Inconsistent Battery Life

[TJH132]

Yesterday my 360 ended a 12 workday with 40% remaining, ambient mode on and off and a normal amount of interaction.

Today at 7 hours I got the 15% warning and shortly thereafter the thing was toast. The battery graph shows a distinct turn downward for some reason, leading to the shortened day.

I've seen this before with Facer but today was a stock face. Any ideas?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[zakcooper40]

I'm having the same. My idle was 12% and screen seemed high at 28% and hadn't been on much so I'm doing a rest to see if that helps.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Rukbat]

Press the graph when that happens and post the next page. Something happened at the "knee" of the curve - something woke the watch and kept it awake, the battery developed a pretty bad dendrite, something. The page you posted shows overall use since the last charge, it doesn't show minute-by-minute use, which is what we need to see.

BTW, 40% is good - so you can charge it at that point. You shouldn't let it get lower. That one 15% hit won't do much life-shortening, but doing it consistently will. I'd set the warning at about 40% if you want to be conservative (that's a warning to finish up your work and charge or shut off the watch), or 35%, which is a warning to grab for the power switch.

 

[ETPhoneHomeT]

Press the graph when that happens and post the next page. Something happened at the "knee" of the curve - something woke the watch and kept it awake, the battery developed a pretty bad dendrite, something. The page you posted shows overall use since the last charge, it doesn't show minute-by-minute use, which is what we need to see.

Say what? Are you talking about the Watch Battery graph pictured in the OP? When I press on that graph on my phone in the Android Wear app, it doesn't switch to a minute-by-minute graph. Am I missing something?

 

[TJH132]

Thanks for the tip about batteries. Clicking on the graph doesn't enlarge it the way the phone's battery graph will. I guess I just have to keep tabs on what might be causing the downturn in the future.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Chris Hamilton3]

I have noticed that playing music from Pandora runs the battery down. I'm listening to Pandora on my phone with a plug-in headset (Bose) so there is no Bluetooth contention between the watch and the headset.

The difference is dramatic. If I don't listen to music at all, the watch will have 40-60% battery at 10pm (starting at 7am). If I listen to music at work (starting at around 8 am) the watch is dead by 5pm. My guess is that there are a lot of notifications going to the watch when playing music on Pandora and it's the data comm between the phone and watch that is causing the battery to be used excessively.

I tried adding Pandora to the 'Blocked Notification' list in Androidwear on the phone but that stop the phone from sending what music is playing on Pandora and did not stop the battery from running down either. My solution was to by a Aukey wireless charging pad (from Amazon, plug) for work and charge the watch back up mid-day.

I haven't had a chance to really test Google Play, but my guess is that it will have the same problem because it's not the apps, it's the notifications (just to many of 'em) that are causing the battery drain. I'll try that and update later.

Update: 2015-03-30
I have found that the watch cannot go more than two days without a restart, I have found that if I restart the watch as I put it on the charger every evening, I have consistent, normal battery usage the next day.

If I let the watch run without a restart and just charge it every night, sometime on the third day the watch will quickly run the battery down to auto-shutdown (or crash).

There are clearly some resource leaks. The question is which app(s) are at fault or is the os. Time will tell (unintended pun stumbled upon).

I've also come to the realization that the accelerometer is to sensitive and activates the watch far more than needed. I come to this conclusion by using the Theater mode which requires me to press the button on the side of the watch to light it up. When in this mode, the watch can have well over 50% battery life at the end of the day.

I don't know, but I hope that things will improve over time. I have an HTC One/M7 and don't have Lollipop yet. I have heard that AndroidWear integration is better with the newer OS.

Update 2015-06-18
Update: I got a Galaxy S6 Edge (with Lollipop) about a month ago and with the new phone OS I got updates to the watch OS as well. I now have three choices for "Interruptions"; Show All, Priority Only and None. With KitKatt it was only Show All or None. But I digress, the battery life of the watch is much improved wit Lollipop; I can get through an entire day without the watch running the battery down to zero. If you haven't already, get Lollipop on your phone to get things going.

One other note, when I upgraded. The Pandora app on my phone no longer works with my watch. With KitKatt I could see artists and skip forward, etc. With Lollipop... nothing. I've reinstalled Pandora but still nothing but that's for another thread.

 

[kuykendallc]

Mine has been doing the same. Every time battery life is bad, Bluetooth is at the top of the list of usage. When its acting normal, Bluetooth is about 2% of the usage, today its 9%. Last night at 8pm when I took it off after wearing it for 13 hours, battery percent was 71%. It just died completely 5 minutes ago after 9 hours of usage. I really think Bluetooth is the culprit.

Another culprit might be the Google search app on my phone. This started happening for me right after that app was updated. I'm not sure if they are indeed related, but it could just be coincidence.

 

[TheRydad]

FWIW, I have noticed that when I wear a sport coat, the coat seems to wake up the screen as I am walking around. I have noticed on these days that my battery will be low long before expected, although I haven't confirmed that the screen was "on" longer. I also notice this with certain dress shirts.

I have a couple of Qi chargers from my Lumia phone so I keep one on my desk and top off the watch for an hour or two while at my office. Because of that, I haven't really looked into it much further, but thought I would put this out there to see if it resonates.

-rd

 

[despich]

I also have a problem with inconsistent battery life, most days it makes it to the end of the day with around 60% left but some days it goes down very very fast. (like sometimes before noon). I don't stream music on it, I don't really do anything with the watch that I think would adversely effect it. I only have 2 custom watch faces on it and no other watch apps I have tried uninstalling them and it still does it. If I notice it's going down fast (like I did this morning) if I reset the watch then it goes down at a normal rate. Notice on my chart below, the discharge slowed way down once I restarted it at like 10 AM. I have a stock Verizon Galaxy Note 4 for my smartphone. I thought it was a defective watch so I had Motorola replace it and the charger under warranty (which they did without much trouble) but the replacement watch acts exactly the same, so I think it's something the phone is doing.. Does anyone else have this problem?

 

[ezzzzz]

I also have a problem with inconsistent battery life, most days it makes it to the end of the day with around 60% left but some days it goes down very very fast. (like sometimes before noon). I don't stream music on it, I don't really do anything with the watch that I think would adversely effect it. I only have 2 custom watch faces on it and no other watch apps I have tried uninstalling them and it still does it. If I notice it's going down fast (like I did this morning) if I reset the watch then it goes down at a normal rate. Notice on my chart below, the discharge slowed way down once I restarted it at like 10 AM. I have a stock Verizon Galaxy Note 4 for my smartphone. I thought it was a defective watch so I had Motorola replace it and the charger under warranty (which they did without much trouble) but the replacement watch acts exactly the same, so I think it's something the phone is doing.. Does anyone else have this problem?
View attachment 168710

I have the same problem, really makes me mad...just some random day for no reason my watch battery tanks. can't figure it out. I don't use my watch for nothing just notifications, no fit stuff, no music, just looking at whatsapp and email. I had to switch to a watch face that displays battery life so I'm not constantly checking it.

on a side note wht is that cool optimus prime notification u got??? please let me know wht app that is from

Posted via AC app on my X 14

 

[John Wenner]

I've had the watch for a few days now and my battery died after 6 hours total time. Not sure what happened! I used a FACER face and listened to music on my phone at work. I suppose my dress shirt could be waking it up, but 6 hours! Not really happy with my purchase, luckily I got it cheap. Is it a defect or possibly needs a reset?