One area that many Smartwatches can fail is in the area of battery life. Even though Samsung’s Tizen based watches have good battery longevity – here is the ultimate tips guide to saving more battery life out of your Samsung smartwatch battery.
The current technology that some of us wear on our wrists is wonderful. We get our smartphone app notifications as well as information about the weather or even our car location. The fitness-minded amongst us can use built-in Heart Rate Monitors to give us our BPM. Built-in Pedometers provide us with steps & floors walked. Both HRMs and Pedometers provide us with data that we can calculate KCal expenditure. No wonder our batteries struggle. Now, on to the battery improvements ….
Improvements to battery life for your Samsung Smartwatch
Many of the tips involve either disabling or reducing some functionality. Some of these changes you may notice throughout the day and others you will hardly notice their absence. The adjustments are down to what fits in with your use of the smartwatch and how it affects your daily use of it. The instructions are for the Galaxy Watch Active 2, but similar options or settings are found on other Samsung smartwatches.
Reduce screen brightness
This is the best tip to increase battery life on your Samsung smartwatch. A bright screen takes extra power to keep it alive. Swipe down from the top of the screen and select the brightness option.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: Select Settings -> scroll and select Display. Adjust Brightness which is right at the top of the options. Press the +/- icons until you get a brightness you think you can live with.
Use a dark watch face with no animations
Down below I have talked about turning Always On Display off. But if you don’t want to do that you could have a battery-efficient watch face. What I mean by this is having a watch face that is fairly dark and simple. As well as this, you want to avoid animations on your watch face to save your battery. You may know this from your phone or other devices, but animated wallpapers really drain your batteries.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: You want to press and hold your watch face until it shows you a menu of watch faces you have. You can pick one you think is appropriate for your situation and if you don’t have any you can go to the Galaxy Store to find one you like.
Screen timeout
This affects how long our screen stays on after we have used it. Selecting a smaller time out value means the screens stays on for less time.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: To do this on Galaxy Watch Active2: Select Settings -> Scroll down to Display -> Select Screen Timeout. The minimum screen timeout of is 10 seconds whereas the maximum is 5 minutes.
Switch off WiFi for your Samsung Smartwatch Battery
If you do not use WiFi on your watch then disable it. That saves your watch continuously searching for it. It is also more battery efficient for your watch to be connected to your Bluetooth from your Smartphone.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: Once again, go into Settings -> Connections. Press Wi-Fi. You should see Wi-Fi again and under it should either be Always On or Auto, change this to Always Off.
Switch off NFC
If you do not use contactless payments then you can safely turn this feature off. Admittedly it doesn’t free up a substantial amount of battery, but every little helps.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: To do this, it is very similar to switching off the Wi-Fi. Go into Settings -> select Connections -> Select NFC and then press the toggle that comes in the menu to turn the feature off.
Switch off GPS
If your Samsung smartwatch supports a feature for GPS, that you don’t use, you will want to switch it off. You want to stop your watch from making any other extra signals until you can get somewhere with a charger for it.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: Head into Settings -> select Connections. Scroll until you find the Location ->switch the toggle off. You can also change the methods of location. Either GPS and Wireless, just GPS or just Wireless.
HRM – Auto HR
Samsung Smartwatches initially come with Auto HR enabled. This can be very useful for some people when they’re training or if they might suffer from a heart condition. If you don’t really need Auto HR for either of the reasons or other conditions that you may have, you don’t really need it.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: You first want to go into the Samsung Health app. Find your heart rate measurement -> press the three dots on the right hands side of the screen (menu icon). Press the settings icon. Select how often your smartwatch takes a HR reading. You can choose from: Measure Continuously, Every 10 mins or Measure Manually.
Switch off Always on Display (AOD)
One of the biggest drains on your Samsung smartwatch battery is the Always-On-Display (AOD). Many watch faces have the ability to provide an alternative AOD watch face to leave on all the time. This alternative watch face is usually less brighter than the normal face and has less detail. This makes it better suited to be left on all the time. Failing that you can choose to switch it off all the time.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: First you want to go into Settings -> scroll until you find Battery. Scroll until you find Watch Always On. Use the toggle in this menu to turn the setting off.
Switch off Wake-up gesture
This feature is where whenever you life and / or shake your arm, you’re device switches on. But obviously, it’s taking up energy trying to detect if you’re motivation specifically to turn it on. So turning the feature off may be better for your battery.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: First you want to go into Settings -> scroll until you find Battery. Wake Up Gesture -> use the toggle to switch the setting off.
Switch off vibration or reduce vibration intensity or short vibration
In order for your watch to vibrate, it actually needs a mechanism to do that. Anything that moves requires a lot of energy. So, if this isn’t important to you or you can live without it, disable.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: Go into Settings -> Sound and Vibration -> Vibration Intensity. Change the vibration from strong to light. As well as this, there is a toggle under Vibration Intensity that changes whether the vibration is a long one or not.
Switch off workout detection
If you’re not really heading for the gym when you need your Samsung smartwatch battery, just turn off workout detection. Even if you are, the elliptical and some other machine will tell you round about how many calories you have lost. Either way, you should be fine?
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: Go into Samsung Health app -> Settings. Scroll until you find Workout Detection -> Activities to Detect. You then switch off all of the toggles for exercised to be detected.
Turn on Greyscale
With this, your screen won’t be projecting colour, which will take up less energy. Perhaps you may get a better nights sleep from having a little less blue light in your face.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: First you want to go into Settings -> Accessibility. Scroll until you find Visibility Enhancements -> tap the toggle that puts the grayscale setting on.
Software Updates to Fix Samsung Smartwatch Battery Issues
This one may seem simple but check if you’re up to date on your software updates. You may have missed one that helps your Samsung smartwatch to conserve some of is battery life.
Run the Optimise
By running the optimise, you’re making sure that any apps you may have used are completely close letting your smartwatch breathe and freeing up storage.
Switch off touch sounds
This little tip doesn’t add too much to the battery saving, but if you are a “saving power” enthusiast, then chuck this in for good measure. As well as this, you can turn off sound all together if you really want to go for it. You may even find that you like the silence your smartwatch being on the brink of death brings.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: First you want to go into Settings -> scroll until you find Sound and Vibration. Find the Touch Sounds toggle to turn the setting off.
Final Two: The Power Saving and Watch Only Mode
If you put power saving, the watch will automatically disable quite a few features, but you may only want to use this when you are desperate. The watch will actually give you a reading of how long it may last with how you’re currently using it.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active 2: First you want to go into Settings -> Battery. Scroll until you find Power Saving -> press the button so that the setting can be enabled. As well as this, the watch should give you a reading of how long it might approximately live for.
Watch Only Mode: This is the ultimate setting you can turn on. This disables EVERYTHING that makes a smartwatch smart. Wi-Fi? Gone. Calls? Gone. Apps? Also gone. I’d like to say this is what you do when you are extremely desperate for the juice to stay in the battery. Samsung claim that with this mode you should get about 40 days of life.
To do this on Galaxy Watch Active2: First you want to go into Settings -> Battery. You want to scroll until you find Power Saving -> Watch Only Mode. You then press the button to turn the setting on.
Hopefully all of these tips will stop your Samsung smartwatch battery from draining as fast. Many of the tips are aimed for the Galaxy Watch, Galaxy Watch Active, Galaxy Watch Active 2, Gear S3, Gear S2, and Gear Sport.
All of the instructions to find the toggles or settings have been based off of the Galaxy Watch Active2 – One UI version 1.5.
