Battery Drain with S3 and Samsung Health

[Rodzp]

I got my S3 Frontier a couple of weeks ago everything seemed to be fine. I did see a decrease in battery, but it was only a slight decrease.

Then there was an update to S Health that changed the name to Samsung Health and​ now it is eating battery like crazy. From 7 AM to 4 PM it used 15%. I put the phone on charge and took it off​ at 5:30 and by 10 PM it Samsung Health used 10%. Before the update it was using 2% between 6 AM to about 9PM

I have uninstalled the watch app and Samsung Health app then reinstalled. This fixed it for a day. I have tried turning off everything I am not using but still no luck. I am in my return period and really think I am going to send it back since this was one of the main things I got the watch for. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
My phone is a Pixel XL.

 

[sparky307]

I got my S3 Frontier a couple of weeks ago everything seemed to be fine. I did see a decrease in battery, but it was only a slight decrease.

Then there was an update to S Health that changed the name to Samsung Health and​ now it is eating battery like crazy. From 7 AM to 4 PM it used 15%. I put the phone on charge and took it off​ at 5:30 and by 10 PM it Samsung Health used 10%. Before the update it was using 2% between 6 AM to about 9PM

I have uninstalled the watch app and Samsung Health app then reinstalled. This fixed it for a day. I have tried turning off everything I am not using but still no luck. I am in my return period and really think I am going to send it back since this was one of the main things I got the watch for. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
My phone is a Pixel XL.

I am having the exact same issue with my Nexus 6P. Contacted Samsung tech support and they claim they are not aware of this issue and advised me to reset the watch. If you find a fix please let me know.

 

[Rodzp]

I am going to return mine. I processed the RMA last night

 

[arunma]

Hmm, I wonder if this has to do with non-Samsung phones. My app updated to Samsung Health too, and I've noticed no battery drain issues. For example, when did wear my watch to bed, over 8 hours I get a 5% battery drain as I always have. During the day I continue to see about 1.5% per hour.

Dumb question I realize, but did you try powering off and restarting the watch? On occasion my watch will start eating battery life like crazy, and a quick restart fixes it, presumably by clearing out runaway background processes.

 

[Rodzp]

Hmm, I wonder if this has to do with non-Samsung phones. My app updated to Samsung Health too, and I've noticed no battery drain issues. For example, when did wear my watch to bed, over 8 hours I get a 5% battery drain as I always have. During the day I continue to see about 1.5% per hour.

Dumb question I realize, but did you try powering off and restarting the watch? On occasion my watch will start eating battery life like crazy, and a quick restart fixes it, presumably by clearing out runaway background processes.

I did restart the watch. I am wondering the same thing on the non Samsung phones.

The drain varies for me and it seem to follow how active I am. Yesterday after 8 hours it was showing 6% I had not used my phone much either and it had used more battery than anything else.

I was at an amusement park 3 days this week and did lots of walking. It used 15%-25% each day. I had very little phone usage these days too.

I factory reset the watch uninstalled all of the Samsung apps yesterday and I am going to start fresh today. This will be my last test to try and fix it.

 

[arunma]

I did restart the watch. I am wondering the same thing on the non Samsung phones.

The drain varies for me and it seem to follow how active I am. Yesterday after 8 hours it was showing 6% I had not used my phone much either and it had used more battery than anything else.

I was at an amusement park 3 days this week and did lots of walking. It used 15%-25% each day. I had very little phone usage these days too.

I factory reset the watch uninstalled all of the Samsung apps yesterday and I am going to start fresh today. This will be my last test to try and fix it.

Yeah, I've also noticed that I see more battery drain when I am active, i.e. jogging, walking, etc. You'd think that merely collecting accelerometer statistics is not that computationally intensive, but I guess not.

 

[Tripndrag]

I have been fighting this battery drain since the update. Nice when it updated it turned everything I had spent days figuring out and turning off. I have never had my phone battery drain because of my watch. I finally narrowed it down to Samsung Health today. The only thing I use in health is the step counter, everything else is turned off. I have had my watch for a year. I don't use wifi, I don't have it auto turn on when I move my arm, I don't heart monitor, I use the weather. I have run a few of the built in watch faces, I usually run 2 custom watch faces I built with Gearwatch designer, Facer drains the battery fast but is super nice to use. I have my sound on 12 and vibrate on. I usually run my watch about 12 hours and turn it off at night. I can go Monday morning to the next Sunday and still have 20-30% battery left. I just cleared all the data for Samsung health, force stopped it and it wouldn't force stop so I un-installed it and disabled it. I have gone 2 hours with 2% loss of battery on my phone and no loss of battery on my watch.

 

[Tripndrag]

A few hours later and the battery on the phone started going fast again after the removal of Samsung health. I ended up deleting/disabling the gear app off my GS7 edge going back to the original version. I already had done the same thing with Samsung Health.

I removed the S3 from the bluetooth connection, stopped and started the BT on the phone to clear the watch out, cleared the cache on the phone in the storage and restarted the phone. I then reset the Gear S3 wiping everything. When it came back up I went through connecting it to my phone again, enabling the Gear app on my phone, it updated to the latest, connected to the watch got all setup. I didn't select use anything from backup throughout this process. I then went through all the settings on the watch and I don't think it had all the settings it has now! For one thing, I found SVoice was active with listen on. I use the SVoice on my watch and phone all the time using the double press on the bottom watch button to activate it but I know for a fact it will eat battery if you leave it in listen mode where you don't have to do anything but say a phrase to launch it. I swear there was way more settings and things I have never seen before after this update even though I went through all the menu's on the watch when I first received the update at Thanksgiving. I know when the battery update pushed it reset a bunch of settings as well. I went through and turned off wifi, all the tracking fittness stuff, basically went through all the settings turning off a all kinds of stuff, like I said some things I had never seen. I don't use Samsung Pay. The watch face I built has a battery level, giant time and giant date. Just like the one on Facer I built, you can look it up on facer under my username. One of the settings I have never seen, turn off wake the watch with the bezel turn (my sweaters and coats turn the thing on all the time, the bezel is easy to turn after a year of wearing the watch). I also don't remember the put your palm over the watch to turn it off. My S3 is not an LTE verison so it connects with bluetooth to my phone and I don't use the wifi so I can use it stand alone, I always have my phone with me and I have the bluetooth disconnect set so if I head out of the house and my watch goes off I know I forgot my phone. I turned off all the notifications accept for mail, calls, texts, google voice, duo and a couple others that I use, I installed a timer off the samsung store, setup the barometer and altimeter, setup the sound and vibration. I highly recommend going through every setting in the settings, there is a lot more things you can do and run with this update. I really wonder if my first update got everything on the watch at this point. After I got the watch all setup I went into the gear app and turned off anything in there I didn't want and checked all the settings. I then activated Samsung health on the phone, went through turning off all the stuff in there, basically use the step counter and the weight tracker, turn off notifications and anything from Samsung sending to me. I then put the watch in debug mode, got it on my wifi and fired up GearWatchDesigner and moved my 2 watch faces I use over the watch. Turned debug mode off, turned the wifi back off, set the watch face and restarted the watch. This whole process took maybe 15 minutes the longest part being the watch connecting to the phone and Bluetooth. So far I have been at work for a couple hours and off the charger for 2-3 hours and my phone it at 96% battery so it seems to be a lot better. I will run a few days and see what happens. Like I said above I wear my watch all day and then when I am finished for the day I turn it off for the night. This gets me through 7 days even if there are a couple nights where I am out late. It has not been like this since the update.

 

[Tripndrag]

A few hours later and the battery on the phone started going fast again after the removal of Samsung health. I ended up deleting/disabling the gear app off my GS7 edge going back to the original version. I already had done the same thing with Samsung Health.

I removed the S3 from the bluetooth connection, stopped and started the BT on the phone to clear the watch out, cleared the cache on the phone in the storage and restarted the phone. I then reset the Gear S3 wiping everything. When it came back up I went through connecting it to my phone again, enabling the Gear app on my phone, it updated to the latest, connected to the watch got all setup. I didn't select use anything from backup throughout this process. I then went through all the settings on the watch and I don't think it had all the settings it has now! For one thing, I found SVoice was active with listen on. I use the SVoice on my watch and phone all the time using the double press on the bottom watch button to activate it but I know for a fact it will eat battery if you leave it in listen mode where you don't have to do anything but say a phrase to launch it. I swear there was way more settings and things I have never seen before after this update even though I went through all the menu's on the watch when I first received the update at Thanksgiving. I know when the battery update pushed it reset a bunch of settings as well. I went through and turned off wifi, all the tracking fittness stuff, basically went through all the settings turning off a all kinds of stuff, like I said some things I had never seen. I don't use Samsung Pay. The watch face I built has a battery level, giant time and giant date. Just like the one on Facer I built, you can look it up on facer under my username. One of the settings I have never seen, turn off wake the watch with the bezel turn (my sweaters and coats turn the thing on all the time, the bezel is easy to turn after a year of wearing the watch). I also don't remember the put your palm over the watch to turn it off. My S3 is not an LTE verison so it connects with bluetooth to my phone and I don't use the wifi so I can use it stand alone, I always have my phone with me and I have the bluetooth disconnect set so if I head out of the house and my watch goes off I know I forgot my phone. I turned off all the notifications accept for mail, calls, texts, google voice, duo and a couple others that I use, I installed a timer off the samsung store, setup the barometer and altimeter, setup the sound and vibration. I highly recommend going through every setting in the settings, there is a lot more things you can do and run with this update. I really wonder if my first update got everything on the watch at this point. After I got the watch all setup I went into the gear app and turned off anything in there I didn't want and checked all the settings. I then activated Samsung health on the phone, went through turning off all the stuff in there, basically use the step counter and the weight tracker, turn off notifications and anything from Samsung sending to me. I then put the watch in debug mode, got it on my wifi and fired up GearWatchDesigner and moved my 2 watch faces I use over the watch. Turned debug mode off, turned the wifi back off, set the watch face and restarted the watch. This whole process took maybe 15 minutes the longest part being the watch connecting to the phone and Bluetooth. So far I have been at work for a couple hours and off the charger for 2-3 hours and my phone it at 96% battery so it seems to be a lot better. I will run a few days and see what happens. Like I said above I wear my watch all day and then when I am finished for the day I turn it off for the night. This gets me through 7 days even if there are a couple nights where I am out late. It has not been like this since the update, battery goes a bit faster like 20% a day.

 

[Tripndrag]

I have been running like this for a few days and my watch and phone seem to be back to normal. At first I thought it didn't help because it still seemed to be using battery more than usual on my phone and the watch got a little better so I ended up clearing all the network connections on my phone under backup and reset in the settings. Had to re-connect my watch and add my wifi back, then figured out I had forgotten to turn the wifi off on my watch after moving my watch faces over to it! I also forgot to turn to the screen brightness down! So I am not 100% sure I needed to clear the network connections on the phone, it certainly doesn't hurt anything unless you have wifi connections that are hard to get back on. When you clear the network connections, it gets rid of all your wifi setups, all bluetooth connections as well so I had to re-connect to my vehicle, speakers, headphone and add wifi setups back everywhere I go. I can run my watch screen brightness at 4 or 5 and still see it fine in the sun outside. Samsung health is back on my phone as well with steps and weight tracking on. I am using about 10% a day again (I turn my watch off at night) so I can go 7 days pretty easy without a charge (my watch does not have LTE). My phone is much better as well only using around 20% in a 12 hour period with light use (90% of that time being connected to wifi instead of cellular).

So if you updated your Gear S3 I really suggest wiping it, clearing the bluetooth connection from your phone, clearing the samsung health app storage cache and program data and un-install it as well as the Gear app.

Start over from scratch, it really doesn't take very long.

After you finish make sure you get all the notifications turned off you don't need like sitting still alerts, leaving on the important ones like phone calls, texts, emails and then turn off all the monitors in samsung health, heart rate, running, biking etc... Turn off the wifi, turn the sound volume down a bit, turn the brightness down as well (you can easily go down half way and it is still plenty bright). I also turn off the wake on wrist movement and wake on bezel movement and turn off the SVoice listen. I activate SVoice with the bottom button on the watch "press twice". I use SVoice a lot. I like starting with everything turned off to see how it performs and then go from there.

This watch in stock form out of the box connecting to Galaxy S7 edge phone and not adjusting any settings gets you about 3 days use "turning it off at night" with the original software that came on the watch. I have a feeling with the updated software it would be even worse. You can drastically improve battery life going through the settings and making adjustments like I mention above and make the watch a lot better in my opinion.

 

[11B1P]

I have been running like this for a few days and my watch and phone seem to be back to normal. At first I thought it didn't help because it still seemed to be using battery more than usual on my phone and the watch got a little better so I ended up clearing all the network connections on my phone under backup and reset in the settings. Had to re-connect my watch and add my wifi back, then figured out I had forgotten to turn the wifi off on my watch after moving my watch faces over to it! I also forgot to turn to the screen brightness down! So I am not 100% sure I needed to clear the network connections on the phone, it certainly doesn't hurt anything unless you have wifi connections that are hard to get back on. When you clear the network connections, it gets rid of all your wifi setups, all bluetooth connections as well so I had to re-connect to my vehicle, speakers, headphone and add wifi setups back everywhere I go. I can run my watch screen brightness at 4 or 5 and still see it fine in the sun outside. Samsung health is back on my phone as well with steps and weight tracking on. I am using about 10% a day again (I turn my watch off at night) so I can go 7 days pretty easy without a charge (my watch does not have LTE). My phone is much better as well only using around 20% in a 12 hour period with light use (90% of that time being connected to wifi instead of cellular).

So if you updated your Gear S3 I really suggest wiping it, clearing the bluetooth connection from your phone, clearing the samsung health app storage cache and program data and un-install it as well as the Gear app.

Start over from scratch, it really doesn't take very long.

After you finish make sure you get all the notifications turned off you don't need like sitting still alerts, leaving on the important ones like phone calls, texts, emails and then turn off all the monitors in samsung health, heart rate, running, biking etc... Turn off the wifi, turn the sound volume down a bit, turn the brightness down as well (you can easily go down half way and it is still plenty bright). I also turn off the wake on wrist movement and wake on bezel movement and turn off the SVoice listen. I activate SVoice with the bottom button on the watch "press twice". I use SVoice a lot. I like starting with everything turned off to see how it performs and then go from there.

This watch in stock form out of the box connecting to Galaxy S7 edge phone and not adjusting any settings gets you about 3 days use "turning it off at night" with the original software that came on the watch. I have a feeling with the updated software it would be even worse. You can drastically improve battery life going through the settings and making adjustments like I mention above and make the watch a lot better in my opinion.

That may work for you, and I agree with checking all your notifications, volume and brightness, but some of the suggestions you made, are half of what the watch was designed for. Uninstall the health app? Why do you have this watch? I want my watch tracking my steps. It's on me all the time. My phone is laying around somewhere so I don't want inaccurate step counting. You can get a generic smartwatch off Amazon for $15 if you want all the settings you suggest.

Yeah, resetting the watch may not take long, but in addition to all the changes you have to reapply back to the watch, plus with my bank, I have to call and have 3 transactions verified to set up Samsung Pay. No thanks. I'm getting well over 2 days even with all the activity tracking and Facebook notifications.