Moto 360 Battery and Impact on Phone Battery

[trecnoc]

Hello everyone, I’ve been a long time visitor here and seen a lot of things that have interested me, but today I saw something that bothered me. In the most recent WAN Show (9/12/14) I saw that Luke wasn’t much of a fan of the moto 360 anymore due to the fact that it scored lower than all the other competitor’s smart watches in a battery duration benchmark. I’d just like to clarify some of the things said by some of the review sites mainly concerning the battery life of the watch. I’d also like to clarify before I start that by no means am I trying to sell the moto 360 to all of you, this is simply something that has bothered me as an owner of the thing and would like to clarify with everyone before they go and make up their minds about how the moto 360 was a complete failure.

 

First of all I’d like to address the “terrible battery life” comments that were being made by some of the sites that reviewed this and how I believe that these may be misleading. First of all, some of these tests were performed with a setting called the “ambient screen” turned on. What the ambient screen does is that instead of turning off the screen when the watch is not in use and turning it only when it senses that the user is lifting up their arm to see their watch, when the user touches the screen of the watch to tell it to turn on, or when the user presses the button the on side it makes it so that the screen only dims down to a level that can still be visible to the user.

 

And thus my first complain about the way that these reviews were performed, why would you want to do this??? You would rather the watch dim itself down to a level which cannot be seen properly anywhere other than inside in some relatively dim lighting (examples at the bottom) instead of having it turn off completely and saving battery and only have turn on in one of the three cases where it thinks that you are looking at it? Now, I understand that some people want this to keep the feel of an actual analog watch or that they want to make sure that everyone around them knows that they are currently wearing a smart watch, but why would you conduct a test with this setting on then only talk about the performance of the smart watch with that feature on and not even mention the battery saving without it? I personally like that the watch is trying to turn on only when it knows that I am looking at it. That being said I would also like there to be a way to personalize how the watch comes out of sleep because it keeps turning on when I don't really want it to, but even that isn't necessary for me to recommend this watch to the tech savvy.

 

Next I’d like to address something that Luke said during the last WAN Show, and that would be that he’s worried about how much more battery the Bluetooth being on all the time would take up than just having the screen on. So I decided to look about how much battery everything on my phone was taking up: on the top of the list is the display which usually takes up about 50+% of the battery on my phone, then I looked to find what battery the watch was taking up and found it in the form of a process named “Mediaserver” which was taking a whopping 7% of battery. Some of you may be saying that this is a massive amount of battery for them, and maybe it is, but for comparison my Google Play Music application at the time has taken up 8% of my battery with me having used it for an extended period of time earlier today to listen to music while doing homework. This was all information coming from my Moto X, a phone where the screen takes dramatically less battery than some other alternatives, a phone that is also rooted and has a metric ton of xposed modules currently running to make it look nicer to me and which may also be over exaggerating the amount of battery used by some processes. Some people may now be saying that maybe it’s because I’m not getting too many notifications and that the phone isn’t pushing as many notifications as it would be with other people and other use cases, but I don’t believe that even this would cause a huge difference in the amount of battery that the phone and the watch would use to communicate.

 

So I’ve said all this but I haven’t mentioned why I didn’t trust the reviews in the first place. At the time or writing this my watch has been off the charger for about 7 and a half hours and is sitting nicely at 75% on a relatively calm day, yesterday I has forgotten to charge the watch at night, woke up at 11AM and put it on the charger, took a shower and got ready for the day, came back got the watch and went about my day starting off with about 85% battery at around 12PM, and then proceeded to go about my day and end it all with 15% at 3AM. I do now doubt that the moto 360, with the right settings, could last two days on a single charge, something which I find thoroughly impressive considering it's the first of its kind. Furthermore, comparing this to the analog watch that I own and use on a daily basis, the only difference I see is that when I take the moto 360 off at night I have to put it on the charging dock before going to sleep, a very small price to pay for the convenience I get from having this watch.

 

Examples for the "ambient screen" option in different lighting conditions (the option is turned on and on the dim state for every instance):

Dimly lit room

Fluorescent lighting

Cloudy afternoon

Sunny day

 

If there is anything I missed in this post about the moto 360 that anyone of you would like to know let me know and I’ll try my best to answer your question.

[connorpiper]

On my phone, my pebble reduces the battery by like 5% (Moto Razr M) and 1% on Sony Z1.

So not really a big deal.

[menendez1293]

Didn't read your post, but my Moto 360 just lasted 30 hours and I really didn't notice my phones battery taking a large hit.

[Scouten]

On my phone, my pebble reduces the battery by like 5% (Moto Razr M) and 1% on Sony Z1.

So not really a big deal.

the battery hit is negligible for sure

 

noticed even less than that on my GS3

[connorpiper]

the battery hit is negligible for sure

 

noticed even less than that on my GS3

 

The Razr M has a 2000mAh battery. Terrible. 

[Scouten]

The Razr M has a 2000mAh battery. Terrible. 

the gs3 is only 2100mah prob has to do with the radio inside of the razr it or it keeps having to re establish the connection

[connorpiper]

the gs3 is only 2100mah prob has to do with the radio inside of the razr it or it keeps having to re establish the connection

 

But the Razr has an issue with using all the battery for it's super power hungry AMOLED display (The one on the GS3 is better)

And you can replace yours.

[iruixos]

We should get Slick to read this and get his opinion.

 

Nice post though OP

[ilikemacandpc]

Great first impressions..

 

But that watch is wayyy too big. 

[Vacsol]

I'll wait for the next good round smartwatch.

[kayodoc]

Awesome. I was iffy before but now I'm definitely picking one of these up. I've been wearing a watch since I was 4 so a smart watch is the next logical step for a tech nerd like me. Thanks!

[cesrai]

@Slick read this