[Official] Version 1 battery life thread

codesplice · Sep 9, 2014

halon said:
Apparently Motorola fibbed a little on the battery. The iFixit teardown reveals a 300mAh battery but when you do the math with the other stuff in the watch it works out to 320mAh. So long story short....marketing.

Class action law suit in 3...2..

Eh, I wouldn't pick up the pitchforks just yet.

Somebody did something crazy and actually contacted Motorola about the apparent discrepancy and received the following response:

The typical battery capacity for Moto 360 is 320mAh and the minimum is 300mAh. In the mobile industry, sometimes both the minimum and typical capacity is listed on the battery, with the typical capacity quoted as the official battery size. Both figures are included on the batteries of our Moto X, Moto E and Moto G devices. In the case of smaller devices, we aren’t always able to list both figures. For Moto 360, we only had room for one figure and choose to list the minimal capacity of the battery. We see how this can be confusing and we will look into ways to add the typical capacity as well in the future.

Sounds legit to me - but I suppose that could just be PR spin. :dontknow:

ckeegan · Sep 9, 2014

Took it off the charger at 8:40am (it is now 6:32pm), Ambient ON, two nav routes of 6 minutes or so each, 18 incoming call notifications, 13 incoming text notifications, 6 agenda notifications, 5 sent texts using text to speech, and general notifications from other apps. I have 30% remaining.

Again, with Ambient turned on I should get just over 14 hours, which means my battery won't die until right around 10:30pm. Tomorrow will be a full day test with Ambient off.

atrain311 · Sep 9, 2014

ckeegan said:
Took it off the charger at 8:40am (it is now 6:32pm), Ambient ON, two nav routes of 6 minutes or so each, 18 incoming call notifications, 13 incoming text notifications, 6 agenda notifications, 5 sent texts using text to speech, and general notifications from other apps. I have 30% remaining.

Again, with Ambient turned on I should get just over 14 hours, which means my battery won't die until right around 10:30pm. Tomorrow will be a full day test with Ambient off.

Really look forward to seeing those results tomorrow. Thanks for keeping us posted.

ckeegan · Sep 9, 2014

UPDATE: The time is currently 10:25pm, my 360 has been off the charger for 13 hours 45 minutes (with Ambient ON) and I have 6% remaining. Good night all.

dportal2006 · Sep 9, 2014

halon said:
Today will be my first full day. As of right now I have had my watch on my wrist for 3 hours and I'm down to 90%, I had around 10 or so notifications pop up and a handful of screen touches to see the time and an unknown amount of times the watch face was on because of movement. I also messed around with watch faces for about 1 minute.

Side note: my review won't be typical because my job is not a place to wear a watch like this. So for 8 hours out of the day I won't have it on me. I'll easily get a full day. Possibly 2 days? We'll see.

Seems to me like you won't take full advantage of a very expensive product then.

Battery life is definitely a huge flaw in these watches. Losing 10% battery after 3 hours without doing anything? Not acceptable. I will probably buy one 3-4 years down the road when they have perfected the technology.

halon · Sep 9, 2014

dportal2006 said:
Seems to me like you won't take full advantage of a very expensive product then.

Battery life is definitely a huge flaw in these watches. Losing 10% battery after 3 hours without doing anything? Not acceptable. I will probably buy one 3-4 years down the road when they have perfected the technology.

Matter of opinion. I don't need to know every email I get. Or what's going on twitter or Facebook on my watch. I can check that stuff later...on my phone. I have zero need to know my heart rate(I find it pointless) and how many steps I've taken. I have a pedometer from work that pays me up to $500/yr. My watch isn't going to that. I don't want turn by turn directions on my watch. I have a job building locomotives so me wearing this watch while working would be really stupid. It would be trashed in no time.

So yeah, my battery results are going to be highly different from others and I will get great battery life. Lucky me

All I need this thing to do is give me the time and let me know when I am receiving a call or a text message. Some sports scores are nice to.

One more thing. I need this watch to look sexy as hell. And it definitely does.

atrain311 · Sep 10, 2014

I apologize if this is a very naive question, but is it even possible through a firmware update to increase battery life semi significantly?

Meaning, it still seems so odd to me that they would release this watch where users couldn't get through a day using it pretty heavily. You'd think they would want to be able to say, our watch can last almost 2 days or a full day of heavy use. Do you think that's the reason none are available at the moment? Let early adopters beta the battery life for them?

ckeegan · Sep 10, 2014

atrain311 said:
I apologize if this is a very naive question, but is it even possible through a firmware update to increase battery life semi significantly?

Meaning, it still seems so odd to me that they would release this watch where users couldn't get through a day using it pretty heavily. You'd think they would want to be able to say, our watch can last almost 2 days or a full day of heavy use. Do you think that's the reason none are available at the moment? Let early adopters beta the battery life for them?

Did you miss my posts yesterday? I would have made it easily more than 14 hours on a single change, with Ambient On, had I not needed to go to bed. Sounds like a full day to me, or at least the part of the day I'm conscious.

Battery tech has to advance in order for something like this to go multiple days, and I don't even know why 90% of people would need it to, unless you hook up with some girl and need to know the time on the walk of shame.

Day 2 test, with Ambient Off, is about to commence. I would consider myself a heavier user. Today I will be out of the office for most of the day, and will be showing houses so I will be outdoors more, and the pedometer will be busier. Also, the only apps I have disabled for notifications to the watch are Groupon and Living Social because I don't need that on a watch. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, Email, Text, Agenda, and everything else are all going.

atrain311 · Sep 10, 2014

ckeegan said:
Did you miss my posts yesterday? I would have made it easily more than 14 hours on a single change, with Ambient On, had I not needed to go to bed. Sounds like a full day to me, or at least the part of the day I'm conscious.

Battery tech has to advance in order for something like this to go multiple days, and I don't even know why 90% of people would need it to, unless you hook up with some girl and need to know the time on the walk of shame.

Day 2 test, with Ambient Off, is about to commence. I would consider myself a heavier user. Today I will be out of the office for most of the day, and will be showing houses so I will be outdoors more, and the pedometer will be busier. Also, the only apps I have disabled for notifications to the watch are Groupon and Living Social because I don't need that on a watch. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, Email, Text, Agenda, and everything else are all going.

Sorry, I might have missed the post or read it half-busy.
I look forward to your findings today.
But in any case, could anyone answer if a firmware could even help this scenario? Thanks, everyone. This is the best forum around due to the great people.

Outatime · Sep 10, 2014

Firmware updates can tweak battery life. It can more aggressively tune how rapidly the screen dims. Things of that nature. I hope they add a disable feature for the heart rate monitor. I'd be curious to see how well it does with that off. Because honestly, I don't care about that.

Firmware updates generally won't offer some epic battery life improvement unless there was some huge programming error.

atrain311 · Sep 10, 2014

Outatime said:
Firmware updates can tweak battery life. It can more aggressively tune how rapidly the screen dims. Things of that nature. I hope they add a disable feature for the heart rate monitor. I'd be curious to see how well it does with that off. Because honestly, I don't care about that.

Firmware updates generally won't offer some epic battery life improvement unless there was some huge programming error.

With that being said, do YOU believe there is some sort of error? I mean, and I hate to beat a dead horse, but I still cannot believe they would release this baby without being able to get through a day of pretty heavy use. It's not logical.

Outatime · Sep 10, 2014

Personally I do not believe there will be an epic improvement. Next to the screen, one of the biggest drains on your cell phone is how well it handles the radios and 3G/4G handoffs. A watch doesn't have that problem. It only has one frequency to worry about, the Bluetooth one, and theoretically the transmitter is always in range.

Manufacturers of all of these smaller devices are in a constant battle. Consumers want small and light. Batteries are big and heavy. So they make trade offs. If they made the 360 one more millimeter thicker to accommodate a bigger battery, people would be complaining that it's too big.

I was really hoping that by now we'd see some sort of advancement in battery technology. Really, it's holding everything up, from smart watches to electric cars.

breadnatty08 · Sep 10, 2014

Hey folks, a few posts were removed for being wildly off topic.
Let's keep this thread focused on the Moto 360 battery life.

Carry on now!

Whatstreet · Sep 10, 2014

MOTO needs to develop a 360 MAXX. I can't be bothered by battery anxiety.

charliecc · Sep 10, 2014

I second the 360 MAXX.

The watch is incredibly light. I'd happily add another 10g for more battery life, there's no need to change the form factor.

dpeagle · Sep 10, 2014

you gotta wonder if this thing would have better battery life if it wasn't using a 4 year old processor. i think i will wait till motorola exhausts their supply. nice when you can unload old inventory at premium prices. (http://www.zdnet.com/moto-360-smartwatch-powered-by-a-four-year-old-processor-7000033478/)

breadnatty08 · Sep 10, 2014

TI OMAP did nothing beneficial to battery life of the Galaxy Nexus, especially the Verizon variant. Still am in awe why they chose to use it over a Snapdragon, but who knows?

ckeegan · Sep 10, 2014

OK, Ambient OFF today, and made sure to take it off the charger at 8:40am just like yesterday. I couldn't post, but was at 44% at 6:32pm, compared to 30% yesterday with Ambient ON. I'll let you know where I am at 10:25pm just like yesterday, but usage between the two days was very similar if not a little busier today since I was out of the office for most of the day and got more calls because of it.

ckeegan · Sep 10, 2014

Whatstreet said:
MOTO needs to develop a 360 MAXX. I can't be bothered by battery anxiety.

Then we can listen to everyone whine because it is 2 inches thick.

I'm on track for 18.5 hours today with what I consider to be pretty heavy use. I'll be asleep for the last 4.5 hours, so it will be back on the charger anyway.

ODog2323 · Sep 10, 2014

breadnatty08 said:
TI OMAP did nothing beneficial to battery life of the Galaxy Nexus, especially the Verizon variant. Still am in awe why they chose to use it over a Snapdragon, but who knows?

Had to have been a cost cutting decision, no?

They put that much more into the build materials and design, they had to cheap out on something to stay in the same price ballpark as the plasticky competition.

Hell, look at the Apple Watch. STARTING at 350 is what you get when you don't compromise build or performance. They can get away with that, probably knowing how any will flock.

ckeegan · Sep 10, 2014

Alright folks, 10:25pm. 29% remaining with Ambient OFF. Compared to 6% with Ambient ON, and I've had a relatively busy night with 18 incoming text messages since 7pm and 8 incoming calls. Plenty of other notifications as well.

ckeegan · Sep 10, 2014

10:48pm (14 hrs 8 mins off charger) with 28% remaining and I'm going to bed. No use for the other 5ish hours.

drkrishall · Sep 10, 2014

Same here. 10:53pm 21%. Took off charger at 7:00am.

One note: I feel like frequent muting causes batt to drain fast. Maybe something with the unmute vibration?

sezat · Sep 11, 2014

Hi guys,
I have another question about the battery life; I am interestested in the idea of changing faces of a watch rather than its smart properties. So, how many hours can you get without using the smart properties and connections etc but just as a digital "watch"? This will effect my decision to buy or not.If it doesn't get a full day or two without any smart-things than maybe I should wait for LG's watch with a higher capacity battery?!? :thinking:

halon · Sep 11, 2014

sezat said:
Hi guys,
I have another question about the battery life; I am interestested in the idea of changing faces of a watch rather than its smart properties. So, how many hours can you get without using the smart properties and connections etc but just as a digital "watch"? This will effect my decision to buy or not.If it doesn't get a full day or two without any smart-things than maybe I should wait for LG's watch with a higher capacity battery?!?

I barely use any features and easily get a day and a half.

[Official] Version 1 battery life thread

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