The article discusses ways to extend the battery life of smartwatches using Google’s Wear OS platform, including the Galaxy Watch, OnePlus Watch 2, and Pixel Watch line. Despite their advanced features and improvements in design and performance, the devices often suffer from limited battery life. This article provides 10 practical methods to improve the daily battery life of a Wear OS device, including the following:
1. Turning off the always-on display can save considerable battery life. Users are encouraged to access settings on the watch to do this.
2. Streamlining watch faces by minimizing complications, reducing them to two to five, and selecting simplified color schemes is an easy way to cut battery usage.
3. Utilizing auto-brightness adjustment in display settings on the watch will adjust screen brightness levels depending on environmental lighting, leading to less drain.
4. Removing seldom-used apps and background activities installed from the Google Play Store saves power. Users should consider their habits and needs before enabling and uninstalling these applications.
5. Disabling the “Hey Google” feature conserves power when voice detection is not necessary by toggling settings on the smartwatch.
6. Shortening the screen timeout ensures that the screen powers down after only 15 seconds, helping prolong battery life.
7. Limit notifications and unclutter the user’s watch interface for more effective time management. App-level adjustments enable users to toggle individual alerts they want to view.
8. Turning off the smartwatch’s Wi-Fi and location when not needed help reduce energy usage significantly. Users must turn the services on again once needed.
9. Disabling the tilt-to-wake gesture conserves energy if accidentally activated and prolongs the life of the device’s sensors. Touch-to-wake settings may be removed or modified according to users’ preferences.
10. Finally, users are recommended to turn on power-saving or battery saver modes provided on Wear OS watches when experiencing critical battery draining, even though the features usually have implications for reduced functionality or increased inconvenience. Users may still perform some tasks in these power-saving modes as long as battery consumption remains efficient.
