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Locus maps gear sucks accu

Thomas Schäfer shared this problem 5 years ago
Solved

The Locus Maps Gear app is really great.

But if i use it on my Sony SW3, only showing the position every 10 minutes, the accu is empty after 2 to 3 hours.

So for a day-tour i cant use it.

Would it be possible to load the used (offline-) map into the watch to reduce significantly the datatransfer during the tour? Then only the position data has to be sent.

Or is there an other way to spare accu, so i come "along the day"?

Regards

Thomas

Replies (2)

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Hello Thomas,

to be honest, Android Wear devices suck in battery life generally but Wear for Locus Map is definitely a significant battery drainer. Communication itself should not be a big problem but the active screen usually is even if dimmed.

I suspect you have "Screen always on" enabled in your Android Wear display settings and Wear for Locus Map is always visible even though the screen is dimmed? I would start by disabling this settings if that is the case. That should allow Wear for Locus Map to close itself and disconnect when you are not looking at the watch and automatically reconnect and display map on wake up (ie. by default by tilting the hand or tapping the display).

With Screen always on enabled though there is probably no ideal solution if we want to keep displaying the map even in ambient mode, the screen will simply drain the battery.

If you have Screen always on disabled though and still experience only 2 - 3 hours run-time while looking at the map only once every few minutes then that would be weird and please let me know if that is the case.

Best Regards

Milan

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Hello Milan,

with the display you are right.

I forgot to write, that i turn the display option "Always On" to OFF.

During the walk i look every 5 to 10 minutes to the watch screen to keep the track. (No active navigation or track-recording!)

But there is a significant difference between a repeated look on the Time-display and the Locus-display.

Looking on the time display every 10 minutes (ok, sounds crazy - but as a test :-) ) the battery reaches to the evening.

Same one the Locus wear screen -> battery empty after about 3 hours.

So i thinks there must be something beside the display that sucks lot of energy...

Regards

Thomas

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Hmm, that is weird with display being off. Based on my tests both communication and screen and practically even the whole application itself should be off during the sleep state and I would expect at least 2 or 3 times longer battery life given the usage you have described.

Well ok, thanks for reporting this. I will leave this problem opened and will try some test later to see if I could help it somehow even with ambient screen off. In the meantime I cannot unfortunately offer you any workaround to improve your situation, sorry :(

Have a nice day,

Milan

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Hi Milan,

a wonder occured.


First i've remarked that on my watch several apps (i.e. Locus, Outlook...) were shown multiple (3x - 4x) by calling the WearOS memory view. This seems to be a result of a "Syncronize apps new". Of course a bug...

Because i miss a play store app on the watch (should be there by default??) to deinstall the aps, i reinstalled the the whole WearOS and the watch.

Now there is every app only once.

And (Oh wonder!) the hunger on accu energy is significantly reduced.

After 4 hours there are 90% accu left :-)


PS Do you know, how to get a play store app on the watch, to deinstall apps?

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Hello Thomas,

great, I am really glad you have found the solution. I wouldn't ever have guessed that this might be the problem but to be honest I am not really surprised, seems like with Wear OS platform everything is possible :)

I thought that Sony SW3 should be running Android Wear 2 (now Wear OS) which should have Google Play store by default, though I am not sure if the AW2 update was official for SW3 but I thought it was. If you are running Android Wear 1.x on your watch then I think there is no way to use Google Play store on the watch. Application should uninstall itself when you uninstall it on the phone, but there was probably some bug in your case. On AW2 Wear for Locus Map must be installed independently on both the phone and the watch (phone part of the add-on is not directly part of the Locus Map app), but on AW1.x reinstalling the add-on on the phone should do the trick.

Anyway I am happy it is working now, hope there won't be any other problems with your watch.

Regards

Milan

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