Is this somewhat normal battery life

[tech_fan]

First of all, I really like my Moto 360. I liked it before I upgraded to the Gear S and still like it better now. I love the different watch face options that I can get with the 360 as well as the round face.

I take my device off charge around 6 am and by about 8-8:30 pm, the battery is pretty much gone (less than 5%). I am running one of the stock facer watch faces and I do have ambient turned on. I also have the heart rate monitor and pedometer enabled as well. I have the display set to auto brightness.

I really do not want to turn off the ambient light feature and would prefer not to go with a stock face. One of the main reasons why I do not want to go back to the Gear S is the assortment of watch faces available for Android Wear. Also the tilt to wake function works way better on the Moto 360 than the Gear S. Other adjustments, I would be open to disabling.

thank you for your help..

 

[mrsmoore78]

Go into your settings > connections and make sure your mobile data is set to auto switch and not ON. I think the watch has it set to on by default, which means your gear is always searching for a network. If it's on auto switch it will use Bluetooth as long as you're in range and switch to your network when you're not. That will extend your battery life to get you through bedtime most likely. I'm not one who expects my watch to last 2 days or more. I'm happy to charge at bedtime, but i want to GET to bed time without charging. If that doesn't work, turn all motion detection off, that will get you there for sure.

 

[Rukbat]

Also, make sure you charge it WAY before it reaches 5%, or you'll be replacing the battery in 6 months. Try to never let it get below 40%.

 

[crxssi]

I take my device off charge around 6 am and by about 8-8:30 pm, the battery is pretty much gone (less than 5%). I am running one of the stock facer watch faces and I do have ambient turned on. I also have the heart rate monitor and pedometer enabled as well. I have the display set to auto brightness.

Ambient off, auto brightness, heart and pedo enabled, I have 75% battery left after 16 hours off the charger. Either you are waking the watch far too often by mistake (like 100+ times), have a bad app installed, something is misconfigured/munged, or the battery is no good any longer. I suggest you turn off ambient and tilt-to-wake and see if you have at least 50% left at the end of the day. If not, do this: http://forums.androidcentral.com/moto-360/471939-what-do-when-360-misbehaves.html

 

[dungoyle]

Try two things. Today, turn off ambient lighting. Just for one day. Did that do the the trick? I know you like it, but if that's the culprit, you have to decide how much you really like it. Okay, maybe that isn't the problem. Maybe you turn it off, and you're still dead in the water by 8pm. You're using a Facer watch face. I like Facer (prefer Watchmaker, but both are good). All watch faces are not equal. User another another watch face. You don't want to use stock I know, but you can at least use another face from your Facer collection. Some of those watch faces can be a combination of sloppy work, and too much data being polled and displayed from your phone, and they will drain you faster.

On the subject of "never let you battery drain to 5%", I agree to AVOID that, but it's going to happen sometimes -- especially on a smart watch. Depending on my activity, my watch can be anywhere from 40% to 15% when I go to bed around 10pm, and I don't give a flip if it's only 15%. It happens. I'm sure the battery will last me for the two years it will probably be on my wrist (at best -- let's face it, most smart watch owners are going to find something else every two years on average).

 

[mrsmoore78]

Try two things. Today, turn off ambient lighting. Just for one day. Did that do the the trick? I know you like it, but if that's the culprit, you have to decide how much you really like it. Okay, maybe that isn't the problem. Maybe you turn it off, and you're still dead in the water by 8pm. You're using a Facer watch face. I like Facer (prefer Watchmaker, but both are good). All watch faces are not equal. User another another watch face. You don't want to use stock I know, but you can at least use another face from your Facer collection. Some of those watch faces can be a combination of sloppy work, and too much data being polled and displayed from your phone, and they will drain you faster.

On the subject of "never let you battery drain to 5%", I agree to AVOID that, but it's going to happen sometimes -- especially on a smart watch. Depending on my activity, my watch can be anywhere from 40% to 15% when I go to bed around 10pm, and I don't give a flip if it's only 15%. It happens. I'm sure the battery will last me for the two years it will probably be on my wrist (at best -- let's face it, most smart watch owners are going to find something else every two years on average).

How do you turn Ambient off?

 

[tech_fan]

Thanks for the tips. I decided to turn off the ambient sensor, use a simplistic watchmaker face with basic colors and no animation. I have had it off the charger for 3 hours. The battery is at 70 or 80% and is expected to die around 5.

I switched it back to the stock Motorola face so ill see if that improves it. The other option would be to wipe the device and start over.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[dungoyle]

How do you turn Ambient off?

On your watch, just go to settings, then scroll until you find "Ambient Screen", then toggle it on or off. The option is also available on your phone using the Android Wear application, but I don't know the exact location off the top of my head -- easy to find though.

 

[crxssi]

Thanks for the tips. I decided to turn off the ambient sensor, use a simplistic watchmaker face with basic colors and no animation. I have had it off the charger for 3 hours. The battery is at 70 or 80% and is expected to die around 5. I switched it back to the stock Motorola face so ill see if that improves it. The other option would be to wipe the device and start over.

Again, I strongly recommend you read this: http://forums.androidcentral.com/moto-360/471939-what-do-when-360-misbehaves.html rather than just factory resetting, which often is not productive.

 

[tech_fan]

Again, I strongly recommend you read this: http://forums.androidcentral.com/moto-360/471939-what-do-when-360-misbehaves.html rather than just factory resetting, which often is not productive.

Actually, I read through it before I did the reset as they suggested some other possible solutions to the problem. So, i tried those and then wound up resetting it.

I also did notice the display coming on frequently while I was driving. I also noticed that listening to music/podcasts while driving brought up the card related to the media player and that could have attributed to the battery life.

 

[mugenlude19]

Watchmaker has a timeout feature.
I set mine to 30s and it's a compromise between running ambient.

M8/360

 

[chezm]

I also did notice the display coming on frequently while I was driving.

I just figured this out recently. My commute to work is 1 hour each way. I'd be leaving the house with 100% and by the time I got to my desk (est. 70 mins) I was already at 83-85%. The rest of the day the battery would drain normally. I have tilt to wake on (ambient mode also turns on during motion, by shouldn't be as battery aggressive ) and didn't realize my screen was pretty much on my whole drive, mainly because my coat sleeve was initiating the wake display (360 moving in/out as I move my arms). I turned on theater mode as a test and low/behold my battery Friday was 98% when I got to work. From now on I'll just shut off tilt to wake while driving, maybe you should consider same for ambient.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[crxssi]

I have tilt to wake on (ambient mode also turns on during motion, by shouldn't be as battery aggressive ) and didn't realize my screen was pretty much on my whole drive, mainly because my coat sleeve was initiating the wake display (360 moving in/out as I move my arms). I turned on theater mode as a test and low/behold my battery Friday was 98% when I got to work. From now on I'll just shut off tilt to wake while driving, maybe you should consider same for ambient.

Posted via the Android Central App

Just some clarification, since the terms you used might confuse some people...

Ambient screen is simply a setting that means "be more sensitive to movement." With it off, it takes a more deliberate tilt motion to turn on, but it still will. Turning off tilt to wake will completely disable motion waking and require pressing the crown button or touching the display to wake the watch. For some strange reason, you can only get to the "tilt" setting from inside the Wear phone app settings.... it cannot be done from the watch itself. Neither will disable touching the screen to wake the watch, there is no option to disable touch to wake except Theater mode, and that will also disable notification waking too.

Ambient effectively uses more battery when it is on. It being on or off doesn't mean anything unless tilt on is also on. Man, they make this unnecessarily confusing.

 

[DanPLC]

Lately I've been having horrible battery life and nothing has really changed as far as I know. I used to make it through the whole day (6:30am - 11:30pm) with plenty to spare, but lately it has been running out in the evening way before I go to bed. I've always kept Ambient mode off and keep the brightness in Auto. I use Watchmaker, but even switching back to stock watch faces did nothing to help the battery life.

After reading this thread, I decided to switch off the "Tilt to wake" feature as an experiment without changing anything else (Ambient mode off, Auto brightness, using Watchmaker faces). For the last 2 days with "Tilt to wake" disabled, the battery life has been so much better. I'm at 55% at 8:30pm which is outstanding. It's a little less convenient, but having my watch die before I go to bed is even more inconvenient.

 

[tripleh3lix]

Thanks for the tips. I decided to turn off the ambient sensor, use a simplistic watchmaker face with basic colors and no animation. I have had it off the charger for 3 hours. The battery is at 70 or 80% and is expected to die around 5.

I switched it back to the stock Motorola face so ill see if that improves it. The other option would be to wipe the device and start over.

Posted via the Android Central App

I've had mine off the charger for about 5 hours. It's at about 76 percent on 2/5 brightness. I'm using a G'dUP watch face.. And it's super pretty. Doesn't drain much battery and looks amazing. What'll make it look even better is a metal watchband.

 

[TJH132]

I've had mine off the charger for about 5 hours. It's at about 76 percent on 2/5 brightness. I'm using a G'dUP watch face.. And it's super pretty. Doesn't drain much battery and looks amazing. What'll make it look even better is a metal watchband.

I similarly use about 5% battery per hour, plenty for a long work day. I keep Ambient off most of the day, but switch it on as I get close to finishing up (last couple of hours).

Still living the 360!

TJH

Posted via Android Central App

 

[TabGuy]

Just as a comparison, here are my stats...

• My battery burns at a rate of 2.4% per hour.
• I have ambient turned off
• I'm using WatchMaker watch faces
• My phone is a Note 4

 

[mrsmoore78]

An update from me: I'm a few weeks into using my Gear S regularly now. I have come to the conclusion that the primary reason for my battery drain is the location I am at work. I work in a school with cinderblock walls. My room has no windows. My phone even struggles with connection sometimes, and when I'm at work my battery drains quickly no matter WHAT my settings are.

When I'm at home, or out and about, my battery life is excellent. I had blamed the watch, but I realize now it's just plain bad luck in where I work all day. I bought an extra cradle charger from the samsung website that I keep in my bag. If I charge it up at lunch (it often drops 50% from the time I get to work until noon) it will last the rest of the day until bedtime. On weekends when I'm not at work, I can go all day and still have around 40% at bedtime. So, keep that in mind if you're having unexplained battery drain.

I have my settings as Wifi OFF, mobile data ON, gps OFF, and my motion sensors are ON. I couldn't ditch that feature, I like being able to look at my watch without pushing the button.

Hope this helps!