Samsung Galaxy Gear: Getting bad battery life on your Gear?

Most will argue that a smartwatch is not an ideal solution just yet… But I on the other hand will say, a smartwatch can compliment your smartphone.

Getting really short battery life?

I have tested a few Galaxy Gear smartwatches, and I can really say that those of you getting really bad battery life can be due to a few things.

I got a chance to test out a few different Galaxy Gear smartwatches, like the wild orange Galaxy Gear, Rose Gold Galaxy Gear and the mocha gray Galaxy Gear. During the testing I never had any issue with battery life like some other reviewers that mentioned that they could barely get through the day.

Fast forward to December 25, 2013 as my wife gave me my very own Rose Gold Galaxy Gear as a Christmas gift! I finally had a smartwatch that I have been putting off, as I wasn’t to sure and diffidently didn’t really want to pay $299.99 for it. My wife was able to get it for just $149.99 during the special holiday sales.

After using the Galaxy Gear for the first few days I noticed that the Galaxy Gear battery life was terrible compare to the previous Galaxy Gear’s I had tested. This reminded me of the reviewers that had mentioned that they could just get through the day. Well this was happening to me as well.

Since my wife has a Galaxy Gear as well, which I had purchased for her for just $99 because I got a discount. This allowed me to once again compare the battery life. If you get a lot of messages, text, email or notifications, this will also affect the battery life of your Galaxy Gear.

Since my wife’s Galaxy Gear would basically have around 98% of battery life after about 3 to 4 hours and my Galaxy Gear in 3 to 4 hours with minor notifications, would be around 83%. So I knew something was just not right.

What I did notice is that the new Galaxy Gear was way to sensitive, compared to my Wife’s Galaxy Gear. This alone would make my Galaxy Gear turn on basically for every movement causing more battery drain because of the screen turning on more often then necessary. I tested both on how sensitive they were, and my Galaxy Gear would turn on very easily, my Wife’s Galaxy Gear was not as sensitive but sensitive enough that when you needed to look at the time it would turn on. At that point I basically decided to make sure I exchanged it for another one. In the meantime what I did was turned off the “Motions”. This is what makes the Galaxy Gear turn on when you move you arm up to view the time on the smartwatch. So I figured this would give me all day use, right? Wrong! I did get a little bit more battery life but some how it still managed to drain the battery.

After the holidays I finally got to exchange the Galaxy Gear and I am happy to report, excellent battery life! Once again I can basically go through two days or maybe three if I push the limit, but now I lose about 2% of battery for every hour. This is with quite of email, text and all day use.

So if you happen to have a Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, and you are experiencing short battery life? or is very sensitive to movement? You might want to exchange your Galaxy Gear.