solar charging
-
I have a question too. Afaik each charging cycle takes a toll on the battery health, even more so if the charging cycle is incomplete. Has it been investigated, how solar charging impacts battery health long term. Or has there been any hw changes implemented to meditate that, e.g. use solar power not to change but to directly power the watch s.t. the battery isn’t used and so it’s durability isn’t impacted.
-
@DMytro
I will let you know in 4-5 years
no, kidding!
I guess Suunto did their homework. compared to charging phones we have way less cycles, hence I don’t worry too much -
@freeheeler with non-solar watches, sure. But if charging cycle is triggered every time the watch ‘sees’ the sun, you probably have multiple charging cycles a day. And I wonder how healthy it is in the long run. In other words, would the watch loose 20% of its original capacity already after a year instead of 2-3 year with non-solar watches.
-
@DMytro
I understood that a charging cycle corresponds to 1 full charge, not every single time you point the watch to the sun… but of course I don’t know details. I just assume that all cycles could be reached within a day or two -
@freeheeler well, I’m no expert either - maybe someone in the forum knows more and can comment. But to me it seems that the following holds: 1 small charge via solar, e.g. increase by 5% (btw charging in the sun prob means that the watch is at least warm and charging warm battery is also not ideal afaik) is not as bad for the battery health as charge from 0 to full, but 20 such charges by 5% is worse than one charge from 0 to 100%, although I don’t know by how much.
I hope this isn’t perceived as criticism, I’m just curious.
-
-
@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos That’s good to hear. Charging to 99% is probably what most people would expect as normal behavior.
-
@DMytro I couldn’t be less bothered about the battery of my watches. They have pretty long lifespan and by the time their deterioration starts worrying me, I guess I’ll have changed the watches. 4-5 years will be without any problems.
-
@freeheeler said in solar charging:
@DMytro
@Egika once explained it well to me in a pm… I stopped worrying that moment 
Do you want to tell us? With permission of @Egika of course…
-
@mikeorbreak
as said before, long story short (what I recall): don’t worry, it takes long for watches to reach charging cycles
-
The solar widget confuses me a little bit.
I had an office day on Friday with probably 1 hour of sun that day. On Saturday I had a 3 hour windsurf session with probably 5 hours of sun, but the graph doesn’t seem to show that.
-
@surfboomerang Could it be that the graph shows the relative energy balance, on Saturday the collected and consumed energy during windsurfing were almost equal, but on Friday more energy was collected than consumed?
-
I left it this morning on clear sun for some 3 hours, battery was at 14% at the begining and after those 3 hours it was still on 14%, it did not raise…but that was 8 hours ago and it is still on 14. My question is…when it is being solar charged does the percentage raise or it just stays on that initial percentage for a lot longer than when it did not had solar charge?
Suunto Ocean
Suunto Vertical Solar Canyon
Suunto Ambit 3 peak Sapphire -
The last two days I could test the solar charging… after a long period of raining we had a slighty cloudy sky with periods of sun 🤩 I noticed the the force of the solar charging is very very depending of the direction or the angle of the incoming sun… but I don‘t want to change the watch from the left to the right wrist when I change the direction of my activity…
-
@SuperFlo75 said in solar charging:
the force of the solar charging is very very depending of the direction or the angle of the incoming sun
Well, that’s actually how solar panel works, unfortunately
-
@surfboomerang I’m seeing similar behavior on the weekly solar chart as well. It doesn’t seem to be displaying the info correctly.
-
@wotus would definitely be a nice idea, but then I would suspect negative values since I ended up with a lower battery percentage at the end of the day.
-
@vlado it does raise, but you need a lot of sun and patience.
-
@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos left mine in direct sunlight for 30 minutes (off wrist), screen went black, and zero charging.
-
@craigeggleton it took me around 50 minutes for 1%. So normally 4-5 full solar bars
Suunto Vertical Titanium Solar
OnePlus Nord 4
