News Smartwatches got bigger to avoid solving their biggest problem

[AC News]

There are three main ways to make a smartwatch battery last longer than a day. Each of them has their problems.

Smartwatches got bigger to avoid solving their biggest problem : Read more

 

[kigmatzomat]

The Pebble got 7 day battery life with apps and hundreds of watch faces.

it didn't have cellular or gps and used ultra-low energy always-on e-ink/e-paper displays.

Those displays were fuzzier a decade ago but now they are much higher res, have better contrast and colors are brighter.

 

[dwterry]

I've been wearing Galaxy Watch Classics for several years now (most recently the GWC 6) and always thought they were great. But just recently I picked up a Garmin 965 for running. It's a beautiful watch with an easy to read color display. It's tracking my steps, my heart rate, my running (using GPS), oxygen levels, sleeping, etc. I was surprised that it works pretty well as a replacement for my GWC6 with notifications (I had expected I would only wear the Garmin watch while running). But what surprised me most was that I used the watch for 6 days straight before I recharged it. Usually running with my GWC6 (with the GPS turned on) would drain it pretty quick, so I expected my Garmin to drain quickly by running with it, but it didn't. I never really used any other apps on the GWC6 (besides the built in stuff for health monitoring including running), so I'm not "missing" anything in switching over to Garmin - except for the daily recharge cycle. And honestly, I don't miss that at all.

 

[Scott Schofield]

80 hours on the Wear? You/ve got to be kidding. Lucky to get 20... No GPS, no always on. Basic stuff... As another poster noted.. LOVED my Pebble. Did everything I needed and lasted a good week...

 

[kbobrwpj]

I regularly get 48-60 hours per charge, on a 2 plus year old Galaxy Watch 4. Over time, I figured out that "dumbing down" some functions really helped the battery life. No auto brightness - I just manually set it usually once for day, and again at night. Turned off lift to view and gestures. Like others, I use mostly the health stuff, no gps, notifications display on all emails and texts, answer a few calls but only when alone and I have no other choice, heart rate monitor every 10 minutes, media controls auto pops. I even have a rotating photo background with 15 pictures currently in rotation. I think turning off the auto sensing for brightness, and turning off gestures may have seriously extended my typical battery life-but your mileage may vary. (And yes, I wear the watch at night, though sleep tracking is still hit or miss for me).