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FR255 - LiveTrack vs battery life

Hi All,

During the upcoming weekend I'm planning to do a ~6h run and wanted to share the LiveTrack with a couple of people. How big battery drain should I expect on the watch and the phone (iPhone XS)? It's going to be an unknown to me and "no civilization" area, so I wouldn't like to get lost without any of those devices working.

Any advices?

  • PS I don't want to carry any power bank with me - I'd rather skip the LiveTrack, if that's the only option.

  • I really don't know, but my guess is that battery drain on the watch will be small, as it just have to send some stats via BT... .the battery drain of BT in modern devices that suport BT Low Energy, as the 255, is usually very low. 6 hours does not seem a problem here.

    The battery drain on the phone though, is harder to predict. It has to sent data over mobile network, and battery drain depends on things like distance from cellullar antennas and signal strength. "No civilization" sounds like few antennas, far away and weak signal. My guess, again, is that your phone will run out of juice far before the watch (of course, that depends on how is the setup and battery state of each device which I don't know).

    In your case I would do a test of 1 hour or so before the event, if possible in the same area, and then see what the data says...

       Best,
       Kurt.-

  • Kurt, thanks for your thoughts. Unfortunately I'm not able to make any test in this or similar environment before my planned event, so that's why I'm looking for some input from Internet. I was expecting quite opposite (watch would run out of battery much faster), but your guess totally makes sense to me now. I think I will not launch the LiveTrack in this case and make a reliable test another time, I'm a bit afraid of losing the ability to call for a rescue, just in case (not all of the area is covered by the cellular signal though).

  • I used Live Track on my FR965 / iPhone 12 Mini a few weeks ago and I saw your post so I took a look at the battery report from the devices.

    The % battery drain on the FR965 looks largely similar to that on a run where I had no live track enabled. 5% per hour average discharge rate in my case using full multi GPS.

    As to the phone , its a bit tough to see, but I don't get the impression that it was different to the normal activity times when GC is open in the background.

    This was a 90 min run that I did.

    I hope that is of some help. Good luck with the run!