Optimal settings for battery life: day-to-day use

I have seen threads complaining about battery life but nowhere can I find a complied list of "good tips" to set up a watch to balance day-to-day use with optimal battery life.

What do you configure? So far I have the following:

- Bluetooth Off (except when needed for a sync)
- GPS only (not GLONAS or GALILEO) unless I am doing a race and want to get a perfect GPS map
- Stock watch face (no second hand requiring display refresh constantly)
- Notifications off
- Connect to phone disabled

There must be more. For example I feel stupid but I canot figure out how to turn off wi-fi!

Everyone has different needs but I am looking to see a balance between the great features vs extending battery life. For example, for me personally, notifications are a great smartwatch feature, I just don't need them enough to warrant battery drain.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I think the only way to "disable" Wi-Fi is to go to 'Settings->Wi-Fi' and set 'Automatic upload' to false (sorry if the menu entries are wrong my watch is set to german language, so I just tried to translate it. But I think you will find it. In the Wi-Fi menu there are only two entries.
Also I set my display brightness to 5% for "In activity" and also for "Not in activity". Usually 5% is more than enough if you have a little bit of background light. Also I disabled the auto-calibration of the height sensor (Settings->Sensors) when I'm not in an activity. I don't know what type of activities you do, for me it's ok if the height measurement is a little bit off.
I have added some external sensors to my list (e.g. headphones, chest heart rate monitor), but if I don't use them I have them set to disabled (Settings -> Sensors -> <Your-Sensor-Name> -> Status -> Off)

0 PSteinlech over 6 years ago

I believe „automatic upload“ is only uploading and trying to connect to WiFi during the first 5 minutes after an activity ...

0 Agepi7o over 6 years ago

And how much juice do you expect to get? I have blue tooth on, smart notification on, wachtface with moving hand. I run 3 times with GPS+GLONASS (45-60 MINUTES ) and swim twice. That way I have to charge it in the 5th day. It’s pretty good battery life.

0 WheatiSm over 6 years ago

And how much juice do you expect to get?....I have to charge it in the 5th day.....

That is pretty good! I'd be happy with that but I am getting less and not sure what the biggest drain is.

I travel a lot and so when I am away I hope to stretch to 1 week between charges (maybe includes 2-3 activities). When I am not travelling I can turn on all the good stuff so charging every 3-4 days was a"hope".

It would be a great feature to see what used the battery, like you can with phones...

0 Browner40 over 6 years ago

The single biggest killer of battery life is the backlight. Bluetooth is the second biggest killer in an activity, but day-to-day is probably the watch face. For the backlight you want to turn it down to 20% or less. The other thing that will kill life is having gestures on during an activity, some people have an arm-swing that will trigger the backlight to come on and stay on during a run and that just destroys your battery life.

The watch face settings that really kill the battery life is anything that accesses the HR and seconds display.