Can one rant about Wear OS here since it’s technically still Android?
When Samsung was making watches on Tizen, they released products like Frontier (boasting upto 3 day battery life), original Galaxy Watch (boasting upto 4 days battery life). Cue they switched to Wear OS with GW4 and with the 40mm variant, the battery life doggedly remained at a pathetic 1 day with AOD on.
Even with release of newer generations like Ultra, they are barely hitting 3 days with ~590mAh battery. Why is Wear OS such a battery hog?
I own a Galaxy Watch 6 and the watch OS uses like 6 GB storage and 1+ GB in perpetual RAM. Is it really so that displaying time and running couple of apps in the background takes more memory than GNOME 46?
And Samsung’s implementation sucks even more. The insistence on using wireless charging baffles me considering that it loses so much power as heat. Rival devices like Oneplus and even Pixel Watch charge faster(in other territory, Huawei’s watch uses silicon carbon battery, lasts thrice as long and charges twice as fast).
Not to mention, in summers, the wireless Puck heats up more than a Pixel and throttles itself to the point where one has to point a fan in that direction.
What os does Huawei use? Surely if it was just a miracle battery tech everyone else would be on it too
I don’t know the newer ones but the Huawei watch GT 2 is using “Huawei lite os”. No 3rd party apps and pretty limited in functions but the battery life is amazing with about 14-15 days for me at least. This combined with a modded app is just right. AFAIK the newer ones are more capable but have a slight less runtime
Huawei has a custom OS but it does most of the stuff including all health/sleep tracking features and music playback. Sure, their app ecosystem sucks but honestly, even Wear OS is pitiable(when compared to something mature like Watch OS).
Silicon Carbon battery, IIRC, can pack higher energy densities than comparative Li-on batteries, though it is not a very significant difference as of now.
Yeah the battery life is stupidly short. Main reason I was looking at sport watches from Garmin and Suunto instead and ended up getting Suunto Race with battery lasting about 2 weeks
My first purchase GW4 40mm was very hastily done. I mainly wanted a watch that could stream music independently and was under the assumption that only Wear OS watches were capable of that(on the Android side). Couple that with the high initial cost of Garmin, and I overlooked it. But it is a mess if you have to put a watch on a charging Puck for 2 hrs daily(that only had 5W wireless charging).
Unless Wear OS really changes it’s direction in the next few years(and I hope my relatively newer GW 6 Atleast lasts for 3 years), I would be looking for a Garmin as well.
Google is removing features from Fitbits so people have a reason to buy Wear devices. Running a bespoke OS they’re able to get 5+ days between charges and had (roughly) the functionality of Wear.
Like another poster stated, Garmin seems like a better option.
Yes, Wear OS is still behind Apple’s Watch OS, which essentially is the market leader(despite their watches sometimes having even shorter battery life).
The original Pixel Watch barely lasted for a day for most users with AOD on. Atleast, the newer ones come in different size options(the larger one has a bigger battery) plus LTPO display. Still it is only a 2 day watch; not anywhere close to Fitbit or Garmin.
I bought a wear os watch deliberately because I thought I would enjoy modifying and customizing it like a regular android phone. In reality, I don’t use it much more than for fitness tracking. I’m going to buy a garmin instinct and not change for the next 4 years.
I have both a three and a four. I have never gotten three days out of my three. I even replaced the battery in it right before work bought me a four. The average battery life for my three and my four is right around 36 hours.
Now, I get a LOT of notifications so maybe somebody’s watch who gets less notifications can go into deeper sleep and is able to sleep longer and stretch that power out. But a lot of people weren’t getting 3 days out of there threes.
The 45mm GW3 had 340mAh battery, which was a downgrade from 472mAh battery on the original Galaxy Watch. The review at GSM Arena mentioned that the 45mm variant of the original Galaxy Watch yielded 2.5 days under moderate use. Samsung’s quoted time is/was longer though that might be under ideal conditions.
I personally used only 4 and 6. Whilst the latter has a bigger battery owing to the larger size and plows through almost 2 days with AOD on(hardly any notifications or continuous Hr though), the 40mm GW 4 barely crawled a day for me.
Garmin 4 lyf!
I have a solar powered Garmin with all the biometrics and all the GPS protocols for every satellite system known to man, and a full map feature, same as any WearOS device is capable of, with zero installable apps; the watch lasts 21 days from a full charge.
I use it to tell me the time, reply to texts and track my workouts. Not sure the point of an entire linux kernel requiring to be run on other watches with only less than a single day of battery. It sounds preposterous that people are okay with this.
When I have £500 to spare, I’ll get that. Until then, my £60 Hauwei watch will do.
When I have £500 to spare, I’ll get that. Until then, my £60 Hauwei watch will do.
This is a very excellent comment, given the context and that this is an Android watch discussion and mine is not running Android.
What Huawei Android smart watch is fucking 60 Euros? I’ll buy it tonight.
It’s not running WearOS, it’s just the most value I could find for £60. It has up to 2 week battery life, sleep and activity tracking, support for some third party apps if you get the GT 3 or up.
I have a Watch5 Pro. Running with AOD, but with the gesture and touch activation features turned off, I get around 48 hours per charge. And I just tap a button to wake it instead of tapping the screen, which doesn’t take any longer.
It’s worth noting that my watch, and a friend, also have the Watch5 and get similar battery life with those settings.
