gps battery life?

[Richard Servello]

Does it get good enough battery life to leave gps on and make it all day.

 

[dshrum84]

I have used it in BT mode and in LTE mode about equally since I bought it. Leaving the GPS on all the time is necessary if you want the emergency features to be useful and if you navigate even once a day it's a pain to go through the menus to turn location on and off. Hopefully in the future we'll see some widgets like the standard control panel on phones.

The battery for me with average use lasted 72ish hours with BT on constantly. When I initially switched to LTE (after starting the T-Mo Digits beta), the battery life crashed to 20 hours but the power management has figured things out and it's up to 48-60 hours now. The trick is that BT connection was murdering my phone battery so it's a tradeoff.

 

[Richard Servello]

I have used it in BT mode and in LTE mode about equally since I bought it. Leaving the GPS on all the time is necessary if you want the emergency features to be useful and if you navigate even once a day it's a pain to go through the menus to turn location on and off. Hopefully in the future we'll see some widgets like the standard control panel on phones.

The battery for me with average use lasted 72ish hours with BT on constantly. When I initially switched to LTE (after starting the T-Mo Digits beta), the battery life crashed to 20 hours but the power management has figured things out and it's up to 48-60 hours now. The trick is that BT connection was murdering my phone battery so it's a tradeoff.

It only needs to last a day. So awesome! As for BT affecting phone battery. I didn't see a difference yesterday. Today will be a full day, so I'll see.

 

[afblangley]

When I initially switched to LTE (after starting the T-Mo Digits beta), the battery life crashed to 20 hours but the power management has figured things out and it's up to 48-60 hours now. The trick is that BT connection was murdering my phone battery so it's a tradeoff.

Please share how you're able to get 48-60 hours on LTE. I burn 2-3% per hour with LTE and AOD, and never use BT. I also don't use Digits or NumberSync, which some have reported effects battery life. Do you have any idea why you're getting low burn rates?

 

[dshrum84]

It only needs to last a day. So awesome! As for BT affecting phone battery. I didn't see a difference yesterday. Today will be a full day, so I'll see.

My phone is approaching 2 years old and the only thing I've used BT for before has been headphones for a few hours at a time. My theory is that power management would have caught on eventually but it was taking longer than normal because it has a long history with short term use of BT.

 

[Richard Servello]

Does your phone support btle? That could be the problem.

 

[dshrum84]

Please share how you're able to get 48-60 hours on LTE. I burn 2-3% per hour with LTE and AOD, and never use BT. I also don't use Digits or NumberSync, which some have reported effects battery life. Do you have any idea why you're getting low burn rates?

I can share my settings, maybe that will help. I only have location and LTE on all the time, I leave BT, NFC, AOD and everything else off unless I need it. I think a big power drain on BT was the watch switching between connecting remotely, standalone, and BT while I was at home not holding my phone all the time. Just being connected remotely all the time is better for it's steadiness. It took 4-5 days for the battery to stabilize at the longer time, so I'd say either give it a week with steady use or maybe reset your watch or check for an update? Sometimes electronics just gets stuck in a loop and needs to start over.

 

[afblangley]

Thanks! I can certainly live with the battery I'm getting now, but more is better!

 

[dshrum84]

I should mention that I'm testing the T-Mobile Digits program beta right now. Before that I was using BT to connect because of a question I still haven't figured out related to: if I have call forwarding set up to send unanswered calls to my watch, is there a way to send a still unanswered caller to the phone's voicemail instead of the watch's? With Digits they're the same number so it's not an issue. Tradeoffs are everywhere.