Battery question

Hi, folks.

I think I know the answer to my question below, but maybe not since I’m not a designer… but I think the answer will be, “yes,” lol.

If I have two identical watch faces, and I use both the exact same way… AOD on or off, whichever, all settings set up the same way, interact with the watch in the exact same way… here’s the difference.

While designed the same, one watch, in addition to the time, displays:
Heart rate, steps, day/date, and watch battery.

The other displays: heart rate, steps, day/date, watch battery, AND calories burned, distance walked, weather, sunrise/sunset, and phone battery.

Will this second scenario, with all the extra data points eat more battery?

Again, I’m thinking that yes it will, but I’m not positive.

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Probably yes, but it will be so slight you won’t notice. What really eats up a battery is how many pixels on the screen has to be turned on to show the face. A black background colored face will have less pixels turned on than a light color background.

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@louandmaura as @mrantisocialguy has said and also how many times you look at your watch . If one has more to look at one might look at it more. As a Designer I find when I am testing the Faces the synching takes a lot of power.

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I expect weather in particular adds a little battery drain, there is more active communication between the watch and phone to update it. But I doubt calories and distance add much if any drain because you already have the steps being called in the 1st face, and those two additional data elements draw from the steps count.

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Thank you all.

@russellcresser too funny you say that. As a relatively new smart watch owner, (Galaxy Watch 4), who has become very enamored of the tons of amazing, (in my eyes), watch faces, I’ve only just the other day settled into a routine of only one face per day, lol.

I had been switching faces many times… like sometimes 10x per day, and my battery seemed to last about 45 seconds total, lol :slight_smile:

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Always the more features the more battery you may use. Most is slight, while others are going to be much heavier.

Anything that requires internet access such as weather is definitely going to use more battery. Same with changing watch faces for you are downloading data and that requires more processing power plus the extra power for the network connectivity.

AOD (Always On Display) always uses a lot more energy. When the screen is active it is using more processor and has to control the pixels as well as the backlight (where applicable). When the screen is off, many of the functions basically go to sleep to help dramatically reduce power usage.

One thing that uses a lot more battery is animation. The more animations you do at a time, the heavier the draw on the battery will be. They use a lot more of the processor, which in turn uses more battery. I have designed too many large calculations for custom animations that actually slowed the watch performance down and everything it did was very jumpy on how it moved and I could actually feel the warmth difference on the watch after a fairly short period of time.

There are other factors as well. I hope this helps some.

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It will settle down . Eventually you will get an Hour and a Half from your battery . Enjoy.

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ROFL.

Thank you… it’s been fun.

So many great designs both here and on the Playstore.

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Great to see you’re having such fun @louandmaura :smiley:

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It should probably be mentioned that the act of syncing itself drains a huge amount of battery power. I’ve noticed a drop of around 3% or 4% per sync sometimes. Of course, the more stuff a watch has the more battery drain, but ten syncs a day will definitely have an immediate impact.

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I go through that with my Fossil Q Explorist when I’m testing my new creations. Fossil watches aren’t known for their stellar battery performance anyway.

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My Gen 6 is pretty good at battery unless I am testingg faces constantly.
@CC-Designs Profile - CC-Designs - FACER Community AOD does not use more battery than main screen, it is a low energy way of displaying minimal info.

Yes, if turned on it will consume more power than off but used well with a face that minimises display on the DIM screen, the additional loss will be minimal.

Pick a face you like both active and dim, that is dark but readable when dim, with minimal infor in dim mode so it does not spend power updating that info and you should be good.

The faces I make that have the extra info I have time/date only on the dim screen (AOD) and any health/weather and anything else on the active screen only.

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I used to make faces with the AOD ambient mode only the time be it analog or digital. I got so many complaints from people wanting the same face in ambient I just started doing that. Now I try to do it in grey scale and if I’m using a picture background, I make a black and white version of it for ambient use.

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