Can one rant about Wear OS here since it’s technically still Android?
When Samsung was making watches on Tizen, they released products like Frontier (boasting upto 3 day battery life), original Galaxy Watch (boasting upto 4 days battery life). Cue they switched to Wear OS with GW4 and with the 40mm variant, the battery life doggedly remained at a pathetic 1 day with AOD on.
Even with release of newer generations like Ultra, they are barely hitting 3 days with ~590mAh battery. Why is Wear OS such a battery hog?
I own a Galaxy Watch 6 and the watch OS uses like 6 GB storage and 1+ GB in perpetual RAM. Is it really so that displaying time and running couple of apps in the background takes more memory than GNOME 46?
Google is removing features from Fitbits so people have a reason to buy Wear devices. Running a bespoke OS they’re able to get 5+ days between charges and had (roughly) the functionality of Wear.
Like another poster stated, Garmin seems like a better option.
And Samsung’s implementation sucks even more. The insistence on using wireless charging baffles me considering that it loses so much power as heat. Rival devices like Oneplus and even Pixel Watch charge faster(in other territory, Huawei’s watch uses silicon carbon battery, lasts thrice as long and charges twice as fast).
Not to mention, in summers, the wireless Puck heats up more than a Pixel and throttles itself to the point where one has to point a fan in that direction.
What os does Huawei use? Surely if it was just a miracle battery tech everyone else would be on it too
I don’t know the newer ones but the Huawei watch GT 2 is using “Huawei lite os”. No 3rd party apps and pretty limited in functions but the battery life is amazing with about 14-15 days for me at least. This combined with a modded app is just right. AFAIK the newer ones are more capable but have a slight less runtime
I bought a wear os watch deliberately because I thought I would enjoy modifying and customizing it like a regular android phone. In reality, I don’t use it much more than for fitness tracking. I’m going to buy a garmin instinct and not change for the next 4 years.
Yeah the battery life is stupidly short. Main reason I was looking at sport watches from Garmin and Suunto instead and ended up getting Suunto Race with battery lasting about 2 weeks
I have a solar powered Garmin with all the biometrics and all the GPS protocols for every satellite system known to man, and a full map feature, same as any WearOS device is capable of, with zero installable apps; the watch lasts 21 days from a full charge.
I use it to tell me the time, reply to texts and track my workouts. Not sure the point of an entire linux kernel requiring to be run on other watches with only less than a single day of battery. It sounds preposterous that people are okay with this.
When I have £500 to spare, I’ll get that. Until then, my £60 Hauwei watch will do.
When I have £500 to spare, I’ll get that. Until then, my £60 Hauwei watch will do.
This is a very excellent comment, given the context and that this is an Android watch discussion and mine is not running Android.
What Huawei Android smart watch is fucking 60 Euros? I’ll buy it tonight.
It’s not running WearOS, it’s just the most value I could find for £60. It has up to 2 week battery life, sleep and activity tracking, support for some third party apps if you get the GT 3 or up.
