Android Wear OS timer and battery life

Techno79 · Aug 7, 2018

I was an early adopter for the 1st gen Moto 360 watch which was a great watch but the battery wouldn't last a whole day using the always on option. My watch has to have an always on display and I need it to last for as long as possible but 24 hours is an absolute must. I soon after upgraded to a Pebble Time which gave me about 4 to 5 days of battery life which was great (but it lacked features my Moto 360 had). I've been rocking my PT ever since but Wear OS feels like it has moved on lots so I thought I might dip my toes in again.

I read news about the Fossil Q Explorist Gen 4 (and was reading old reviews about the gen 3). Does the Fossil gen 3 last at least 24h with always on mode?

Also, anyone know how the countdown timer app works in Wear OS? Can I configure multiple durations which can be quickly triggered from my home screen of the watch?

Thanks in advance

codesplice · Aug 7, 2018

As with phones, battery life on a Wear OS depends a lot on your usage - how often you wake the device, how many notifications you receive, and (perhaps especially) what watch face you're using. With reasonable use, I think most modern Wear OS watches should be able to last 24 hours - but probably not a whole lot longer. If battery is a priority (and you're not planning to charge the watch overnight each night) you might want to look at the new Ticwatch Pro which uses a secondary display for maximum power savings while idle; they advertise 5-30 days of battery life.

You can set multiple timer durations within the Timer app on the watch, but I don't know of a way to link directly to those various timers from the watch face. You can add a Timer complication for quick access - but that will prompt you to set the duration each time you use it.

lunatic59 · Aug 7, 2018

Techno79 said:
I read news about the Fossil Q Explorist Gen 4

Funny you should mention that in particular. I picked up one of those on Amazon prime Day. Completely happy with it, BTW.

I use it fairly heavily for email and messaging. Some days I feel like I'm getting notifications every 5 seconds, although it's more like every 10 minutes or so. I use a Watchmaker watchface for my daily driver with "always on" enabled, which can be a bit power hungry. That said, I wear my watch approximately 12 hours a day and when I take it off it's almost never used 50% power so i'd say 24 hours with the Q Explorist is certainly a reasonable assumption.

Techno79 said:
Can I configure multiple durations which can be quickly triggered from my home screen of the watch?

Are you looking for one tap to start several timers? Or do you want to be able to tap on different areas to being individual timers of a single duration? I can't say that I'd know how to do either, but maybe a custom watch face could include something that would work for you. Does the Pebble do that?

Griz · Aug 11, 2018

I purchased the Fossil Explorist gen4 yesterday, very excited. Was going to replace my Gear S3 with it. Doesn't look like that is going to happen. Did not make it through a full day on a charge. Did not have it on always on like I do my gear and it was dead before I got home from work. Very disappointed in the battery life, it is such a good-looking watch.

The_Chief · Sep 9, 2018

Qualcomm is expected to announce, in the next few days, a dedicated system chip just for smartwatches. This will likely result in far better functionality, and far better battery life, than current watches... which are cobbled together with shrunk-down mobile circuitry.

The next generation of smartwatches should put everything out now to shame, as they will be using components designed for the watch, instead of forcing cell phone components to act like a watch.

Techno79 · Sep 10, 2018

Griz said:
I purchased the Fossil Explorist gen4 yesterday, very excited. Was going to replace my Gear S3 with it. Doesn't look like that is going to happen. Did not make it through a full day on a charge. Did not have it on always on like I do my gear and it was dead before I got home from work. Very disappointed in the battery life, it is such a good-looking watch.

I read quite a lot about poor battery life of the gen 3 so I kind of thought that the gen 4 would be better. I went to a Fossil store and the sales lady I spoke to actually used a gen 4 watch, they said with the always on screen, they got well over 24 hours. Probably not enough to last 2 days but I would be charging every night so I only need 24 hours. But I'd want that 24 hours to be with plenty of use, always on screen and max brightness. It would be worrying though if the gen 4 didn't do that though.

The_Chief said:
Qualcomm is expected to announce, in the next few days, a dedicated system chip just for smartwatches. This will likely result in far better functionality, and far better battery life, than current watches... which are cobbled together with shrunk-down mobile circuitry.

The next generation of smartwatches should put everything out now to shame, as they will be using components designed for the watch, instead of forcing cell phone components to act like a watch.

Yes, I heard about this last week. I think it's worth at least seeing what the unveiling of the new chip has to offer. I guess it'll be a while though before watches start releasing with this new chip but if the features are good then it seems like it's better to hold out. I was also holding out for the rumour Pixel watch too but that seems to have been denied by Google so hoping the Qualcomm announcement is good.

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Android Wear OS timer and battery life

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