Watch 7 LTE Ultra - battery drain and feedback

[Richard-Tx]

First, I have had/used every Galaxy Watch (i.e. S3 Gear thru Watch 6 Classic).  Very familiar with using the features and removing unwanted apps and disabling unused features.  My only purpose for these watches are the health apps, LTE (enabled via TMobile), step counter.  Do a lot of running in hot/cold weather.

Last year, I had to return the Watch6 LTE classic due to logistical and technical issues and went back to my Watch 5 Pro LTE (W5P).  Have had the W5P since day 1 and the battery is rock solid, even after almost 2 years.  I look at two major areas of a watch.  Battery life and how it handles very hot weather.  Watch 5 Pro was perfect in both areas - Never a complaint from me.  However, I decided to get the new Watch 7 Ultra (W7U).  Even though I was not very impressed by the specs, I figured it was time to upgrade and that I got a great trade-in value for the W5P.  In addition, it had a 590maH battery - same as the W5P.  My display is never on unless I tap screen.  (i disabled "Always On").

So, getting to the point on my W7U experience after using it so far:

-  Ordered on Day1, received on July 19.  (faster than what was originally stated - good).

- Watch is a bit thicker and seems heavier.  Marine band is a bit wider.

- These are newer style quick-release bands.  Can't use previous bands (pin style).  These are not D-Buckle bands.  I really liked the original D-Buckle bands because I could get an exact fit/adjustment on my wrist.  In addition, with the D-Buckle, very quick to put on/take off the watch.  W7U bands take extra time now to put on / take off.  😞

- Speaker/Sound more powerful than W5P. - Great improvement over W5P.

- Titanium casing, just like the W5P.  This is good for better heat dissipation.  I have not had a change yet to try the W7U in >100 degree weather, whereas we have not seen the high tempt this year (yet).  The W5P easily handled 100+ weather.  Just don't make LTE phone calls in 100+ degree or else the watch will overheat.

- Quick button has very limited usage.  Why Samsung????  Anyways, I set it for the water lock feature.

- You can't place the W7U flat on a charging pad because the band prevents the watch from sitting flat on the pad.  However, once you place the W7U flat on the pad, you can put something on top of the watch to keep it flat.  Then it will make electrical/magnetic contact with the pad and start charging.

- Touch screen very responsive.  No delay in scrolling thru each menu.

- Screen very bright.

- The home and back buttons are directly on the side, which is different from the W5P which had the button on the side as well, but at a slight angle.  The W5P made it easier to press those two buttons.  When the buttons are directly on the side, you have to torque your finger/hand slightly to make contact with those buttons.  (of course everyone will have a different opinion on this button placement.

- Samsung still has NOT fixed the infamous problem where when you swing your arm, the display screen turns off.  WHY SAMSUNG??  Why do you turn off the screen when you swing your arms?  Didn't you learn/listen at all from all the complaints us runners informed you since the W5P.   Leave the display on and rely on the screen timeout to turn off the display when not in use.

Anyways I could go on-on, however, there is one item that I take the most concern with now is the battery life on the W7U.  As previously stated, my W5P battery life has been perfect from day 1 and still is solid after more then 1.5 years.  My W5P and W7U settings are manually set by me to be identical. 

However, I have noticed that the W7U seems to drain the battery by 35-40% faster than my W5P.  Yes, you read correctly.  I have watched my battery usage like a hawk on the W5P and it has aways been consistent and sturdy.  Never had a concern even as I speak now.  But, on the W7U, the battery drain is excessive.  As an example, while sleeping,  the battery went from 66% to 44% over a 7-hour period, as compared to my W5P that would go from 88 - 82% over that same period.  It's not clear to me why the excessive drain on the W7U, but even with power management turned on, the drain is still excessive. 

The only two items that could cause this are maybe the LTE signal or the health sensors.  Will soon experiment by turning these off to see if this makes a difference.

Overall, the W7U does not really offer any more "exciting" as compared to my W5P, but I really need to see what is happening to this battery.  Not happy about this battery drainage.   Curious if other W7U (LTE) users have the same battery issue.

[notforhire]

as with any new device, it usually takes a few days to learn your usage patterns and adapt. if you're still having issues after a week, maybe consider a reset. in the meantime, clear the cache partition from the recovery menu and see if that helps.

[dortyboy]

Same here. It's the same as my 1year old galaxy watch 6. Seems like samsung can never deliver. Issues after issues.

[AsanteBacala]

What happened to Innovation at Samsung. Their phones are great, but their wearables have stagnated. Lots of gimmicks, but no substantial updates. Battery life remains poor at best. A supposedly more energy chip in the Galaxy Watch 7 series is about energy efficient as a wood chip. You need to turn off, all the features, to get the battery life they advertise. When you do that, you turn the watch in to the most expensive Timex on earth. Samsung needs to pay as much attention to their wearables as they do with their great phones.

[user27XpOkXq85]

Hello,

I got my Watch 7 at July 19 and first couple of days battery life was not great but acceptable (about 24hrs). But last 2 days it is AWFUL. 70% battery lost during SLEEPING!!! My Watch 6 Classic last 30+ hours with 3rd party watchface. Now Samsung BLOCK  most cool 3rd party watchfaces to "better" battery life and now Watch 7 can't last even 24 hours!!! **bleep**???? Samsung, fix it while I am in 14 days or I will return it.

P.S. Please do not tell me that I have to wait 4-5weeks or that I have to reset my watch. Because LOT OF Watch 7 customers has THE SAME ISSUE. It is Samsung fault that Samsung have to fix ASAP.

[coffeemugs]

I'm having the same problem!

[Noobie]

Could be touch sensitivity when sleeping since you move a lot while sleeping. But you can still change how much battery is wasting by going to settings >> battery >> battery usage (I don't own a watch so I'm not sure what it's called) should work a bit better

[user27XpOkXq85]

And it is a problem that battery usage does not show anything helpful...5% Screen, 0.7% UI 6.0 and several other system apps less than 1%. But where is  other 60+%?

[bellam035]

Hi! Here is a couple things to try: Consider turning off continuous heart rate, deleting unused apps, and turning off AOD.

Also, try rebooting your watch to recovery mode and wipe cache partition. Here are the steps:

- On your watch, press and hold the home and back button simultaneously until screen goes black. (do not worry about the power settings that will appear, ignore that)
- Once the Samsung logo appears, let go of the buttons and then quickly double-press the home button. It will give you some options.
- To go down where it says "Recovery", you want to click the home button until it highlights "Recovery".
- To select "Recovery", press and hold the home button.
- The Samsung logo will pop up and after some waiting you'll be in recovery mode. After that, you can swipe up and down to scroll through the menu.
- Scroll down with your finger and make sure that "wipe cache partition" is highlighted. To select, simply press the home button

Hope this helps!

[tups730]

Also having the same problem. Ive had mine for a week. Yesterday i charged 100% at 10am. It was completely dead when i woke up at 4am, so less than 24 hours. What good is the health/sleep monitoring if you have to turn all of it off to get the battery to last? So frustrated with this. I upgraded because the battery was so bad in the watch 6, hoped this one would be better.

[tack1]

Watch 7 40 mm. My battery dropped by 80% overnight, even after I disabled everything possible to test it. Interestingly, the first 2-3 days were fine.   I uninstalled all apps that could be uninstalled, and I disabled WiFi, location, NFC, AOD, and all sensors like oxygen level. I also set all sensors to manual and disabled 'raise to wake'.  Currently I'm  collecting data for Battery Historian to analyse.  https://github.com/google/battery-historian