My Galaxy 5 Watch will completely run the battery down during long workouts (3.5 - 4 hours). Otherwise the battery life seems normal. Is there any way to extend the battery life during workouts, for example shutting off the continuous heart rate monitor?
How long should the battery last during long workouts?
Long distance runner here. My GW5 44mm LTE burns through its charge within a couple of hours of running when in areas with poor 4G coverage; the GW4 44mm LTE I had before that would even overheat in the middle of the forest trying desperately to cling to weak signal.
Disabling some of the body sensors does nothing, disabling GPS also doesn't. Engaging "energy save mode" does help stretch it a bit, enough to have some battery left after 3 to 4 hours even in worst case areas.
On the other extreme, with Energy Saver on, all radios disabled (airplane mode), audio muted, auto-lap disabled, but GPS as well as full health and running stats tracking enabled, my watch had 27% left after a ten-and-a-half hour cross country run. Tracking app was Samsung Health in "Running" mode.
tl;dr Airplane Mode plus Energy Save Mode.
Remaining question: Does crash/fall auto distress call still work when in Airplane Mode?
Thanks. I'm not sure how to disable body sensors (like heart rate), other than to set background sensing to manual only?
Next time I will try airplane mode with Energy Saver and see what happens.
I don't know how the auto distress call can work in airplane mode since all the radios are turned off. I suppose they could program it to override the airplane mode, but then it's not really airplane mode. My fall detection often false alarms when I am giving applause.
So ... just for science, can you applause-trigger an alarm while the watch is in Airplane mode please?
As I said, body sensors use very little battery, so don't bother disabling them. Radio transmitters and display activity is where most of the energy goes.
Here's another thought: During sleep mode it has all the radios on (except GPS) and measures heart rate and blood oxygen all night and it hardly drops the battery after 8 or 9 hours. But the display and sounds are disabled. Is there anything else disabled during sleep mode?
Maybe that's all you need to disable for long workouts?
