How to Prevent Battery from Draining on Samsung Gear Smart Watches

Samsung’s Gear watches provide many features to its users along with message notifications, music, and the ability to scan the person’s heartbeat. The watches also track the daily walking and running distance of the user and provide over 60+ hours of usage in normal circumstances. However, quite recently a lot of reports have been coming in of the watches only lasting the users 4 to 5 hours which is much less than the battery timings they used to provide.

What Causes the Fast Battery Drain on the Gear Smart Watches?

After receiving numerous reports on the issue we decided to investigate it and scribbled together a guide which solved the problem for most of our users. Also, we looked into the reasons due to which this error is triggered and they are listed as follows:

Now that you have a basic understanding of the nature of the problem we will move on towards the solutions. It is recommended to try these solutions in the specific order in which they are provided.

Solution 1: Disabling Weather Application

The weather application in the Gear App on the mobile was causing a huge drain on the Gear S watch battery and increased resource usage resulted in shorter battery life. Therefore, in this step, we will be disabling certain elements of the weather app. For that:

1. Grab ahold of your phone and open the Gear App.
2. Inside the application select your Gear watch and tap on the “Manage Apps” option.

   

3. Uninstall all applications that you don’t require and then tap on the “Weather” application option.

   

4. Disable the “Use Current Location” option and set the “Auto Refresh” interval to 6 hours.
5. Check to see if the Battery Drain still occurs.

Solution 2: Disabling Connection Alerts

Another fix that we will try is to disable the connection alerts which were reported to cause a huge battery drain. For that:

1. From the Apps screen, rotate the bezel and select the “Settings” option.

   

2. Tap “Connections” and then “Alerts” to disable the feature.
3. Now check to see if the problem is solved.
   Note: This feature is turned back on automatically after every update and will need to be disabled again.

Solution 3: Disabling S Health App

The S Health application was noticed to cause a huge drain on the battery. Therefore, in this step, we will be disabling the S Health application. For that:

1. Press the “App” button on your phone and rotate the bezel to highlight “S Health“.

   

2. Rotate the bezel to go to settings and tap on the “Settings” option that appears.

   

3. Inside the settings, you will see “Profiles” when it is first opened, rotate the bezel once and tap on the “Health Nudges” option.

   

4. A Green mark can be seen on the options that are enabled, press once on all the options inside the “Health Nudges” tab to disable them.

   

5. Press the back button, rotate the bezel again and tap on the “Workout Detection” option.

   

6. A green mark will be seen on the options that are enabled. tap on each option inside this to disable them and press the back button.

   

7. Rotate the bezel three times and tap on the “Auto HR” option.

   

8. Tap on the “Auto HR” button to disable it.
9. Check to see if the Battery drainage issue has been solved.

Solution 4: Checking for Updates

Samsung Acknowledged the Battery drainage problem on the Gear Devices and released a new update in order to address those issues. Therefore, in this step, we will be checking for new updates to the SmartWatch. For that:

1. Connect the watch to the Smartphone and open the Galaxy S App on the device.
2. On the main screen, tap settings and tap on the “About Gear” option.

   

3. Tap on the “Update Gear Software” and let it check for new updates.
4. Tap on the “Download Updates” and updates will now automatically be downloaded and installed.