Why Smartwatch Battery Drains Fast? (15 Reasons)

Fitness trackers and smartwatches have been increasingly popular in recent years. Aside from their advantages, the most common problem with these devices is their quick battery drain.

But why smartwatch battery drains fast? The relation between smartwatches and battery life is straightforward. When your watch offers more features and functionalities similar to those available on a smartphone, the battery drains faster.

To save your smartwatch’s battery, you must reduce your interactions with it. If that isn’t possible, you can still conserve battery life by controlling your smartwatch’s notifications, Wifi usage, brightness, and other settings.

This article will go over 15 of such reasons about what drains smartwatch battery and how to fix them.

So, without further ado, let’s get started.

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15 Reasons Why Your Smartwatch’s Battery Drains Fast & How to Fix it

Following are the reasons for the quick battery drainage of your smartwatch. Make sure to follow these tips to guarantee that your battery lasts as long as possible:

1. Turn Off the Always On Display

The Always-on display is efficient for checking the time, but if you’ve set it to be on permanently, it depletes the battery. It also indicates that the backlight will remain on, consuming even more energy. So, rather than leaving it on all the time, make sure to turn it on or off as needed.

2. Block Unnecessary Notifications

You may be able to extend your smartwatch’s battery life by managing or blocking unnecessary app notifications. It’s possible to disable or remove notifications from apps that aren’t critical to your daily life.

Follow these steps to stop receiving notifications you don’t want:

Step 1: Open the Wear OS app on your phone.

Step 2: Go to “Settings,” then “Notifications,” and “Block notifications” in the “Notifications” section.

Step 3: To block another app, tap Add more + icon.

Step 4: Tap on the app you want to block to complete the process.

3. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Syncing 

Cellular, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi are just a few of the connectivity options available on smartwatches. In most cases, these rely on a Bluetooth connection within your phone’s range. When you don’t need or use a connection, you can save battery life by disabling it.

4. Adjust the Screen Brightness Level 

The more you use your watch’s brightness, the more battery drain you’ll see on your wrist. Keeping the brightness at a low or automatic level is recommended. Because of this, you won’t have to worry about draining your battery.

By decreasing the brightness of your watch, you can save battery life and protect your eyesight simultaneously. Additionally, this will improve battery life and enhance optimal performance.

For Android Wear smartwatches, follow these steps to change the brightness of the screen:

Step 1: Tap on the watch screen to wake it up.

Step 2: Swipe down from the top of the watch screen to complete the second step.

Use the Settings (cogwheel) and Display options in Android 2.0. In contrast, Android Wear 1.5 and earlier users can access the Settings menu by swiping left and tapping the Settings icon.

Step 3: Tap on Adjust Brightness

Step 4: Finally, tap to adjust the brightness of your screen.

5. Limited Background Apps

Running apps in the background, such as Weather, calendars and clocks, heart rate monitors, and message notifications, consumes battery power. Try to keep the number of apps operating in the background as low as possible. As a result, you will save the battery of your device.

6. Use the Snooze

Use the snooze feature to extend the battery life of your smartwatch. A beep will sound on your watch as soon as an alert is received. In addition, disabling notifications prevents your smartwatch’s screen from lighting up and eliminates vibrations, both of which drain the battery.

7. Change the Frequency of Weather Update

The weather app installed on the smartwatch consumes a lot of battery power because it requires a lot of processing power. In addition, an error has been discovered in the weather app, causing it to run in the background and drain the battery much more quickly than it should.

You can adjust how frequently the watch requests weather data. You can change the auto-refresh interval in the Wearable app on your phone by opening Apps, selecting Weather, and selecting the gear icon next to the Weather app.

Remember: A six-hour interval is a good choice.

8. Try a Different Watch Face

In general, watch faces with animations or interactive capabilities, such as those on the Apple Watch, drain battery life more quickly than others. Such watch faces should be swapped out by users as soon as possible.

9. Disable Wrist Gestures 

You may want to disable the wrist gesture feature if you don’t use gestures while lifting your arm. It may help in increasing the battery life of the smartwatch.

10. Streaming Music

It’s perfectly fine if you’re a fan of working out and prefer to listen to music from your smartwatch rather than AirPods. However, using your smartwatch to play music for extended periods can seriously deplete the battery.

You’re better off buying a pair of air-pods instead of listening to music directly on your smartwatch. It will save some power for your smartwatch.

11. Uninstall Apps

Many smartwatch apps drain the battery quickly. After installing third-party apps on their Android Wear, smart users will notice a noticeable change in battery life. In this case, users should remove battery-draining apps from their devices.

If you’ve recently installed an app and your battery is draining faster than usual, consider uninstalling it.

Try to follow these steps to remove an app from a watch:

• You can wake up your watch by tapping the screen if it’s too dim.
• Press the Power button to access your app list.
• Scroll down and tap Play Store Google Play.
• Swipe from the top of the screen and tap My Apps. 
• When you’ve selected the app, you want to uninstall, scroll down and tap Uninstall.

12. Disable System Apps

You cannot remove or uninstall pre-installed apps, but you can always disable system apps installed by default when you buy the device.

Step 1: To begin, open the Settings app on your smartwatch.

Step 2: Select Apps or Application Manager from the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Click on the app you want to disable after finding it by scrolling up and down.

Step 4: Finally, tap on Disable to complete the process.

13. Turn Off Location Services

With the GPS in your watch, battery life can be quickly depleted depending on how frequently the watch asks for your location. For this, navigate to Settings > Connections > Location.

Moreover, use the toggle switch to disable location services or to select GPS, Wi-Fi or both as your preferred method of tracking your location.

14. Older Battery

Unfortunately, you can’t replace the batteries in smartwatches when they die. When it comes to smartwatch batteries, unless you’re willing to open up the device and replace the battery, you’ll probably never need to do so.

15. Monitor the battery

You can extend the battery life of your watch by keeping an eye on it. Some smartwatches come with tools that tell you which apps consume the most battery power.

Final Thoughts

After reading this article, we believe that you should better understand why a smartwatch’s battery drains fast. Fast battery drainage is done by an overabundance of notifications, an always-on display, background apps, music streaming, and excessive brightness.

In this article, we’ve put up a complete guide on how to increase the battery life of your smartwatch. You’ll get more use from your smartwatch battery if you follow the tips above.

If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to share them below. Thank you so much!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How long do smartwatch batteries last?

The battery life of most smartwatches is between one and two days on average. However, it all depends on how the device is used.

Should I charge my smartwatch every night?

To ensure that your smartwatch has a full battery when you wake up, you should recharge it every night. Remember that you must turn off the smartwatch before you plug it in to charge.

How long does it take a smartwatch to charge?

Typically, the charging time varies from watch to watch. Not all smartwatches have the same battery, charger, or charging port. But on average, it takes 3–4 hours to reach full charge. Apart, the model you’re using has an impact on the results.