- Many Galaxy Watch owners report a battery drain issue
- It appears to have arisen from a recent software update.
- Samsung has not yet commented, but Google Play services could be to blame.
Samsung makes some of the best smartwatches out there, but we’re seeing multiple reports from Galaxy Watch owners about rapidly draining battery life, and the issue appears to be related to a recent software update.
As spotted by Android Authority and others, users took to Reddit to complain about a sudden drop in battery life. Given the number of comments and upvotes the thread received, it seems like quite a few people are having problems.
Some of the models mentioned in the thread are the Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 6 Classic, so this is having an impact on more than one device. In one case, a day’s battery life was reduced to just 4 or 5 hours, demonstrating the severity of the problem.
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One user says their battery life has gotten significantly worse, while another describes their Galaxy Watch “burning through the battery like crazy.” One commenter says their watch is now “a total disappointment” and not “what Samsung promised.”
Reboot or reset
Does anyone else have this problem? from r/GalaxyWatch
There has been no official comment on this from Samsung yet; We have asked the company and will update this story if we receive a response. But Reddit sleuths have noticed that Google Play services consume an excessive amount of battery, so that seems to be the villain of this particular piece.
Google Play services run in the background on Android phones and watches and handle tasks such as connecting apps to the operating system, authenticating users, and reporting location data. It is often updated separately from the main Android or Wear OS software.
Standard troubleshooting methods such as rebooting, clearing data cache, or hard reset may help if you experience this issue. These techniques seem to have helped some of the affected users, but not all.
It’s also worth mentioning that some users have chimed in to say they don’t see the battery life issues described by others, so this doesn’t affect all Galaxy Watches. Let’s hope Samsung can implement a fix sooner rather than later.
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