JS2 battery life

How are people finding the battery life?

I appreciate the advertised 4 week battery life is an optimistic expectation and the more apps you run or how often you interact with the screen will reduce the overall duration, but I am only getting 4 to 5 days before having to recharge.
Also seems to run out very quickly at the end. Had a notification from the android Gadgetbridge app I was at 29% and then in the space of an hour dropped to 7% and then powered off at about 2% with no warning from the watch itself, not even a buzz.
GPS is off, HRM is off.
I do have the twist to unlock option set and close observation seems to indicate the settings were quite sensitive so have now adjusted to require a very sharp wrist flick to unlock but can't have been the reason for that sudden drop over an hour.

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Could you possibly share your Twist settings please?! I just can't get the LCD to respond!

Not sure about the threshold value, but when the timeout was at 1000, just turning my wrist seemed to unlock it.

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If the screen is unlocking but backlight isn't lighting it'll be because you're still on the original KickStarter firmware and need to update it.

In terms of battery usage, have you changed any apps? Specifically the clock face can really suck up power if it updates every second. What I'm seeing here with the default apps is significantly higher than a 4-5 day battery life.

I would expect the battery percentage to be a bit non-linear towards the end though - it's a hard problem as all we have to go by is battery voltage, and that changes not just with the calibration of the resistors in the watch, but by temperature too.

Updated the firmware to get the fix for the twist unlock when it was released. Currently on 236 version.
Messed around in the first week with various apps and clock faces and testing notifications so expected the battery to run down quicker. But the last 2 weeks was just normal daily wear and the default clock.
Anyway did a full charge last night, have done a complete reset to default apps, only added in 3 additional apps (GPS on/off indicator, charging indicator and quiet mode scheduler) and tuned the twist settings to dial down the sensitivity .
12 hours later battery still says 100% so something seems to be working. (Or the battery indicator is broken :-) )

Was just curious if others had experienced battery life issues.

Was just curious if others had experienced battery life issues.

I don't think it's an issue to have 4-5 days, especially compared to other watches. It depends really on the use. If you lay it on the desk it will last virtually forever, if you are wearing it 7 days+, if you do things with it 4-5 days.

BTW: My Bangle 1 is on the desk (not moved) running for over a month now with a clock face updated every second.

@Sham1969 - I would concur with your experience.
Things that have stretched it out to 2 weeks for me are.

1) Turn wake on twist off - I'm happy to press the button if I want the backlight
2) Turn the LCD brightness down to 0.4
3) Reduce LCD timeout to 5 seconds - this can be a pain if you are slow in the launcher.
4) Make sure Health / Heart rate monitoring is off - even at 10mins it uses a lot of juice.

I agree the battery falls off a cliff after 30%. I've powered off twice by running out. I now recharge once I get to 40%.

Thanks for these settings - I'll try them and see if I get any better results!

Battery drop off sounds similar to a LiPo - fast discharge to nominal voltage, then gradual discharge, ending with rapid falloff to zero. I had the same today - 25% or so, then the next time I looked, the watch had turned off. It would certainly be handy to have a "critical battery level" warning or something similar.

The battery widget (with percentage) allows you to set a percentage warning level. Default is 30%. I try and recharge where I get to 40%.

Good idea. I hadn't picked up on that option... Which of the many options do you suggest?!

I charged my watch 5 days ago and I'm still at 55% battery. I've interacted with the watch a fair amount during that time.

The battery widget I have used a lot is called 'Battery Level Widget (with percentage) (v0.14)'
I would set the warning level at 35%.

Thanks!

@Tx, same for me: 6+ weeks and still gong strong... worn about 60% of the time... but only with default clock active.

Hi @HughB, maybe this is staring me in the face, but I installed that app and can't see any option to set a warning level.
The options on the watch app settings are:
Percentage
Charging Icon
Color
Fill Bar
Hide if >

Battery life is currently at 67% since being charged on 9 Dec.
Only used for message notifications and checking the time, so looks like toning down the sensitivity of the Twist action has helped a lot.

I was thinking the same! Perhaps it's one of the other battery apps that provides an adjustable warning level?

To determine the rate at which the voltage drops off, could it just be logged to flash and then a mathematical formula developed that could be used to determine the percentage more accurately, accounting for the non-linear voltage?

Yes, absolutely - that could totally be done. You'd have to be a little careful since there are slight variations between watches but on the whole some tweaks for nonlinearity would help a lot.

It just hasn't been a priority right now.

If you set hide if > 30% then the widget will appear when the battery reaches that level. The A battery widget (with percentage) turns red when it gets to 30%.

👍