Bug? Watch battery level only reported as whole number

I've been discussing this over at the 735XT forum and it was suggested i also post it here as it might be a bug at the CIQ level.

I can use any number of connect IQ apps or code my own to tell me the battery level on my 735XT. It always reports back a whole number percentage, e.g. 75.0, and never 75.2 or similar.

Without going into a side discussion about the accuracy of reporting the battery level on such devices, this behaviour is different to the 235 (and i assume the 230 and 630), which do report back a current battery level that is not rounded but is exact with decimal precision.

In particular, perhaps the FW is only passing the integer part, or how the battery level is being converted in the CIQ VM (thanks to @jim_m_58 for the technical thoughts).

Can this be reported and looked in to? Thanks.

HermoT over 8 years ago

I can confirm this behaviour.

I have quickly created a watchface displaying the raw battery level.
For my actual 735xt it only reports a whole number such as 81.000000
For the 230 it reports more precision such as 40.677734

The simulator seem to be always a whole number regardless of the watch being simulated.
This should also probably allow simulation of battery levels with decimal precision.

So to me there are 2 things to be looked into:

1) 735xt firmware bug
2) Simulator limitation that does not allow decimal precision.

jim_m_58 over 8 years ago

I recall seeing this in early 230 FW, and I forget if it was the FW or the integration of the VM, but it's now fixed on the 230. (This was back when people first noticed the max of 97-98% for battery level on the 23x/630, and no rounding up was possible without the decimal part)

Brandon.ConnectIQ over 8 years ago

My guess is that this is a firmware bug, but it's possible it's a hardware limitation. I'll get this reported and see what I can find out.

Brandon.ConnectIQ over 8 years ago

I should also mention I'll raise the simulator issue, too. It appears that you can simulate integer-only by design, and in my opinion, that seems sufficient. How important is it for battery percentage to be reported as something other than a whole number? I understand darrencroton is using the values to calculate some statistics, but for testing purposes, does it really make sense to change the way the sim works?

darrencroton over 8 years ago

I should also mention I'll raise the simulator issue, too. It appears that you can simulate integer-only by design, and in my opinion, that seems sufficient. How important is it for battery percentage to be reported as something other than a whole number? I understand darrencroton is using the values to calculate some statistics, but for testing purposes, does it really make sense to change the way the sim works?

Thanks Brandon. The simulator difference isn't a big deal for me.

HermoT over 8 years ago

If you need to test battery percentage (for example displaying in a custom font) with decimal values, I suppose you could hard code it for testing and change it back again to dynamic value.

I believe a simulator should be as close as possible to the real thing though.

Brandon.ConnectIQ over 8 years ago

I heard back from the device team about the battery value returned on the 735, and this is by-design at the product level. So, it's not a bug, and it's not something we can address in Connect IQ, unfortunately.

HermoT over 8 years ago

I heard back from the device team about the battery value returned on the 735, and this is by-design at the product level. So, it's not a bug, and it's not something we can address in Connect IQ, unfortunately.

Thanks for the feedback!

darrencroton over 8 years ago

I heard back from the device team about the battery value returned on the 735, and this is by-design at the product level. So, it's not a bug, and it's not something we can address in Connect IQ, unfortunately.

Appreciated Brandon.

Hopefully they'll reconsider and bring it into line with the other watches. I'm not sure what prompted the change.

HermoT over 8 years ago

IMHO I think it should have been whole numbers in all other watches and this is actually the correct approach.

You never see decimal precision on mobile phone battery levels for example.