Battery LIfe

olymay · 16 Jun 2021, 13:59

I think it is time for a battery FAQ pinned in the S7 forum.

It should contain something like:

In activity:

map use consumes more energy

Not in activity:

if BT is not connected watch will revert to Wifi -> more energy

auto update for apps enabled -> more energy

some watch faces with additional data -> more enrgy

etc.

who can start this? @isazi ?

I think this could be a good idea. However, battery life is so dependent on individual usage - what causes more drain for some could cause less for others - as settings and app combinations are pretty much unlimited.

For example, I see no battery savings by turning off app auto update. The only time this is of use is if your watch and phone are separated, your watch is not in aeroplane mode, and your watch is not and can not connect to a network. If during that time an app tries to update the watch will continuously hunt for a network (in the same way a phone will do so when out of cellular range and munch through battery).

Tilt to wake and AoD will be compared forever and are mostly dependent on how many times someone lifts their arm etc.

As I said I love the idea, I just can’t see how it could be something that would be relevant to all the people all of the time

Jamie BG · 16 Jun 2021, 14:10

@steff - I generally got an estimated 12hrs for all my walking activities (do it every day), and that is connected to phone and using Best GPS mode rather than good mode.

There is also no way that GFit should be giving you better battery life than Suunto app. If it is there is something wrong with your watch/how suunto app has been loaded. I assume your watch is set up with latest firmware update - if so you should definitely get far better tracking battery life with suunto app. Have you tried the walking activity instead of the hiking one - that is the one I usually use and I am at worst 10hrs best 15hrs tracking life.
Settings - suunto app, walk activity / watch settings AOD on, touch to wake (tilt to wake and power tilt off) / gesture navigations off / generally connected to phone.

Also if you go back to September in the forum you will probably come across lots of posts discussing our tracking battery life - that is if I remember correctly the update that gave us Good/Best GPS option and a lot of us were discussing our results.

Jamie BG · 16 Jun 2021, 14:12

@olymay TWP3 can do it, but only by including LCD screen use (sort of cheating when comparing), also don’t forget its battery has 25% more capacity.
GW3 watch is similar to S7, and so are most of the GW models - they had a version which did have better battery life, but can’t remember which model - was an older one.

Jamie BG · 16 Jun 2021, 14:15

@Steff I must use 3rd party sync services to get my data into Suunto?
Why - there is no need to - if you have correctly set up your watch and are using the suunto app this all flows through properly with no issues.
What firmware version are you on? Only the very first initial firmware versions had this sync issue and had higher battery drain on activities.

“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.”
Accuracy issues - from when a wifi signal can move the track quite significantly. Also all of these services seem to smooth out their tracks, and or show them in very zoomed out, so they look good at a quick eye check, but can’t really see the detail. And that is fine, as most people using these watches don’t really care about how good their track is as long as it about look right.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos · 16 Jun 2021, 14:28

@steff he is not the only one claiming this. Among other users there are test reports and automations

Steff · 16 Jun 2021, 14:29

@jamie-bg said in Battery LIfe:

@Steff I must use 3rd party sync services to get my data into Suunto?
Why - there is no need to - if you have correctly set up your watch and are using the suunto app this all flows through properly with no issues.

I mentioned that I need 3rd party sync services if I’m using GFit instead of Suunto, not the way around.

What firmware version are you on? Only the very first initial firmware versions had this sync issue and had higher battery drain on activities.

I’m on the latest firmware, PXDZ.210326.002.A2

Have you tried the walking activity instead of the hiking one - that is the one I usually use and I am at worst 10hrs best 15hrs tracking life.

Yes, I tried both walking and hiking activities.
There was no noticeable difference in terms of battery life.

The only thing that I did not tried is to factory reset the watch.
I will try that today.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos · 16 Jun 2021, 14:30

@steff I dont get some of the arguments here

Why import back from Google FIT is a Suunto responsibility in a way of “demand”

Regarding connected GPS (using the phone GPS) its about accuracy issues and connectivity issues. S7 is a watch as well and that decision is in the specs of the device.

Steff · 16 Jun 2021, 14:33

@dimitrios-kanellopoulos I think I was misunderstood.
I said that using GFit to track activities has the disadvantage of needing 3rd party sync to get the data into Sunnto, not that is Suunto fault that GFit does not upload activities into Suunto.

Jamie BG · 17 Jun 2021, 10:00

@steff thanks for the clarification - I certainly wasn’t reading your original comment that way.

I think you need to consider a reset as your battery lfe consumption definitely isn’t standard and what most of us experience.

Steff · 19 Jun 2021, 18:43

I factory reset the watch, configured it without installing any 3rd party app or watchface (installed updates for all preinstalled apps, set up GFit and Suunto App).

I first made a 1h18min walk (Best GPS, DND, airplane mode, keys locked) and I got an estimation of 10h4min
Today I made 3h52min hike with the same settings and I got an estimation of 9h01min

I’m pleased with these results.
I think it was something wrong with the SuuntoApp from the watch, probably because I went though 2 system updates since I got the watch.
Thank you all for your suggestions.

Unfortunately, now I have other 2 problems:

The GPS track looks terrible even though I used Best GPS.

Here is what it looks on S7

and here is how it looks on a Samsung Watch Active 1, also from today:

here is how the same area looks on a Samsung Gear S3, from last year:

I’m starting to believe what @olymay suggested, that is something wrong with my GPS chip.
Not sure if I will send the watch to warranty they will want to do anything, being something difficult to check.

The watch has a very hard time to pick up my HR.
I noticed this on several occasions on the past hikes, but I didn’t paid to much attention.

Today I was more attentive:

here is after 10min of starting the hike, climbing, barely breathing and with my heart pumping like crazy.
I don’t have 96 bmp not even walking slowly on flat surfaces

only after another 2 minutes the watch picked my HR and it jumped to 160

This happened several times during the hike, especially after resting.

I tried moving the watch up on my wrist, tighten the strap but not too tight, but with no results.

I finding strange because I didn’t had such problems with none of my previous watches.
Seems to be more a software problem than a sensor problem.

aeroild · 20 Jun 2021, 11:33

@aeroild said in Battery LIfe:

On two different Suunto 7 watches I typically get an estimate of between 7 and 8 hours on both runs and walks. Best estimate being as much as 9 hours 25 minutes on a trail run. I also checked a mountain bike ride I did yesterday and the estimated battery life is over 12.5 hours!

I did another test today: 1 hour 36 minute walk with best GPS and flight mode. Battery went from 15% to 2%. Estimated battery life 12 hours 23 minutes! I am very pleased with that!

olymay · 20 Jun 2021, 16:20

@steff YAY! Great news that your battery life seems to better, I’m really pleased

Regarding the GPS track, it cannot de directly to the other watches, as they look incredibly smooth, so are either sampling at much higher rates, or are applying some smoothing to the track.
I notice that the two tracks you are comparing to are both Samsung devices, so maybe there is something happening to the signal afterwards (in a similar way to Samsung over-processing their photos to make them look super saturated…).

Something to bear in mind is that GPS typically has an accuracy of roughly 10 metres, and this can change as you move around, as obstacles get in the way (tress, buildings, clouds), or even as the satellites them solves move around.
I do a lot of sailing with high end GPS devices with HUGE antennas and even they are not perfectly accurate, so a dinky watch our wrists is never going to be spot on perfect.

Here is a link to a run I did at the weekend with GPS on bets mode.
At times, the GPS is spot on, at times it has me running through buildings or on the canal. This is perfectly normal for any GPS and in fact is the best I have seen from a wrist based device that does not piggy back the phone. (There are some detours from paths that I did take in order to avoid sheep, cows, ramblers, or just to enjoy the scenery).

The HR I can offer less info about. Wrist based optical HR is finicky at best. There are so many factors that can affect it - skint type, skin colour, freckles, how hairy you are, sweat, and many more.
Without knowing how you wear it or how tight (if it helps I have mine tight enough to leave an imprint of the HR sensor, but I can still slide one finger inside the strap) then it’s impossible to tell. Some people just don’t get on with certain sensors.
Maybe compare to a chest HR sensor?

Before 24/7 HR was added it was crucial to wait for a solid HR lock, but now I find that the HR is spot on as soon as the activity starts.
Do you have 24/7 HR turned on? If not, do you wait for for the HR symbol to become solid at the start of an activity?

Grillo54 · 25 Aug 2021, 17:14

@olymay
I like to share my experience about battery life and GPS precision,
I use my S7 by 3-4 months and i know by myself battery life it is a big issue of this nice watch so i dont use anything else than sport utilities , no sleep and day cardio monitoring fo example ….so this sunday i made a trekking 1250m delevel rest on the top of mountain for 1 h when i come back around 6 h after trekking start my S7 was out of battery , but this is not the only problem cose the altimeter for all the trekking was wrong about 150 m down you can see the top of mountain i was Cima delle Saline is 2612m and my s7
Tell it is 2460
I think that the 2 problems are too much for a good sportwatch , i like to repeat the watch was fully charged at start trekking and i dont use any smartwatch functions to save battery for sportfunctions
I like to know yor opinions
Agostino

Martin Vrska · 25 Aug 2021, 18:17

@grillo54 I recommend turning off the GPS in the watch during rest.

Grillo54 · 25 Aug 2021, 19:25

@martin-vrska i agree i had to turn off gps during rest but Suunto say 12 h gps , mine S7 was out of battery in half time 6 h

Martin Vrska · 25 Aug 2021, 19:34

@grillo54 Suunto probably thinks with GPS “good” - 10s…

olymay · 26 Aug 2021, 07:42

@grillo54

Something definitely doesn’t seem right with your battery life.

In activities that I have done, I typically get 7% battery drop per hour when using GPS GOOD and 10% drop per hour on GPS BEST.
Even if I factor in some extra battery use due to smartwatch features or my actions, I would still expect to get 8-10hrs of GPS use on BEST mode.

If you are tracking I believe GPS defaults to GOOD (I may be wrong so please check this) and this should give you plenty of battery life.

Do you use the map screen on the watch much during your activity? As activating the map screen brings the watch out of the low power mode and puts it into full power mode. This will have a big hit on battery life. Occasional checks are negligable, as I sometimes do this when on a new route, but the more you check it the more it hits the battery. And if you have it set to map always on, kiss goodbye to battery life.

Are you following a route? If so, do you have waypoints? As again, the (excessive) notifications around waypoints bring the watch into high power mode.

Finally, please excuse my ignorance here, but you have bought a smartwatch and then turned off all of the smart features to try and turn it into a sports watch? Why not buy a sports watch in the first place? If you do not need or want the smart features then the S7 is maybe not the watch for you.
But if you do want a smartwatch and all the features that come with it, then the S7 has one of the best batteries of any smartwatch on the market.

A Former User · 13 Sept 2021, 07:17

hello,
first post, first trail run with the S7.
Thank you so much for all the helpful tips I have read in this forum.

6 hours,
gps 10" + FT,
airplane mode,
several quick glances at the map

battery went from 100% to 63%.

best,

rooldaa · 23 Sept 2021, 07:06

Hello,

Yesterday I noticed the very strange behavior of the battery.

During a shower, I put my watch on the charger and got from 3 to 30 percent of battery. It was around 10 pm. When I went to sleep at 1 am it was still 30%. And during the night the watch took ONLY 3% - 8 hours sleep.

The settings:

Pulse 24/7 - ON
Sleep - ON
Airplane mode - ON
AoD - OFF
Tilt-to-wake - OFF
Powersaver tilt - OFF

Basically, these are my usual night setting. So, nothing was different.

And now see the battery graph from the Wear OS app on the phone.

It tells that during the night the watch somehow was being charged)))

olymay · 23 Sept 2021, 08:06

@rooldaa Is it possible that the watch lost connection with WearOS at the end of charging it? So when it did re-establish connection the battery was a little higher than it had been at the point of last connection and therefore it simply drew a straight line between the two? In a similar way to losing and re-establishing GPS and drawing a straight line between the points?

Either that or you are a human charging pad