Top Battery Saving Tips for Samsung Galaxy Smartwatches

Samsung changed the future of Wear OS smartwatch a few years back by launching its most popular smartwatch, Galaxy Watch 4. Currently Galaxy Watch 6 is the latest smartwatch from Samsung released last year with almost similar specs as Galaxy Watch 5. Although the battery life on Galaxy Watches are good, there could be times when you wonder if your watch has a bigger battery. But don’t worry we have some battery tips for you. Here you will know about best battery saving tips for Galaxy Smartwatches.

Galaxy Watch 4 was a big upgrade for wear OS smartwatch, but since then we haven’t seen any big improvements. Both Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 6 are slightly improved models of Galaxy Watch 4. Even their average battery life is almost the same which is around 30 hours per full charge (for non classic). This even goes down after some time because battery degrades over time.

But thanks to the One UI Watch controls, we can tinker around settings to get more battery life of your Galaxy Watch. So if you want to get more battery life on your Galaxy Watch 6, you can follow these simple battery saving tips. If the OS is optimized for best battery, you will get even more battery life.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips

If you want to Preserve Battery Life for Later Use

If you know that your Watch battery will run out by the time you need it, you can preserve its battery life by switching it to Watch Only Mode. In this mode Watch will use minimum battery as it only shows time and nothing else. And when the time comes to use your Watch, you can turn off the Watch Mode.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips

To turn it on open Battery and device care > Battery > Watch Only.

Turn on Battery Saver

Just like Smartphones, you will find battery saver option on Galaxy Watch that limits various features with a single tap and hence increase battery life. Since it limits features, I suggest using this tip when you are traveling and want to save battery. If you keep it enabled all the time, you may not get to experience your Galaxy Watch to its full potential.

When the battery saver is enabled, it turns off AOD, wake up gestures, and WiFi, decreases brightness, and limits some other functions. To enable battery saver mode, you can follow these steps.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips
  • Scroll down from watch face screen to open Quick Settings.
  • Swipe to the left for more quick settings and then tap on Battery Saver (Power Saving) icon.
  • OR go to Settings > Battery and device care > Battery > enable Power Saving.

Turn Off Always On Display

Display consumes more battery than any other part or feature on Smartwatch. When Always On Display is enabled users don’t get even 24hr of battery life on their Galaxy Watches. And by turning off this just one feature can give around 7-10 hours of more battery life which is just insane.

In my case, I didn’t find the Always on Display useful because the raise wrist to wake gesture does a pretty good job. What it does is when you raise your wrist to see your watch the display will turn on immediately. So why keep the watch screen enabled all the time?

To turn off Always on Display on Galaxy Watches, you can follow these steps.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips
  • Scroll down to open Quick Settings.
  • Tap on the Watch icon if its blue. When the icon is grey that means AOD turned off.
  • Or you can go to Settings > Display > Turn off Always on Display.

Change Heart Rate Measure Time

Heart rate is now a basic feature of a smartwatch. And the heart rate data is quite reliable on Galaxy Watches. But by default, the Galaxy Watch measures heart rate continuously and consumes more battery.

However, there is an option that allows users to change the interval of heart rate monitoring. It can help increase battery life drastically on your Galaxy Watch. Here are the steps to change the heart rate measurement interval.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips
  • Go to Settings > Health.
  • Now go to Heart Rate and choose 10 Min interval.

Switch Watch Face

Watch Face with animations and colors consume more battery. For example, AR emoji watch faces have heavy animation that drains the battery faster.

Thankfully, Galaxy Watches supports so many official cool watch faces which means you can easily find watch face that look cool and don’t consume a lot of power. My suggestion is to use any classic analog theme watchface with black background.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips

Also, you should avoid third-party apps as they consume more battery. If you want to show some flashy watchfaces, you can easily switch between watch faces whenever you want.

Turn Off Location

If you stay home most of the time or you don’t care about GPS/location tracking then Location service may be using your Watch battery unnecessarily.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips

To turn it off open Quick Setting panel by swiping down from watch face screen and then scroll to the left until you see location icon. If the location icon is blue tap on it. You can also access it from Settings > Location > Turn off.

Close apps from background

When you open an app it stays open in the background even if you go back to watchface or other apps. And so this accumulates multiple apps in the background that you use on your Watch.

Like Smartphones, you can also see the recent apps on your Galaxy Smartwatch and you can close all the apps from the recent apps page. Here are the steps.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips
  • Open Recent apps screen by pressing the second button once.
  • Now Swipe Up every app in the Recent apps window or tap on Close All.

Reduce Screen Brightness

Galaxy Watches come with brighter displays maybe not high like Smartphones but still high enough to see in sunlight. You will need to use your Galaxy Watch in almost full brightness when in sunlight.

But if the surrounding is not very bright you can reduce the brightness of your Galaxy Watch to save battery life. Increasing and decreasing brightness is quite easy. Here is how to change brightness.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips
  • Scroll down to open Quick Settings.
  • Swipe to the left to see more options. In the second page you will see Brightness icon, tap on it.
  • Now adjust the brightness based on your requirement.

Turn Off Bluetooth and WiFi

Bluetooth is required to maintain Galaxy Watch connection with your Smartphone. So when this is not required you can turn off Bluetooth on your Galaxy Watch.

WiFi is used for many purposes but we don’t need it all the time. Its requirement is even less than Bluetooth. When your Watch is connected to your phone and your phone has an internet connection, your watch will also have internet access. So there is no need to use WiFi for most cases.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips

You only need WiFi when you want a high-speed connection. For example to save a playlist or album. Other than this you will need WiFi when you want to use WiFi debugging. The rest of the time you can keep the WiFi turned off.

Manage Notifications

If your Galaxy Watch is connected to your phone and you have turned on notifications for all apps, then your Watch will wake up or buzz every time you receive a notification. And this will lead to faster battery drain.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips

So to save some battery, you can either turn off the notification or choose to show notifications for a few selected apps.

Allow Only Required Health Tracking

There are many health tracking features running continuously on the Galaxy Watch that contribute to more battery consumption. I already shared about Heart Rate which is the major concern, but there are low-impacting metrics as well.

If you donโ€™t do outdoor activities or Ok with enabling workout mode manually then you should turn off the Auto Workout Detection feature.

Galaxy Watch Battery Saving Tips

You can also turn off Blood Oxygen monitoring during sleep if you are not interested in its data. And there is Snore Detection which doesnโ€™t work accurately so I suggest turning it off along with skin temperature detection during sleep.

Other Tips that have minimal effect on battery consumption:

Screen timeout : You can set the less screen timeout (suggestion 30 seconds). This means when your Watch is not is use, its screen will turn off after 30 second of last use. Available in Settings > Display.

Raise wrist to wake up : You can also turn off this gesture but it can affect your experience. I keep this gesture enabled. When its enable you don’t have to touch the display or press button to wake the Watch display. Available in Settings > Display.

So these are the best battery saving tips for Samsung Galaxy Smartwatches. If you want to share your findings, you can share with us in the comment section.

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By Ashutosh Singh

Ashutosh started his technical writing journey when he was a university student. He is now a full time tech blog writer specializing in smartwatch based tech news and how-to guides. He spends his free time exploring games and useful gadgets.

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