much I find.

I like to keep the devices connected as much as possible as it keeps everything up to date and stops oddities (like your battery gain situation) from happening.

Maybe give theatre mode a try and see if it works for you? I like that it is a one stop action for screen off and do not disturb. Although it is a pain if I forget to turn it off in the morning and then wonder why I’m not getting any notifications through

I would love it if the watch auto went into theatre mode when it detected you are asleep, and then deactivates it once you are awake.

rooldaa

@olymay said in Battery LIfe:

Maybe this is because I use the alarms on my phone and they are simply repeated across to the watch? If you want a silent alarm you can still do this by setting the phone to no alarm tone and no vibration

This is probably the case. I use the standard alarm app directly from the watch.

olymay

@rooldaa said in Battery LIfe:

@olymay said in Battery LIfe:

Maybe this is because I use the alarms on my phone and they are simply repeated across to the watch? If you want a silent alarm you can still do this by setting the phone to no alarm tone and no vibration

This is probably the case. I use the standard alarm app directly from the watch.

I find that too much of a faff to set the alarms using the small screen.

I use the clock app on my phone and it means I can easily switch between silent alarms or alarms that make a chime. Or a mixture of the two if I need an extra kick to get out of bed

@olymay said in Battery LIfe:

I would love it if the watch auto went into theatre mode when it detected you are asleep, and then deactivates it once you are awake.

second that!

Brad_Olwin

@walker said in Battery LIfe:

@olymay said in Battery LIfe:

I would love it if the watch auto went into theatre mode when it detected you are asleep, and then deactivates it once you are awake.

second that!

Mine does. Try this.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ironysoft.theatermodeschedule

olymay

@brad_olwin I like the concept, but does it just do it based on time? My sleep schedule isn’t the same every night.

The app also has bad reviews and a rating of just 3.5

Egika

@olymay I think the app description is very clear.
Have you read it?
Yes, it is time based.

Plus have you actually read the reviews? they say the app does not work on a Ticwatch model xy…
Who cares if you have a Suunto?

olymay

@egika said in Battery LIfe:

@olymay I think the app description is very clear.
Have you read it?
Yes, it is time based.

Plus have you actually read the reviews? they say the app does not work on a Ticwatch model xy…
Who cares if you have a Suunto?

Thank you for the patronising reply, I really do appreciate that.

No, the description is not completely clear.
Thank you, that is what I was asking, you could have typed this line without the rest of the attitude.
Yes, I have read the reviews. All of them. There is one user who mentions it does not work with a TWP, four users who say it does not work without mentioning a device, and two who say it works for them.
Seven reviews, five say it doesn’t work. Not a good ratio.
Also, the only good reviews are more than a year old and the first two reviews there. Every review after those two is one star.

And yes, I DO care if it doesn’t work on another specific device. And before you ask yet another daft question as to why, it matters to me that a developer does not take the time to fix an issue with a device which just so happens to be one of the best selling WearOS devices on the market. And also happens to run the same operating system as mine.
So yes, I do care that it doesn’t work.

Jamie BG

@olymay I used it fine without any issues.

olymay

@jamie-bg thanks, that’s a much more grown up reply than the snarky post from egika.

I’m not saying it doesn’t or won’t work, I am simply remarking on the poor reviews of the app and that this is a reason I won’t be exploring it further.
(also being time based isn’t ideal for me).

I’ll keep an eye on it though, never say never

isazi

@olymay you are not alone, I also looked at the reviews and had a very bad feeling about the app.

Egika

@olymay snarky thank you
sorry for being direct. Brad Olwin already stated that he was using it… What additional info to this do you get from the “grown up reply”?
Sorry again, I need to shut up.
Just from the feature list of that app:
Feature list:

Screen turn off by schedule
Screen turn on by schedule

“by schedule” means time based for me…

Have a nice weekend, even if I am snarky today.

Cheers!

olymay

@egika No worries, no offence taken

I’ve been on these forums long enough to respect the views of Brad, but not blindly (I don’t follow the advice of anyone blindly). It was when reading the reviews and seeing the low rating that made me question the app.

This includes their use of the word schedule. Yes, dictionary definition means time based, but due to the poor reviews I was taking noting in the app description at face value. So I was simply asking an existing user for clarification. If it could be set to trigger via certain states/inputs (alarms etc) then it would be more useful to me and it would work in the app’s favour.

I was only meaning to ask for some more info from someone who as used the app (it appears we have two of them in here), as I was more than a little put off by the poor reviews.

I’m still not convinced I’ll use it (something still niggles my brain to say don’t trust it) but I’ll do some more digging and anything is possible.

I apologise if I snapped back over the top, it’s been a long week and I’ve spent too much time dealing with idiots at work that I’m probably running low on patience with everyone today.