Battery LIfe

[Spree]

@steff This is why other sport oriented companies (e.g. Coros, Polar, Garmin) tends to underestimate their battery claims, because they know how important it’s the battery for their client base.

This is blatantly false, though ;). https://www.nakan.ch/wp/2020/02/03/autonomie-des-montres-cardio-gps-promesses-et-realite/.

Additionally, Suunto 7 is not really in the same category of other Suunto watches - this idea that there are “customer types” per brand, and not per product, baffles me a bit. Does it mean brands shouldn’t venture into different segments, because “their customers” expect something else?

With Suunto 7 you will never get more than 7-8 hours with low moving sports with Best GPS. As @NickK correctly said, clearly the “testing” part was not updated - what I suspect is that adding the “good” GPS setting was part of “catch up” to the original battery duration claims. If it was meant to be “up to 12 hours with Best GPS” it would obviously say so - since it would be a selling point.

[Steff]

@NickK @spree

so let me see if I understand your logic: they launched the watch in January 2020 saying the watch can get up to 12 hours of battery because they were thinking that 9 month later they will release a feature (Good GPS) that can obtain those claims ?
And after they released this feature, they innocently forgot to update the product page to mention that you can obtain those results only with that feature ?

And this is an OK approach, right ?

I’m amazed of the mentality of the users from this forum.
Every time someone is complaining about something, there is someone who find an explanation and an excuse for it, only to not acknowledge the watch deficiencies.

You need a feature that a watch doesn’t have it ?
It’s WearOS you can install an app for that.

You get only 6 hours of battery during activity ?
It’s because you installed an app.
I get 10 hours in the same conditions.
Try using 10 sec GPS + FusedTrack.

You used FusedTrack is a total mess?
You are moving to slowly.

The altimeter is wrong?
You wear it wrongly.

The watch specs are misleading?
Are the poor marketing guys.

[Spree]

@steff said in Battery LIfe:

And this is an OK approach, right ?

Not really, it’s not what I said.

I explained how I think things came to be. Also, I explained that assuming that based on the current information the “up to 12 hours” claim is with GPS best is being intentionally naive. Does the Suunto 9 page say that you can get 120 hours and you expect it to be with GPS = best? Obviously not. The order in which things were done (and the fact that most likely the “up to 12 hours” claim was probably wrong/misleading, or at least more out of tune with reality, before the 2020 update) is irrelevant as of right now.

So yeah, you can be angry - but it comes at least in part from betrayed expecatations placed on some misguided faith that marketing doesn’t play a role. It does, and while we can ignore it it doesn’t lead to any improvement in our experience as users.

[Egika]

@steff said in Battery LIfe:

@NickK @spree

I’m amazed of the mentality of the users from this forum.
Every time someone is complaining about something, there is someone who find an explanation and an excuse for it, only to not acknowledge the watch deficiencies.

The mentality is basically to help users out. If someone has an issue with their product, other users try to give advice and help as far as they can.
If bugs are found, people from Suunto listen and try to get them fixed (or fix them themselves).

What do you suggest to do, if someone is complaining about sth?
Everyone has to join in complaining in a group complain? Would this be helpful and forward thinking?

[isazi]

@egika said in Battery LIfe:

The mentality is basically to help users out. If someone has an issue with their product, other users try to give advice and help as far as they can.
If bugs are found, people from Suunto listen and try to get them fixed (or fix them themselves).

Exactly. This is a place where people help each other solving issues, this is why people tell you “have you tried this?” “have you tried that?”. It helps finding the real issues. And helps users to not have to go through support with every issue.

[A Former User]

@steff said in Battery LIfe:

so let me see if I understand your logic: they launched the watch in January 2020 saying the watch can get up to 12 hours of battery

Please show me the version of this page from January 2020 when the watch was launched that promises 12 hours with Best GPS tracking?

because they were thinking that 9 month later they will release a feature (Good GPS) that can obtain those claims ?

Has it occurred to you that some features may not be released immediately but be delayed? Require additional testing? And said testing may be impossible due to… I don’t know…

There was this Covid-19, cough-cough, thing… You sure heard about it? When everything literally stopped for months and things that were supposed to be released, not just by Suunto but others too, got pushed later in the year or into 2021?

Oh, well… You are here clearly to vent your frustration, so who am I to stop you?

[Egika]

@nickk check here from 01/2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20200109045232/https://www.suunto.com/suunto-collections/suunto-7/

It says “up to 12h in GPS tracking mode”
** Actual battery life may vary considerably depending on settings, applications, and many other factors.

[Steff]

@nickk this is from 29 March 2020 http://web.archive.org/web/20200329023345/https://www.suunto.com/Content-pages/suunto-7-battery-information/
It’s the same text.

Maybe I didn’t expressed myself correctly.
In many ways I really appreciate the community here because the users are trying to be helpful (especially compared to other brands forums where no one is responding)

But, in other ways, I think this helpfulness is becoming to bias to the manufacturer.

Anyways, I will close the subject here.
It was not my intention to argue with you.

[A Former User]

@egika Funny, because the battery page @Steff was referring to didn’t exist until March 29.

Regardless… Doesn’t change either of my arguments. Nobody promised anything with 12 hours and best GPS tracking and some features take time to develop, test, and release.

[olymay]

Today I did my longest run since hurting my achilles at the beginning of Feb. I did a 14km run through the local countryside as I have realised I MUCH prefer trail running to street/road running ( @Brad_Olwin will likely approve!).

Anyway, I thought this would be a good opportunity to check out the battery life of the S7.

First, the settings I had and how I used the watch:

GPS: Best (1 sec)
Always on map: NO
Aeroplane mode: NO
Do not disturb: NO
Activity Mode: Running - Basic
(i think that’s the key stuff, feel free to ask for more info)

Watch was connected to phone at all times. Phone was playing music via BT headphones (during the road sections) and the watch was used to control this music playback.

I was following a route which had 18 waypoints. I also checked the map a LOT as this was a route I had never done before and there plenty of ways to go wrong.
I also paused the activity a number of times in order to take photographs and have a drink.
Essentially, I forced the watch into full power mode many, many times.

Now the juicy stuff:

Activity duration: 01:40:57 (this is only my moving time, does not include the time paused which does keep the GPS connection active, probably 10 minutes max paused)
Starting battery: 97%
Finish battery: 63%
Battery consumption: 34%

Therefore 34% use in 100 minutes equates to 0.34% battery usage per minute.

If that rate continued the watch would go from 100% to 0% in 294 minutes which is 4.9 hours.

Considering the amount of time the watch was in high power (me checking map, waypoints, music control, notifications received, etc) I am actually BLOWN AWAY by how good this battery is.

Once I am more familiar with this route I might try to do it again with the GPS in good (10sec) mode, no waypoints, and me not using it, to see what the difference would be.

So almost five hours with the watch in high power mode for a significant amount of the run? Yes please!

[A Former User]

Watch was connected to phone at all times.

And that’s your real secret. The watch was using phone’s GPS most likely unless Suunto’s app specifically requests internal GPS.

[olymay]

@nickk said in Battery LIfe:

Watch was connected to phone at all times.

And that’s your real secret. The watch was using phone’s GPS most likely unless Suunto’s app specifically requests internal GPS.

Incorrect, the Suunto 7 does not use the phone’s GPS at any time.

[Brad_Olwin]

@steff The S7 will go much closer to 12h on Best with cycling but not with running/hiking. I am getting a bit better battery estimates than you are by 1h to 2h and as of now I cannot explain why. I am perfectly happy with FusedTrack as I do not need my GPS tracks to exactly match a trail, whose projection in a map may not be totally accurate anyway. So with FusedTrack I can get ~16h, more than enough for most of my training but not for races. Adding FusedTrack exceeds the specs stated that you quoted.

[giulio]

Hi at all,
I tested a walk,trekking mode,airplane mode,gps best 1 sec,route loaded,map view 10 sec. Every 1 minute, drain 28 %/hour.
So…if i am in map view 10 sec every 3 minutes it could last 6 hours!!

[Nigel Taylor 0]

@brad_olwin said in Battery LIfe:
I am perfectly happy with FusedTrack as I do not need my GPS tracks to exactly match a trail, whose projection in a map may not be totally accurate anyway. So with FusedTrack I can get ~16h, more than enough for most of my training but not for races.

I can vouch for that…I did OMM Lite a couple weeks back and I ran for 6.5hrs the first day…I was in mid 60’s% at the end.

Recharged in the evening from a battery pack, wore overnight and did 4.5hrs run day 2…didn’t bother checking charge.

[Nigel Taylor 0]

@brad_olwin said in Battery LIfe:

I am perfectly happy with FusedTrack as I do not need my GPS tracks to exactly match a trail, whose projection in a map may not be totally accurate anyway. So with FusedTrack I can get ~16h, more than enough for most of my training but not for races. Adding FusedTrack exceeds the specs stated that you quoted.

I can vouch for that…I did OMM Lite a couple weeks back and I ran for 6.5hrs the first day…I was in mid 60’s% at the end.

Recharged in the evening from a battery pack, wore overnight and did 4.5hrs run day 2…didn’t bother checking charge.

[Spree]

@nickk Suunto Wear app always uses the watch’s GPS chip, never the phone’s.

[Jamie BG]

@steff
Personally I don’t understand why you think that the watch should get higher battery life while tracking. The only other full smartwatch that gets more than 12hrs continous tracking is the Ticwatch Pro 3 - and it only does that by using its LCD screen only which gives very little info. Every other full smartwatch (Apple, Tizen, Wear os, Fitbit) all give up to 12hrs of continous tracking max (and that is being generous - a lot give less than 10 hrs). the fact that you can get up to 18hrs (and enough people including myself have found that is a reasonable claim) is pretty amazing for a full smartwatch.

I understand that you though you were buying a fitness watch due to it being from Suunto (known in Europe for fitness watches) and due to the amount of fitness features compared to other full smartwatches, but the reality is its a smartwatch first and fitness watch second, which is blatently obvious on every review out there.

If you need better battery life you will have to compromise on the smarts and go for a fitness watch, which start at 20hrs of continous tracking (i.e. my Garmin Fenix uses approx 2%/hr for what I am currently tracking - compared to my S7 8-12%/hr for same activity) [and that doesn’t take into account norma operating battery life - last night sleep with SPO2 reading, and tracking sleep took maybe a percent - battery changed by 1 percent but had been on same percent prior to going to sleep for a while).

And no I am not heavily biased to suunto, in fact currently using a Garmin as my main driver, as suunto didn’t have anything that could do what I wanted. Parts about both eco systems that are really good.

[Steff]

@jamie-bg I did not said that I want more than 12 hours of tracking.

I don’t even want 10 hours.
I hoped for 10 hours but I’m perfectly satisfied with 8-9 hours of 1 sec GPS tracking.

My problem is that I cannot get more than 6 hours in these conditions.

And, as I mentioned, there are several full smartwatches which can get 8 hours (Samsung, Ticwatch, etc.)
I know that some of them are sharing the phone GPS, and it’s not necessary a fair comparison, but at least they have an option to obtain those hours.
On S7, no matter of what features I disable, it’s impossible to get more than 6-6.5 hours of 1 sec GPS tracking, when walking/hiking.

Anyways, for me this subject is closed.

It was also my mistake that I had other expectations from this watch.

[Brad_Olwin]

@steff eight hours of I sec would be pushing very hard. Why do you have to have I sec recording?