Battery usage on Gear S3

@Andydz @MTULI great to hear things are improved for you guys!

Everybody else - if you’re still having battery issues on Gear S2 or Gear S3, please make sure you are using the latest version of the companion app on your Gear S2/S3 watch. The version is 3.0.8 in the Galaxy App Store. Please let us know if you’re still having issues after that and we’ll look into it immediately.

I’ve uninstalled/reinstalled the phone and gear app to make sure they are both at the latest release. Battery is much improved, but still about half that that I get from the same watch face created in Gear Watch Designer. Thanks for the good work!

L

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@lspiers glad it’s improved and hopefully enough to make Facer 100% usable on a daily basis! We’re continuing to improve our battery usage and will be releasing updates as soon as new optimizations are confirmed on our side. Cheers!

New update has significantly improved battery drain issue, well done!

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My battery drain is much better, now I want to see Heart Rate added as an element.

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guys - any update on the issue resolution for higher than expected gear s3 battery usage?

@DaveS2 Hi! Are you using the latest version of the Facer Companion app from the Galaxy App Store? The latest is v3.0.8 and should significantly improve things - do let us know if it’s still using more battery than is acceptable and we’ll investigate that with you!

yes, just upgraded to 3.0.8 (which was very odd as the gear phone app does not report that an update is available in the my apps / updates, or in the app notifications main page, however when I go to the app listing in the gear app store, it showed the update available). Anyway I’ll give it a shot and let you know. Benchmark would be the native gear faces … would be great if you guys did some testing methodically (vs. what would be ‘acceptable’ … e.g. what should I expect?), but I’ll certainly post back what I find.

Hi Dave
After installing new version of the software all my watch faces designed by my self
come down from ± 14% per hour to about 3 - 4% per hour which is excellent!

Thanks. My watch is typically 3% / hour including the watch face and notifications. So I’d hope the watch face itself is closer to 2.5% / hour. I’ll keep eye on it… Before the update, facer faces were definitely in the same range you quote. Would be great if there was little difference between facer and native faces…

@DaveS2 thanks for the note about the lack of indication that an update is available. We’re going to try and do a better job at communicating that out!

Regarding our battery usage, we’re definitely continuously trying to improve the battery and shooting to be as good as the Samsung faces, but not sure we’ll be able to get there immediately. Definitely let us know if the 3.0.8 version improves Facer’s battery usage, and if it makes it acceptable to you!

@DaveS2 Hi Dave - just following up to see if you noticed any improvements with the battery after the update to 3.0.8?

Ok so I saw most of these updates whilst I was on holiday so have been eager to try.

Running 3.1.1_1437 on Pixel and findings are as follows:

Gear s3 Frontier using TL Casual Golden God face

Flight mode using dark blue screen 100-0% in under 6 hours (on a plane so no ability use the device to any degree) 16.7% usage per hour

Normal use light blue screen 100-33% in 14 hrs 4.4% per hour

Normal use yellow screen (default colour that comes with face) 100-75% 11 hours 2.3% per hour.

As you can see very erratic usage and only one face. Will try another tomorrow but still have to pack a charger if I’m going away for the weekend which isn’t acceptable but can definitely see you guys are making progress. Keep up that focus on getting this nailed and you’ll be on to a winner

yes – it’s much better. I did some limited testing and was using about 3.3% - 3.5% per hour with stock faces on the S3 and now with 3.0.8 am getting about 3.7% to 4.0% / hour with Facer. So overall would still like to see Facer closer to stock, but at least now it’s very usable. (e.g. the extra 0.5% battery / hour over say 18 hours is about 9% total, which is easily within capacity for someone who charges daily).

That said, it’s not clear what the extra 0.5% / hour really buys … more faces, yes, but not clear whether facer is providing any more features over faces that are developed native. So, knowing those features or encouraging development using anything unique would help. But, Facer is now very usable so that’s great. Note that I did test facer with two different faces, including a lower burn face and one that really tanked my battery previously (Faster…with the red hands …).

One thing, the battery consumption rates above were for the watch as a whole…one thing I realized is that I should have measured only the watch face consumption for a true apples to apples comparison. I did my testing on days where other battery usage was about equal, however may not have been exact. If I test any further to isolate just teh watch face, I’ll post back.

Thanks for the fix.

Hi all…I´m new with Gear S3 and having a big drain of battery using Facer. Almost, 3-5% per hour. Stil is this normal?

I am using a Facer watch I created with blue and white on a black background. I have battery %, day of the week and date of the month and hour/minute/second hands. I disabled everything else (GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc., to see a baseline. I am using only 0.63 percent per hour.

I intend to add different features back in one at a time to see how they use battery. You might do the same. It could be your Facer watch face or something else. Do some testing. Use another watch face and compare. Disable some apps and compare.

I had created a watch face that was very heavy on conditionals. Because of that, My watch went from 100% at 7 am to a full shut down by 1 pm. I had about 6 conditionals running, basically to make some graphics appear and disappear.

I am also having the same problem.battery drains in 30h.THEY HAVE TO FIX THIS PROBLEM…i stoped yusing it…

I have the exact same problem. I use Facer on the new lg 1 day of battery life. I use Facer on my Gear 3 classic, I have from 6am till about 1pm and the watch is completely dead!

i have the same on my huawei watch. i really like the faces better from facer but cant sacrifice the battery drain. i hope they come up with lower OPR for the faces. i have to use Watchmaker more than i want just for reduced battery drain