Ask Jerry: How can I get more battery life from my smartwatch?
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How do I improve battery life on my smartwatch?
Chris asks:
Is there anything I can do to get better battery life on my Galaxy Watch 6? I hate that it needs charging before the end of the day or when I’m not at home.
Thank you
Hi Chris. Great choice in a watch — my wife buys last year’s Galaxy Watch model every year and saves a bunch of money while still having something that is new for her. The Galaxy Watch 6 is really nice.
She also has to charge it every day around dinnertime because it just can’t seem to keep up with her all day long. There is some good news, though: you can shut off or not use in order to get the most out of the battery.
The first thing to remember is that your smartwatch is a small, wearable, power-hungry computer with a tiny power source. Super-long battery life is never going to be a thing with a smartwatch and the best we should expect is for it to last between regular charge cycles. What I mean is that you should expect to charge your watch at the same time every day and it should last that long every day, regardless of what you were doing.
And from what I see, we’re mostly there. Not counting the random days when something gets “stuck” running and eats your battery or days where it’s counting a bajillion steps because you’re at Disney World, you probably only have to charge it once per day. You shouldn’t expect more from the current generation of technology inside of them. One day it will change, but we’re not there yet.
The other thing to remember is that the more you do, the sooner your battery will die. Take my watch — a Garmin Venu 3 — as an example. I get four days or more between charges but Garmin watches aren’t the same as a WearOS watch and other than fitness tracking they really fall behind when it comes to the “smart” stuff. An old Casio watch that only tells time gets about 10 years of life from a battery. Your Galaxy Watch can do all sorts of things that will eat your battery.
Enough explaining why we have to charge so often and time to start talking about what we can do to make battery life better.
Number one on the list is the apps you have installed. Most every app you have will randomly start up to do something once in a while even if you’re not using it. Some apps run constantly. This eats away at your battery; sometimes just a little bit and other times a lot more. If you don’t use an app, uninstall it. It will always be there if you decide to use it again.
Number two is the display. Mind the brightness setting so that it’s bright enough to see without being some sort of beacon. Having it too bright does nothing except eat your battery. You can also shut off the always-on display and make sure the screen time-out setting isn’t too long.
Next is your watch face. You can avoid displays with a seconds indicator or a lot of complications you don’t use to get a real boost to your battery life. One with a black background will also save battery. The less your watch face has to refresh itself, the longer your battery will last.
There are some more drastic things you can do, too. These make your watch a bit less smart but they can have a significant effect on how long your battery lasts so you might want to use them from time to time.
Shut off the features you don’t absolutely need. I’m talking about things like GPS or vibration or even Wi-Fi and you’ll see a real gain in battery life. Bedtime mode also saves battery at the expense of using some features.
Use power saving mode or “watch only” mode in a pinch to stretch things out to the maximum.
These things can come in handy if you’re out later than usual or doing something like camping where charging is pretty inconvenient.
We’re probably never going to be satisfied with the battery life on our watch. It does get better every year but we end up doing more and cancel it out.
These tips will help a little but the best advice is to carry a spare charger and a battery pack if you have to have your watch doing its thing and won’t be home to charge it.
