Battery LIfe
-
@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.
-
@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.
Vector/T6c/Ambit 3 Peak/S5 Copper/S3/S7 Ti/S9 baro Ti/S9P Ti/S9PP Ti/Vertical Ti/Race Ti/RaceS/Ocean/Wing
-
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!! -
@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.
-
@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.
-
@nickk Suunto Wear app always uses the watch’s GPS chip, never the phone’s.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@steff eight hours of I sec would be pushing very hard. Why do you have to have I sec recording?
Vector/T6c/Ambit 3 Peak/S5 Copper/S3/S7 Ti/S9 baro Ti/S9P Ti/S9PP Ti/Vertical Ti/Race Ti/RaceS/Ocean/Wing
-
@steff please do not take this the wrong way, but there is definitely something specific to your watch (caused either by software problem, hardware problem, or user problem) that is causing you to have such poor battery life.
Please see my example above that I can also get under 6 hours battery life during an activity, but this is caused by me running the watch in high power mode for significant portions of the activity.
It seems to me that something similar is happening on your watch.
(I have done many other activities keeping the watch in low power mode and average 6-7% battery drop per hour).During the activity, does the data screen revert to a thin font style? If it stays thicker, this means it is stuck in high power mode.
Do you check the map screen often? Are you using multiple waypoints? Streaming music? Are all apps updated? (some users advocate turning off auto update of apps) Do you have any other devices conected to the watch? During activity, does the watch remain connected to the phone? Or do you use aeroplane mode? Is the phone killing the connection at any point due to aggressive power optimisation modes?All forum members here want to help you get the most out of your S7 and enjoy using it the same as we all do. There is something clearly not working correctly in your situation however your attitude of blaming the watch for everything and it clearly having a poor battery life are simply not true and understandably frustrating some forum members.
The Suunto 7 can and will last you over 12 hours of an activity, if you are willing to get to the bottom of what is causing this abnormal battery drain. If not, no skin off my nose, we tried to help.
-
@olymay thanks for help, for sure I’m willing to find a fix, if the problem is fixable.
(I have done many other activities keeping the watch in low power mode and average 6-7% battery drop per hour).
Just to be clear, you get 6-7% battery drop per hour in Best GPS mode ? Not in Good GPS + FusedTrack ?
All my bellow responses are based on using Best GPS mode.
During the activity, does the data screen revert to a thin font style? If it stays thicker, this means it is stuck in high power mode.
yes, I know how it looks when is getting out of low power mode. Is doing this only when I receive the auto-lap notifications
Do you check the map screen often? Are you using multiple waypoints?
no, I did tests when I didn’t even touched the watch and there was no route loaded and I got 14-15% battery drop per hour.
Streaming music?
Never
Are all apps updated? (some users advocate turning off auto update of apps)
Apps are always updated and also Play Store auto-updates are disabled, I only update the appa manually.
Do you have any other devices conected to the watch?
No
During activity, does the watch remain connected to the phone? Or do you use aeroplane mode? Is the phone killing the connection at any point due to aggressive power optimisation modes?
All hikes I did until now were in airplane mode.
The Suunto 7 can and will last you over 12 hours of an activity, if you are willing to get to the bottom of what is causing this abnormal battery drain. If not, no skin off my nose, we tried to help.
Again, are we sure that we are speaking about the same thing ? Best GPS mode with walking/hiking profile ?
-
@brad_olwin said in Battery LIfe:
@steff eight hours of I sec would be pushing very hard. Why do you have to have I sec recording?
Because Good GPS + FusedTrack was very inaccurate in walking/hiking profiles.
See my experience here
-
@steff phew! I’m glad i didn’t come across as aggressive, I just wanted to make sure all the obvious bases were covered.
Firstly, we are not comparing the same activity types, but I don’t see that it should make all that much difference.
I do most of my running with GPS set to best (my runs aren’t long enough to worry about battery life running out!).
I was getting the 7% per hour on good GPS, but can still get 10% per hour or under on best GPS (when not checking the watch every couple of minutes like I was at the weekend).It seems like most of your user settings and methods are similar to mine, although if i have my phone on me i do not turn on aeroplane mode (as I like to use my watch to see and control the music from my phone).
Do you have any third party apps installed?When not tracking an activity, what sort of battery life do you get from the watch? (and do you have the 24/7 HR and sleep tracking on etc?) I’m wondering if it is something maybe outside of the activity that is draining the battery?
I’ve done a fair few walks with my S7 and used the ‘walking-basic’ mode. This uses the good GPS mode and i’ve had no issues with either battery life or accuracy of the track, is there a reason you are using best GPS?
(i may be wrong but i don’t think fusedtrack works in walking mode, but 10s GPS seems to do well enough for walking speed).I will add. I am not a developer, or associated with Suunto. I’m not even experienced athlete. I’m just an average user who wants to help and to see others get as much joy and use out of their Suunto 7 as I am
-
@steff That was not a direct link, obviously it won’t be quite as good as 1s fix but in my experience it is quite good and distance estimates are as good as 1s fix. How many times have you tried this and are you sure that it just wasn’t a bad GPS day. I can show you side by side tracks and data if you like with other Suunto watches. I now have 2 S7s so I can run them side by side as well. Happy to do that.
-
@brad_olwin according to the watch settings and the Suunto website, FusedTrack only works with running or cycling, so if it does not work with walking/hiking etc then if the watch doesn’t get a good enough GPS signal maybe this could be throwing off @Steff’s track?
I’ve used good (10s) GPS for many walks and the track has been fine, I’m just thinking that maybe without FusedTrack if the GOS fix isn’t great it could cause more of an issue?
@Steff, have you tried the same route with good GPS more than once? and have you tried it with best GPS as a comparison?
This still doesn’t solve the battery drain though?? (unless there is a weak GPS fix causing the drain??
-
@olymay Could be but I think the S7 is different. If not, record as trail run and change afterward
-
Thanks @brad_olwin
@steff maybe try what Brad has suggested and convert to hiking afterwards, just as a comparison.
Also, I’ve had a thought regarding GPS fix. If possible, do the same route you have done before, on both good and best GPS modes and screenshot the difference. Before and after each activity, maybe use an app on your phone to check how many GPS satellites are visible from that spot.
Also compare this to doing the method Brad suggests.I understand this is asking you to do a lot of work, but I feel it could help to rule out some potential issues.
What do you think?
-
I think I found a workaround for my battery problem.
Yesterday I made a test in the same conditions (walking, same route, phone connected) using Google Fit and I got 9.6%/hour battery drop.
This is because Google Fit is sharing the phone’s GPS.
During that hour, Google Fit app used 2.7% of battery on the phone.
Also, the GPS track looks perfect, 0 difference from Strava corrected distance, even cleaner than when using SuuntoApp with watch GPS.In these conditions, I can get 9 hours with 86% battery on the watch and 25% battery on the phone.
Of course, the problem is the lack of customization of the Google Fit app and the fact that I must use 3rd party sync services to get my data into Suunto.
Today I will try the same thing with Ghostracer app, which is more customizable and even have an offline map option the paid version.
But, I paid 500$ on this watch for the Suunto services, if I wanted to use Google Fit or other 3rd party app, I would have get any other 200-250$ WearOS watch.I don’t understand why Suunto is not adding the option to share the phone GPS in their app.
This is what almost all smartwatches are doing: Apple, Samsung, GFit on all WearOS watches.Most people will always take their phone with them during long activities, especially into the wilderness.
At lest users will have an option, if they want to use only the watch GPS they can use airplane mode, if not they will share the phone GPS, and be able to get 9-10 hours of 1sec GPS.
I know that most of the fitness watches are not sharing the phone GPS but, as you also pointed out, S7 is a smartwatch with some fitness capabilities, not a pure fitness watch.@Brad_Olwin , @olymay thank you for your suggestions, I will keep making tests if I have time, but I bought this watch to use it, not to try to fix a problem which seems unfixable. I already lost too much time doing this.
It’s clear, as many users also reported on this forum, that the best you can hope for 1sec GPS with slow activities is 6-7 hours. -
@steff said in Battery LIfe:
I don’t understand why Suunto is not adding the option to share the phone GPS in their app.
This is what almost all smartwatches are doing: Apple, Samsung, GFit on all WearOS watches.Suunto already offers that, for the Suunto 3.
-
@steff i may be completely wrong here, but it is starting to sound to me like there is a problem with the GPS chip in your S7…?
I haven’t compared my S7 to my phone GPS, but I have compared it against my gf’s phone (Pixel 3a and then a Pixel 4a5G) when she had a Fitbit and now against her Garmin Venu and the tracks are very similar with the S7 usually being the better one.
This has been done on runs with best and good GPS modes, as well as walking (although not hiking) with good GPS mode.Also, the Suunto App should be using significantly less battery than Google Fit, regardless of settings, because Google Fit does not use the low power co-processor.
I understand you want to use the watch and not have to fix a problem, but if you aren’t going to use the Suunto features of a Suunto watch then you may as well buy a cheap and cheerful Fossil or similar.
The Suunto App knocks the spots of Google Fit, Strava, and all of the others (in my opinion) and is worth persevering to get it working (again, in my opinion).I would suggest trying some tests to check the GPS chip in the watch (although I have no idea how to do this).
Your final statement however, is factually incorrect. I for one can get more than 6-7 hours using best GPS, and there are many others who can too.
