The main gripe of the Galaxy Watch is battery life, and every version – bar the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro – offers a single day between charges.
Now that smartwatches are effective sleep trackers, you can be more accountable for getting good quality rest by wearing your Samsung smartwatch to bed. But that's no use if it won't last through the night.
If you’re looking to make improvements to your Galaxy Watch to save battery life, and make your smartwatch last longer, then try these tips.
And read our guide to using Samsung Wireless PowerShare to charge your Samsung Galaxy Watch on the move.
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Turn off the always-on display
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Samsung estimates 40 hours of battery life from the Galaxy Watch 5/6 when the always-on display is turned off, as opposed to 30 hours with it on. So you can get 25% extra battery by getting rid.
Go to Settings > Display > Always on Display and use the toggle to turn it on/off.
Turn on power saving mode
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There’s a dedicated power-saving mode built into the Galaxy Watch to help you save battery.
Swipe down to the top for the Quick Settings tray and then swipe right to the second page and look for the battery icon. Tap that to enable power saving, and you could extend battery life by another 20%, or get closer to 50 hours on a full charge.
There are quite a few sacrifices, but crucially, none to the health tracking prowess of the Galaxy Watch. The changes are below:
- Turn off Always On Display
- Turn off Wi-Fi
- Turn down CPU
- Brightness down 10%
- Limit location usage
- Reduced syncing frequency
- Screen timeout to 15 seconds
- Turn off the wrist wake up
- No software updates
Close apps
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If you want to save battery then closing apps running in the background can help.
On the apps screen choose the Recent Apps icon (above). This will show all apps currently running. You can close them one by one by swiping them up and away, or you can hit Close all to get rid en masse.
Decrease screen brightness
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Keeping your screen brightness down will make a big impact on battery life. If you cranked it up when you got the Galaxy Watch, that could explain poor longevity.
Go to Settings > Display > Brightness and turn that down.
Turn off blood oxygen during sleep
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There are loads of health settings that will drain battery life – and blood oxygen is a big one.
If you’re tracking this during sleep it will have a big impact on your battery life.
It’s a great health metric that’s a big part of the sleep-tracking experience, but if you’re not bothered, there’s a chance to make a big saving here.
Go to Settings > Health > Blood Oxygen during sleep and toggle off.
Turn off skin temperature
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Another worthwhile visit to the Health settings is to control the temperature sensor.
Skin temperature tracking isn’t cracked up to much on the Samsung Galaxy Watch, unless you’re a woman using period tracking.
For everyone else, it’s an easy sensor to turn off and save some juice.
Turn off measure continuous heart rate
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This is a big one to turn off as it will really hobble your health tracking, but there are multiple levels of heart rate tracking on the Galaxy Watch.
Continuously tracking will produce the best data, but suck more battery.
You don’t have to turn it off altogether, however. You can reduce the frequency to every 10 minutes in the Health settings menu, which will save valuable battery life. However, it can affect resting heart rate data.
Turn off stress tracking
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We’re not fans of stress tracking on smartwatches and generally find the data lacks usefulness. It can also be a battery hog, crunching the numbers on real-time HR but also heart rate variability. So for us, this is an easy one to turn off.
Go to Settings > Health > Stress and turn to Manual Only. You can still take spot readings, but on your terms.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.