Battery LIfe

[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?

[olymay]

@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.

[Steff]

@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 ?

[Steff]

@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

[olymay]

@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

[Brad_Olwin]

@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.

[olymay]

@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??