For those concerned about Moto 360 battery life

[SeanBlader]

The 4.4W1 update changed my 360's battery life from 4 hours to 16 hours. Highly recommended, would buy again.

Mike Elgan has a good article he posted for Computerworld where he talks about why the Apple Watch will "integrate" with your wrist better than Android Wear.
What Apple knows about smartwatches that Google doesn't | Computerworld

Some of it is obviously speculation, but there are some neat tricks. Whether those tricks become useful or they are ignored of course we'll have to wait and see. I will be most interested to see what people think about the ergonomics of the Apple Watch since there's an aweful lot of watch under the band, where the Moto360 has all of the watch above the band. I will look forward to reviews on the comfort of Apple's device. I imagine it will be called "ComfortGate".

 

[LocationDudeNYC]

Picked this up on Saturday. Light usage over the weekend. I had charged it fully. Today saw first real world use. I barely used it and the battery lasted 5 hours!! I placed it on the charger and watched the percentage DROP while it was charging! Then it died. I recharged it up to %98. In less than 30 minutes the charge was %76. What the heck!! There is no way I can use this watch if this is how long the battery lasts. It's horrendous!!

 

[atrain311qes109]

Picked this up on Saturday. Light usage over the weekend. I had charged it fully. Today saw first real world use. I barely used it and the battery lasted 5 hours!! I placed it on the charger and watched the percentage DROP while it was charging! Then it died. I recharged it up to %98. In less than 30 minutes the charge was %76. What the heck!! There is no way I can use this watch if this is how long the battery lasts. It's horrendous!!

Very curious to see the outcome of this. This certainly doesn't seem right. Do you have any third party faces installed?

 

[solotristan88]

Well said.

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[turnerm]

Picked this up on Saturday. Light usage over the weekend. I had charged it fully. Today saw first real world use. I barely used it and the battery lasted 5 hours!! I placed it on the charger and watched the percentage DROP while it was charging! Then it died. I recharged it up to %98. In less than 30 minutes the charge was %76. What the heck!! There is no way I can use this watch if this is how long the battery lasts. It's horrendous!!

This was my early experience as well. I reset the watch, deleted and reinstalled Android Wear and then it worked as expected.

Then I happened to use a third party watch face and I saw my battery draining like mad. I'm not sure which of the two things (or both) fixed my issue. But I know that using certain third party faces yields bad results.

 

[fofjjsr]

I honestly think to many people are expecting these smart watches to replace their phones. People need to remember they are an accessory.

 

[Torisen1]

The battery life is more than good enough. This also depends on the person using the watch. I took it off my charger at 7:00 AM. It's now Midnight and I'm still at 54%.

What are people expecting out of this watch? It does everything it said it would, it's pretty damn handy.

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[tcmeiss]

Yesterday I went from 6:00am to 10:00pm and had 17% left when I dropped it on the charger. I think that was perfectly fine. It went from when I left for work till I went to bed. Exactly when I need it to work. This has been a pretty typical result for me too. Only one day when I didn't make it to 10, and that was because I had a 3rd party watch face draining my battery.

 

[JohnCenaFan]

anyone notice that some watchfaces drains the battery quickly.

 

[LocationDudeNYC]

Very curious to see the outcome of this. This certainly doesn't seem right. Do you have any third party faces installed?

I have a ton of 3rd party faces installed. Today I took it off the charger and drove to work, about 45 minutes. Didn't use the watch at all except to look at the time twice. When I got to work my battery was at %86. Yeah, this is a big fail.

 

[anon(871934)]

I have a ton of 3rd party faces installed. Today I took it off the charger and drove to work, about 45 minutes. Didn't use the watch at all except to look at the time twice. When I got to work my battery was at %86. Yeah, this is a big fail.

You can't really consider it a fail. Google has publicly stated that they do not recommend installing custom watch faces using current methods. There is an API coming to support this. I'm not sure you can blame Google if you are seeing massive battery drain because of custom watch faces.

 

[LocationDudeNYC]

You can't really consider it a fail. Google has publicly stated that they do not recommend installing custom watch faces using current methods. There is an API coming to support this. I'm not sure you can blame Google if you are seeing massive battery drain because of custom watch faces.

Yeah, but I used the same watch faces with the LG G Watch and my battery lasted all day.

Today I took the watch off the charger at 6am and by 10am I have %25. This is really ridiculous.

 

[TimeHunter]

Yeah, but I used the same watch faces with the LG G Watch and my battery lasted all day.

Today I took the watch off the charger at 6am and by 10am I have %25. This is really ridiculous.

Well, they are both Android Wear, but they are different hardware at the core. It could be that what got along okay with the LG G hardware has some incompatibility or was not optimized with the Moto hardware.

I know this is a hard pill to swallow, but since Google recommends staying away from third party faces for now, you can't blame either Google or Motorola for you not heeding the recommendation, even it those faces did manage to get along with the G.

 

[tcmeiss]

I have a ton of 3rd party faces installed. Today I took it off the charger and drove to work, about 45 minutes. Didn't use the watch at all except to look at the time twice. When I got to work my battery was at %86. Yeah, this is a big fail.

From what I've read, Google hasn't released the sdk for watch faces yet. So the people creating them may not be doing so in the correct way. Makes sense that they could be causing battery drain if that's the case.

 

[nyijedi]

The battery life is more than good enough. This also depends on the person using the watch. I took it off my charger at 7:00 AM. It's now Midnight and I'm still at 54%.

What are people expecting out of this watch? It does everything it said it would, it's pretty damn handy.

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I think a lot of us were expecting similar performance that the G Watch and Gear Live get as far as battery life with the screen always on, but in a beautiful watch. The Moto 360 is certainly beautiful, but it doesn't come close to the G Watch and Gear Live as far as the former goes.

 

[Flibberdejibit#WN]

Re: For those concerned about battery life

Fortunately for me, Best Buy stores around Columbus had an influx of 360s over the weekend. It was almost exclusively the black version...only saw three silver face versions available, but plenty of black ones. The first BB I went to had 7 on the shelf, and I just missed the silver one by a few minutes.

I initially picked up a black one. Brought it home, charged it to full and downloaded the update. I had ABYSMAL battery life...like 50% in 4 hours...with very minimal use. I checked stock again and found a silver one locally, so raced to the store to return the first one I bought and pick it up the silver, right as they opened. Repeated the same process...charged to full and downloaded the update. I really do believe the first one I bought was defective, because this new one is getting very respectable battery life.

Today has been the best day so far, but also seen my highest usage, so I think the battery takes a couple of days to calibrate. Took it off the charger at about 830am this morning and have been using it pretty regularly all day. Reviewed dozens of email notifications, a couple of meeting reminders, set some reminders/alarms, checked weather, checked heart rate, fiddled with my pedometer goal, controlled music playback through it, did a couple of Google searches, about 15 minutes of navigation (testing it out...works GREAT), and sending roughly 10 text messages via voice recognition. At 6pm, I have 57% battery remaining. So, 43% battery use in 9.5 hours with what I would somewhat aggressive use. I have also been in brightly-lit locations all day long so my ambient light sensor has had the backlight cranked to max all day. Ambient mode off of course...I don't need my watchface lit up unless I'm looking at it, and it rarely fails to turn on when I raise my wrist.

In summary, this thing gets better battery life than the OG Galaxy Gear I had in late 2013/early 2014. Looks dead sexy to boot. My only gripe thus far is not with the watch itself, but rather Android Wear. I get a TON of emails and the notifications that come in will indicate that I have multiple emails, but wont let me review them individually...have to go to the phone. So, that's a drag.

Otherwise, I love this thing. If you're having poor battery life, try returning yours for a new one Worked for me.

 

[M635_Guy]

Re: For those concerned about battery life

Got mine tonight (first post here) and hoping that they've been dialing in the firmware, etc. This can be pretty common with hardware/software designs in the beta/pre-release versions and even get dialed in early on as the development team gets field data.

Mine came with about 25% charge and is sitting on the stand now. Looking forward to using it!

 

[Flashfox]

Re: For those concerned about battery life

Day one with the MOTO 360 and here are some additional comments:

Battery life = It's been over 13 hours now and the watch still shows 42% battery power left, which is great. I was worried about this aspect but as I read, the horrible battery life is essentially tied to how you use the watch. If I leave the display always ON I don't expect the same battery life.

Usage = I left the display off until I needed it (flick of the wrist). However, I did send and receive several text messages, E-mails and made several Google voice inquiries. I sent text using Google voice which worked fine.

Bluetooth reliability = I read that it occasionally looses the BT link and I can confirm that it does happen. However, no big deal as it reconnects almost instantly.

Sharing with the car = When I am in the car, my Nexus 5 auto-connects to my car's BT and I can make and received phone calls without any problem. During this time, the MOTO 360 is still connected to the N5.

Readability in sunlight = I was pleasantly surprised as the display is very readable outside in the bright Florida sunshine.

So far so good... more feedback tomorrow after day 2 with this MOTO 360 

 

[teckee]

anyone notice that some watchfaces drains the battery quickly.

If anyone identifies a 3rd party watchface as a battery hog please share with us. I have several installed, but mostly use Facer. Maybe I'll remove all the others and see if battery life changes.

 

[stoneworrior]

I was using third party watch faces from day one and was getting anywhere from four hours to eight and I was getting annoyed with the watch. After listening to the last android central podcast I heard Phil say third party watch faces drain your battery. This was news to me so I switched to stock face for the first time today. I am very happy to say I took the watch out of the charger at 9:00 am and used the watch a lot today. Responded to at least thirty text messages. Read 23 emails. And used navigation for 28 minutes along with various other notifications, Instagram, several calendar alerts and weather and television show updates (Google now notifications) My phone went into the charger at 10:00 pm with 46% left. This is a huge difference for me and now I'm thrilled with my battery life. Until the API comes out I'm staying with stock faces.

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