'Screen always on'

[Lee Petchey]

I've read countless reviews and posts about the 360, re: its issues with the 'ambient' display and battery life, but it's unclear as to whether these take in to account software updates.

I'm about to jump from my GWatch to the Moto and am really hoping that I can get a full day (7am - 11pm) on one charge with the screen always on. Two-day battery life means nothing to me unless I wake up on day two with 50%, but the ambient mode is vital as I do a lot of glancing at the time.

What are people's recent experiences?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[jackal24]

Without ambient, I can go a while day and still have 50% battery. With it enabled, I can barely make it through the day.
Note that even with it enabled, the watch still goes blank, it just takes longer to timeout and waited up with less movement of the wrist.

 

[Lee Petchey]

Really?! Oh, that's quite disappointing. I probably spend most of my time just glancing at the ambient/dimmed watchface on my GWatch.

As lovely as the 360 looks, that's a fairly big oversight from Motorola.

 

[dcastillo]

It's not an oversight, it's a design compromise. Every piece of electronics has compromises.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Michael Lynady]

I use ambient mode and make it through the day-however I'm careful of which face I use, some can be battery hogs-trial/error. Also, I installed task manager and battery stats-kill any unneeded apps pushing to watch

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[ETPhoneHomeT]

I use ambient mode and make it through the day-however I'm careful of which face I use, some can be battery hogs-trial/error. Also, I installed task manager and battery stats-kill any unneeded apps pushing to watch

Posted via the Android Central App

Ii tried the 2 different task manager apps and killed some apps with each, but seemed like just about all of the apps I killed just kept re-starting so I uninstalled them. I've experienced around 20 hours of battery capacity in ambient mode with light use, just using it more or less as a normal watch. If I start using some of the additional smartwatch features , voice commands, searches, navigation, etc, then it will drain the battery faster.

 

[Lee Petchey]

It's not an oversight, it's a design compromise. Every piece of electronics has compromises.

Posted via Android Central App

I'm sure the compromise lead to an improvement elsewhere, but I still feel they've overlooked how important an always-on display is to some people.

That said, I've seen a YouTube video that shows the watch only turning fully off once the watch is faced away from you. That's not as bad as I thought!

 

[ETPhoneHomeT]

I'm sure the compromise lead to an improvement elsewhere, but I still feel they've overlooked how important an always-on display is to some people.

That said, I've seen a YouTube video that shows the watch only turning fully off once the watch is faced away from you. That's not as bad as I thought!

Actually, in my experience with ambient mode, the display turns fully off whenever the screen is in any position where it's not within eyesight. For instance, if your arm is hanging by your side, it's off. If you have the watch face pointed straight up and somewhat within eyesight like if you're typing, it will turn on in dim mode in black and white. Once you lift your arm and face the watch towards you, then it lights up to full color and whatever brightness setting you have it set at. To me, this makes perfect sense. Why have the watch display on eating battery if it's not within your own eyesight?

 

[Slow_S10]

For what it's worth everyone's battery life experiences are not going to be the same. My watch is off the charger every day from 6am to around 11ish pm and with ambient display off I usually have around 50% battery left, with it turned on it's still usually over 40%. I don't have any third party apps or faces installed and I have it pared with a Nexus 5.

I mainly use the watch for the time, and to check notifications and play and pause music.