I have a son who has used the watch for ~9 months now and have been keeping a close eye on battery levels. To me the watch battery is the weakest link of this amazing product. In your test did you have the watch in one location all day? I find that if my son is in a location with good reception then battery drain is around 3-5% per hour. If it sits on the bench then the drain is around the levels you identified. This difference cannot be my son playing with the phone all day as I have recorded battery drain on an hourly basis over a short period of time and can see the average battery drain. Plus it has now been 9months and the initial wow factor has now subsided and it is now just an everyday item for him. I have noticed when phone reception is poor battery drain is considerably higher. I have the phone set to update every 20 mins, and at the end of the day (7am - 5pm) battery levels are anywhere between 40 - 70 %. This means I need to charge the watch on a daily basis as you can never predict battery use. It would be so nice to have a couple of days charge - but for me this is not a realistic option. Note this is all based from suburban Sydney.
I did some tests early on comparing 20 vs 30 vs 60 minute updates, and I was presently surprised that when reception was good there was only minor differences in battery drain. I wish the spacetalk team would provide different time zones where updates could vary as I only need the 20 minute updates around departure arrival times. I know this has been suggested to them in the past, but obviously this is not high on there agenda.
The only other thing I have noticed is that occasionally the watch stop communicating with the server. This means that while the watch can still make calls I do not get notification updates via the app. This is easily fixed by restarting watch. - but you have to be actively monitoring to catch it. Was happening a bit last month but suddenly started to behave itself again - perhaps there was an update that fixed this.
MWR Price at posting:
$3.59 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
