Description: Wear Battery Saver is an Android app specifically designed for Android Wear smartwatches, and particularly those like the Moto 360 that aren’t known for their great battery life. Wear Battery Saver aims to save battery by turning off Bluetooth on your watch, the biggest culprit for high battery drain on these little smartphones. It turns off Bluetooth in sync with the Android Wear Connection cycle meaning that your Android Wear watch shouldn’t behave any differently than otherwise. With a comprehensive app designed for both watch and phone, Wear Battery Saver is the only thing you should need in order to monitor your battery consumption on Android Wear. Read on to see how it worked with my LG G Watch.
How it Works: With an Android Wear watch synced to your phone, you’ll need to download Wear Battery Saver from the Play Store. Then, you can go ahead and launch the app, and you might see the status of your watch. If not, go ahead and Resync Apps using the Android Wear Companion App on your phone.
You should also see something on your Android Wear device as well.
A lot of interaction can take place on your watch, as you can change some of the settings right from your watch. Here, I’m using an LG G Watch, but the UI will look the same on any Android Wear smartwatch. Changing the battery saving plan could be a big help to eek out even more life from your watch.
Back on the phone app, and you can get detailed information on the battery life of your device, obviously this is just a quick example, after a number of days or even weeks you’ll have a much better picture of your battery life.
After a while, the way that Wear Battery Saver saves battery, by turning off Bluetooth in line with the connection cycle, you should notice an improvement in your overall battery life, and see that Wear Battery Saver is going to save you a good amount of battery over the days and weeks.
Opinion: I’ve been using an Android Wear watch since the G Watch first hit shelves, and honestly, I’ve never had an issue with battery life. Sure, if I use the watch heavily and then go out for the evening by midnight, one o’clock I’m going to run into an issue perhaps. During my working week though, I can get two days of normal use out of my G Watch, so I was skeptical of Wear Battery Saver if I’m honest. I came across a couple of issues as well, the Bluetooth widget (which isn’t on by default) made my watch difficult to use. Whether this is because I was using a custom watch face I’m not sure, but you can easily turn off the widget to remove this problem After things had settled though, I could see that the app was indeed disconnecting Bluetooth at intervals that seemed fairly regular and manageable. I didn’t miss any notifications like this, but they’re definitely not going to get to me as quickly if my watch is sleeping. For myself and my G Watch, I won’t get the most out of Wear Battery Saver, as I get great battery life with the stock software. Moto 360 users however, should seriously give this a look. Let’s not forget as well, that if I were to go away for the weekend and forget my charger, Wear Battery Saver might help me make it through the rest of the weekend.
Ratings
- Speed (3.5/5) – This isn’t all that quick to set up and when I first did so, a lot of things crashed on my watch.
- Features (4/5) – It does what it says it does, without any pesky cache cleaners or unnecessary things like that, something I wish other developers would seriously look into for phone equivalents.
- Theme (4/5) – With a decent looking Wear app as well as a detailed phone app, Wear Battery Saver looks good enough and the interface works well.
- Overall (4/5) – While I came across a couple of issues at first, these subsided and the overall experience is decent. For a lot of G Watch and G Watch R users this might not be too helpful, but Moto 360 users finally have a helping hand with Wear Battery Saver.
Pros
- Gives you a look at how much battery you’re using as well as how much you’re saving with Wear Battery Saver.
- Wear Battery Saver is a good option for Moto 360 users in need of a battery boost.
- Gives you a quick way of turning off Bluetooth on your watch to save battery when you’re simply not using the watch.
- Designed to be as easy to use as possible, while also comprehensive enough to give detailed information to users.
Cons
- Bluetooth Widget is a good idea, but it doesn’t play nice with all watch faces, but it is easily disabled.
- For users with decent battery life, there really isn’t much need for something this, sadly.
Conclusion: Whether or not you’ve had an Android Wear watch for a while and found a new use for it that’s running your battery down, or you’ve just got one and are disappointed with the battery life, Wear Battery Saver can help. It won’t get in the way of how you use your Android Wear watch and can help you make the most of its battery life, helping you get through that weekend without the charger or that long, long day at the office.
