Find out how to increase battery life on a Wear OS Smartwatch. Today, we will see with this new guide on Android, how to increase battery life on a Wear OS smartwatch. By now, smartwatches are among the devices that are most sought after as an alternative to classic watches, this is because, especially for younger people who like to wear a wristwatch, in addition to allowing them to be able to display the current time, they also allow them to be able to access many other functions, the most important of which are the ability to receive notifications, the ability to be able to call and to be able to download new applications. A smartwatch then, can be highly customizable with a variety of themes regarding the face graphics, which would be impossible with a regular watch. At one time, the smartwatch market was pretty much in the hands of the Apple Watch, but step by step, smartwatches with Wear OS have also managed to get their large share of users. Wear OS smartwatches are devices that generally manage to please most users in terms of features, but one thing they do require, however, and that is longer battery life. This applies to any device that makes use of batteries, be it a smartwatch, a tablet, a notebook, the longer the battery life the better. The same thing applies to smartwatches. If you want your Wear OS smartwatch to be optimized so that it has a battery with longer battery life, continue reading this guide to find out how to increase battery life on a Wear OS smartwatch.
turn off the Always On Display
Wear Os wrist wearable devices with OLED displays all come with the Always On Display feature, a feature that many users find quite useful, as it allows you to be able to have the screen always on to show the time and other information, just as if you had a classic watch that tells the time. There is no doubt that the Always On Display feature is very useful on a smartwatch, but it also has to be said that it affects battery consumption, which is why, if low power consumption is a really key thing for you, you should see to it that you disable this feature, that way you will be able to be able to extend battery life. By disabling the Always On Display, however, in order to see the time each time you will have to take manual action to be able to activate the dial.
To disable the Always On Display on smartwatches running Wear OS and thus increase their battery life, continue with the steps listed below:
- Access the Settings of the smartwatch by making use of the switch in the quick settings panel and from which you can press on the appropriate icon
- Then tap on the Display item
- Now scroll down and you should see the Always On Display item. Turn off the switch located to the right of it.
- Now that you have turned off the Always On Display, you may start to notice a slight drop in battery consumption
turn on automatic brightness
Having the display of a smartwatch always set to the same brightness is not really good for the battery. Instead, it would be ideal to set the screen brightness to automatic, so not only will you be sure to always have the smartwatch screen clearly visible in all ambient light conditions, but you will also save on battery power. In fact, as you may know, higher screen brightness affects higher battery consumption, but if this high brightness is not necessary it only results in unnecessary waste of energy.
To set automatic brightness on a smartwatch running Wear OS, the steps are as follows:
- Tap the Settings app icon on your smartwatch.
- Then press on Display
- You should now see the Auto Brightness item. Activate the switch located next to it.
Now that you have auto-brightness turned on, the screen will increase or decrease its brightness based on how much light you have around, saving you battery life if you don’t need an overly bright screen unless needed
use fewer features
A smartwatch, likes it because in addition to marking time and notifications it also allows you to access several other functions. A smartwatch, depending on the model can show in its small screen in addition to the time also the date, weather, location, notifications, can track heart rate, sleep activity and more. The more functions of the smartwatch are active, however, the higher the power consumption will be. If you want to decrease the battery consumption on your smartwatch with Wear OS, you should therefore turn off all the functions you don’t necessarily need, so the battery life will tend to increase. I also recommend that you use a watch face that is as simple as possible, with as few visible functions as possible. To change the smartwatch’s dial theme, follow these steps:
- Press and hold your finger on the dial you are using.
- You will now be able to scroll sideways through the various types of watch faces that are available for your smartwatch
- Select a simple dial that doesn’t have too many elements
- Apply the dial you have chosen
turn off screen activation by specific wrist movements (gestures)
A Wear OS smartwatch, is able to turn on the display if a specific wrist movement called a gesture is detected, but this may lead to unwelcome battery consumption as some movements may be detected by the smartwatch unintentionally. Therefore, due to an accidental movement, the screen might turn on even when you didn’t really want it to, plus the smartwatch’s sensors will consume power because they will always remain active in order to detect a precise wrist movement that causes the smartwatch display to turn on. To turn off wrist gestures on Android Wear OS proceed as follows:
- Access your smartwatch’s Settings through the Quick Settings panel.
- Then tap on the Display item
- Now turn off the switch located next to Lift Wrist to activate the screen
- How to increase battery life on a Wear OS smartwatch: reduce the screen activity time to a period of 15 seconds
Once the smartwatch screen is active, it will go off by itself after a certain period of inactivity time and that corresponds to a period of time that has been preset beforehand, such as one minute. If the screen when it is on but not in use has a very long power-on time and it is not a necessary time because you are not using the smartwatch, it would be better to reduce this time period so that the power consumption decreases. By setting a shorter power-off time period when the smartwatch screen is unused, you will then go to save on battery consumption. Here’s how to decrease the power-on time of an idle screen on a smartwatch running Wear OS:
- Go inside the Settings of the smartwatch
- Then press on Display
- Now tap on the Screen Timeout item.
- Set the lowest time and that should be 15 seconds
- Now if you will have the smartwatch’s screen on and if it is idle for 15 seconds it will go off automatically, thus saving you battery life
turn on battery power saving
As is the case with Android smartphones, smartwatches with Wear OS can also turn on power saving to consume as little battery power as possible. I recommend activating this feature when you really have a low remaining charge and want the smartwatch to stay on for a while longer. The Power Saving feature, will go to disable several functions all at once, such as Always On Display, GPS, Wi-Fi, gestures, CPU speed will be limited and more. To enable power saving on a smartwatch running Wear OS, proceed as follows:
- Access the smartwatch’s Settings by tapping on the drawn gear icon.
- Then tap on the item Battery
- Activate the switch located next to Power Saver. You will also be shown an estimate that stands for how much the battery life will increase when power saving is turned on
conclusions
This is what you can do if you want to save battery life on a smartwatch with Wear OS. Battery life is never enough, but you have to resign yourself to the fact that there is still no such thing as a battery that can have eternal power, so you have to look for compromises to be able to make the battery last longer under certain circumstances, particularly when you are away from home and do not have a charger nearby. Perhaps, however, if you find yourself away from home often and with your smartwatch’s battery running low, you might start thinking about using an external portable battery to use in emergencies. See you next guide.