7 tips to improve the battery life on your smartwatch

Smartwatches are great companion gadgets for your smartphones. With a range of features that offer immense flexibility and handy functionality, smartwatches are only limited by their tiny batteries, which need to be charged often, unlike regular watches.

This is partly due to the compact dimensions of most smartwatches. An average smartwatch battery is too small to power the watch and all its complex functions for over a day or two. You may find smartwatches out there with more battery life at the expense of lesser features, functionality. However, with flagship do-it-all smartwatches, you’ll find yourself charging the device at least 3-5 times every week.

However, that doesn’t have to mean your hands are tied. Here are seven tips to maximise the battery life of your smartwatch and make it last longer on a single charge.

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These tips will help you improve the battery life of your smartwatch, but the effectiveness may vary depending on factors like the type, brand, display tech, and model of your watch.

1) Manage notifications: Your smartwatch might be receiving too many notifications from all the apps. You can turn off notifications for apps that you don’t need or use frequently to save battery. Only sync those notifications that are crucial. This can be changed from the companion apps for most smartwatches.

2) Screen brightness: It might just be the case that your screen brightness could be too high resulting in battery drain. Lowering the screen brightness will drastically improve the battery life of your smartwatch. If your smartwatch has an auto-brightness mode, leaving it on may actually save you more battery by toning it down when not needed.

3) Disable GPS: Consider turning off the GPS on your watch if and when you don’t need it. Similar to the effects of leaving GPS on on a smartphone, leaving GPS left on on a smartwatch will drain its battery much faster than it needs to. Turn it off along with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and any other connectivity options that may continuously be scanning in the background even when not in use. If you want to be a little more aggressive with battery saving, then you can also turn off voice assistant or motion gestures as well.

4) Power saving mode: Whenever in a low battery situation, you should always turn on the power saving mode. It will turn off all the background processing and will give you a bare-bones experience. While not very feature-rich, this is ideal when longevity of the watch is more important.

5) Update the software: Keeping the software that runs your smart watch updated will not only add new features and improvements but also carry battery improvements. Always keep your watch (or any other device for that matter) updated to the latest versions when any updates are available.

6) Darker watch face: If your smart watch sports an OLED display, then you can use a minimal, largely black watch face to save significant battery life. On OLED panels, black pixels on the display are turned off (giving them the dark, punchy black effect), and thus consume lesser battery.

7) Power bank: You can do only so much with all the tricks mentioned above to conserve battery. However, when you need a charger, having a power bank with you can make a big difference. What’s more? The power bank can also charge your phone, earbuds and any other small gadgets you may need to power up when on the go.

There are several other tips like closing unused apps, and reducing the frequency of heart rate monitoring that can further help to get more battery life. Even after all these changes if you’re not satisfied with the battery life of your watch, consider upgrading to another watch with a bigger battery.