Galaxy watch 4 and WearOS fast battery drain causes and solutions

[abc_34]

Update 27/12/21:

Using watch for more than 2 months. Swicthed to classic bt model after 3 weeks of using 44mm bt model. Must say that battery little bit improves on latest update and after using watch for a few days when battery calibration thing has finished. With ligth usage it gives 2-2.5 days of battery life. imo, Its still far from good. The watch at least should offer a software based lite mode (instead of watch only mode) that users can get basic notifications, exercise step counting etc like a regular fitness band with about 7 days of battery life. 

First Post on 10/21:

As noted by many users Galaxy watch 4 series have some battery life issues. I'm trying to figure out root cause (with limited tools, not much help from Wearapp's battery menu). I did some tests on GW4 44mm BT model. 2-4% per hour battery drain when watch is idle is too much for a smart watch really. Even when airplane and power saving modes enabled at the same time (no BT, no Wifi, no AOD, no SPO2, screen brigtness on 15%, only 10 mins heart rate on (runs once or twice an hour), sleep tracking and workout detection is on) while watch is idle in this state without any screen activity it drains battery around 1.2-1.5% per hour during day and around 1.5-2% over night during sleep. All this suggests something in the background drain battery fast. Battery menu on wear app doesnt give much clue since list of apps there (samsung health services, screen activity, ui etc.) all combined shows only about 1/3 of total battery drain. So what does drain battery the most, about remaining 2/3 of total battery drain, when watch is idle? Is it WearOS itself? Is there a tool application that shows more battery info than Samsung's Wear app, like Gsam battery on phones? 

I think most likely root cause of battery drains are software based, Wearos and/or Samsung side, and they can be improved by devs. For instance; maybe some process/services (wifi, BT, notifications, gps, google services, health services etc. ) are running  too frequently in the background which use cpu/memory power even if sensors/features are disabled and watch is inactive. There might be bugs and/or just bad implementations. No matter what, they should be found and solved by WearOS/Samsung devs. Maybe solution is as simple as changing the frequency of one service/process call that cause the most battery drain. Letting users change/tweak those settings that affect battery life would be better idea in fact.

Much cheaper watches or fitness bands last couple weeks even a month with like 2/3 battery capacity of GW4. They provide similar workout and health stuff, basic notifications, remote media control etc. With all features on they give much better battery life than GW4 with all smart features off (no notifications, no wifi, no BT, power saving on etc.) even much better than when Galaxy watch 4 is waiting idle doing nothing. Definitely WearOS is not battery optimised and buggy. Samsung apps might be making it worse as well.

[robbed]

I only turn off my nfc and ive had no issues since, I used my health app daily while cycling and walking, if you have downloaded a watch face, thus could be the problem, once I got rid of watch face I purchased and used one of the GW4 faces, my battery uses 1% every hour, I get roughly 4 days out of battery, hope this helps

[margusb]

If the device is turned off for some reason, then after starting the device I have also enabled and then disabled the NFC . Sometimes also after recharging. I hope they find the glitch soon and send us a fix for this strange battery drain.

[VinceZ]

Thanks, I will turn off NFC and keep the health integration to see how that goes. I'm an active rowing machine user and I cycle, it would be great to keep this feature.

[robbed]

I use the nfc when I pay for stuff but instantly turn it off once items have been purchased, just by pulling watch screen down. Good luck buddy

[GalaxyWatchUser]

I keep both NFC and GPS on all the time and am back to over a day and a half battery life but, with one caveat.

Each time after using Strava, Google Maps or Google Pay I need to actively close the App or I can watch the battery drain at a massively accelerated rate.

This is inconvenient, especially when you forget after paying for something and suddenly having an empty watch so I hope that Samsung fixes the problem of background Apps draining battery.

Also, give us a possibility to remove, for us, useless Apps like Bixby and let us remap the buttons properly.

[John Doe1]

After having it used for about a month, my watch (non-LTE, 42mm version) started extreme battery draining. It literally consumes all the battery within 2 hours, from 100% to 0% until the watch turns off. The backside of it is warm, so it keeps spinning inside, and I haven't even worn it. I slept 2 hours while it was laying on the table, started fully charged. Woke up to 2% battery.

Tried the cache wiping mentioned in the youtube video (posted somewhere on here), didn't help,

Updated apps (why do I need a samsung account for that even, but that's a different story), nothing helped. Will charge it again, and give it a factory reset, and see what happens. If it keeps draining the battery, I'm sending it back and not buying a samsung watch again.

[John Doe1]

So, this is officially garbage.

After giving it a factory reset and having charged to 100%, I had to recharge twice today from 0% again.

It's 17:58 here and the watch is fully discharged for the second time.

I'm sending it back and never buying a galaxy watch again.

[John Doe1]

Posting this as a heads up for people after me:

Just a quick update, the lack of google services (I'm using an ungoogled LineageOS, hate the google spyware) causes this. The companion apps (google wear, galaxy wearable and the galaxy watch4 plugin) keep the phone spinning in an endless loop, started from the watch that wants to communicate to some obscure google service.

Since I don't think Samsung is ever gonna fix this (they will just say that the ungoogled phones are "unsupported", whereas they are the true android phones), I have to get rid of this watch.

I suggest everybody who ever cared about their privacy to not buy a samsung watch. The fact that they're gonna force you to send your data to them outrages me in the first place. You can't even get through the installation phase without authorizing the apps to send all your data to "cloud servers".

[Big Durbs]

After years of galaxy watches ( S2 , and best part of 3 years of my S3 ) , I decided to treat myself to a new S4 , the reason for this was for a nice new battery as my S3 was only lasting a couple of days ( oh the irony) , I was kinda thinking as Glastonbury Festival is finally happening this year it would be nice to not have to charge up every day from a battery pack.

i would have to say this S4 lte is an absolute disgrace, yesterday I fully charged over night , wore it to work and then took it off and placed it on my desk , at 5:30 I put it back on and it was down to 10% . 

I have even put it in airplane mode to disable the phone element to try and extend the battery life m also set a basic watch face with just time and battery display, white on black with bright turned down to minimal.

[John Doe1]

I removed the google wear os companion app from my phone as I kept seeing that it constantly tries to connect to google services.

As a result of that, my watch is no longer connected to my phone (I don't get notifications from it). With that, my battery usage decreased significantly: with normal usage, I get ~30% usage on a daily.

Something is really wrong with those companion apps. I can live without them, as I don't want any of my data to wander into the cloud.

Nonetheless, I'm gonna sell this watch ASAP.