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Kyle76

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 22, 2017
413
330
North Carolina
New to S5, I’m looking for tips to save battery life. It was never a problem with my S2, but now I find I’m down to 25% at the end of the day when I used to rarely go below 60%. Is there a way to gauge which functions are burning the most energy?
 

kmichalec

macrumors 6502a
Aug 14, 2010
898
302
Try turning of the Always On Display. Curious to see if that makes a difference for you.
 

deep1

macrumors 6502
Mar 29, 2011
388
274
Best battery saving tips which really worked for me was to Turn off start and end workout reminder. Battery improved vastly.
 

nickdalzell1

macrumors 68030
Dec 8, 2019
2,787
1,670
I've reduced the number of running apps in the dock to 6-7 (watch S5 starts acting 'goofy' after 8--where Siri and any data-enabled app fails to work until a reboot) and keep the number of watch faces down to like 3 vs 10. Believe it or not, any watch face heavy with complications or running app in the dock is active, and updating even when not selected/in the foreground.

That's netted me the same battery life I got from my Series 3, which is roughly 1.5 to 2 days depending on the amount of calls/text I make.

Not sure if it helps, but having a single-color watch face should use less pixels than multi-color. Galaxy Watches used to do black and white AOD for that reason.
 
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Lyn2012

macrumors 6502a
Dec 26, 2007
690
272
I have ten apps in the dock and about the same number of watch faces (with lots of complications) on my S5, no goofy behaviour here, with Siri or anything else. I probably don’t get 2 days battery, but I just put it on the charger when I’ve time to top it up, usually morning and evening as I sleep track too.
 

StaceyMJ86

macrumors demi-goddess
Sep 22, 2015
8,372
14,753
Washington, DC
I’ve been watching the battery on my S4. From 10pm-6:20am I go from 100% to 84%. All I do is sleep track at night. I close all running apps, and my watch mirrors my phone with do not disturb enabled. I also have it turned off where the time would display every time my watch is raised. I turned off all notifications except for texts, phone calls and heart rate notifications if it reach 100 bpm. I haven’t downloaded any new apps to my watch in 8 months. I have them on my phone so I don’t need them on my watch also. By the time I get home from work, I’m down to 30-40%.
 

nickdalzell1

macrumors 68030
Dec 8, 2019
2,787
1,670
I have ten apps in the dock and about the same number of watch faces (with lots of complications) on my S5, no goofy behaviour here, with Siri or anything else. I probably don’t get 2 days battery, but I just put it on the charger when I’ve time to top it up, usually morning and evening as I sleep track too.

Mine starts losing apps in the dock and certain background services crash if I go past 7. Siri eventually acts like there's no connection to the iPhone or Wifi and Dictation fails until a reboot once that occurs. Either WatchOS 6.1.1 failed somewhere or my particular S5 has a big memory leak/RAM management issue. It won't show more than 8 apps in the dock, eventually it just shows 6 or 4 like a few dropped off/crashed. My S3 running the same OS, however, can manage 10. Keep in mind mine is set to show recent, not favorites in the dock.
 

ACE83

macrumors member
Apr 8, 2015
52
88
Buffalo, NY
Make sure you are on the latest watchOS. The first few builds of watchOS 6 were killing battery life on S5.

I start my day at 6AM and end around 1030 with a 30-45min tracked workout and AOD on - and end the day around 40-50%.

I don't even think about battery anymore
 

nickdalzell1

macrumors 68030
Dec 8, 2019
2,787
1,670
Battery life was never an issue for me on either my S3 or S5.

I wear my S5 to sleep too, I only charge it from 7 to 9PM each night. It's usually at 65-70% by then. That's after going to bed, sleep tracking with Autosleep, tracking activity the next day, along with up to a 45 minute workout, texting, some calls, AOD on, notifications in general and some Siri (when she works)
 

AL2TEACH

macrumors 65816
Feb 17, 2007
1,220
501
North Las Vegas, NV.
call me eh crazy but I think it's grand that the battery life is as good as it is seeing what it powers. I can get about 20 hours of (my) normal usage. I will have test this now, lol.
 

sjinsjca

macrumors 68020
Oct 30, 2008
2,238
555
I get about 36-40 hours off a full charge of my Series 5 Cellular. I wear it all day and to sleep, swapping it on the charger for my trusty Series 0 for an hour or so in the mornings when I have breakfast, shower, etc.

Usually, when I put it on the charger on arising, it has 40% or so left.

During the day I use it for alerts, audio play through Bluetooth (both of on-Watch content where the Watch itself streams, and as a control for content playing on my iPhone), and pretty frequently for Siri. I have a sleep tracker app.

My settings, for those items that would appear to have battery impact:

Background app refresh: mostly on
Wake screen on wrist raise: on
Auto-launch Audio Apps: off
Wake for: 15 seconds
Workout power saving mode: off
Display brightness: slider is mid-way
Listen for "Hey Siri": off
Raise to speak: off
Haptic alerts: On, Prominent
Fall detection: On
Start Workout Reminder: On
End Workout Reminder: On
Detect Gym Equipment: On

During the day: Always-on Display is on
When sleeping: Always-on Display is switched off via Theater Mode, and Do Not Disturb is turned on

In the Dock:
iCatcher
ECG
Messages
Timer
Battery Grapher
AllTrails
 
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