Sudden battery drain - how to tell what caused it?

[itm]

My Zenwatch usually consumes <50% of its battery during a typical day. Today however it was completely dead by 7pm, even though there was nothing unusual about the day - it was worn at the same location all day, and was in close proximity to my phone all day.

Is there any way of tracing what causes this sort of sudden battery drain?

 

[H.B.]

Hello,

same Problem here.

You can use the "Android Wear" app, connect to your watch and press the gear wheel on the upper right, then press on the first entry " Asus Zenwatch 2" and then you see the option "Battery of the watch" in the middled of the screen. It looks the same as you can see it on the telephone but for you watch battery.

I made a few screenshots today:

looks ok for me...

still ok...

now there has something started sucking the battery empty....

now it has stopped... but only for a moment - later it came back and at 15:30 I had only 13% left. I noticed that the temperature display still was showing 7°C but my car display shows 16".
I restarted the watch now and voilá the temp changed to 16°... very stange

And this is the second watch - the first one I send back to Amazon because of the same "bug" ....

 

[itm]

For some reason I can't see any of your screenshots. Any chance or re-uploading them?

 

[H.B.]

For some reason I can't see any of your screenshots. Any chance or re-uploading them?

better now?

 

[itm]

Still nothing
???

 

[itechnoguy]

I think he was trying to upload a screenshot like the one I attached to this post, it's basically a similar battery usage indicator like the one for the Android phone itself. I don't have anything on here really, yet, because it hasn't been too long since I took it off the charger.

 

[Android Optimizer]

Asus Zentalk forum has walkthroughs

The Asus ZenTalk forum has a walk-through with pictures on how to get to the battery use screen. (I'd post the link for you, but I don't have enough posts yet to post links).

 

[itm]

I just had the same problem happen this evening. Everything was fine until about 8pm, with 70% remaining, then two hours later it had plummeted to 15%. I checked the battery stats in the Android Wear app, as suggested, but they didn't help: there were only 2 lines:
- Watch Idle: 5%
- Screen: 2%

Screenshot is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jd8x74gbhs78uih/Screenshot_2015-10-29-21-47-19.png?dl=0

???

 

[Android Optimizer]

I just had the same problem happen this evening. Everything was fine until about 8pm, with 70% remaining, then two hours later it had plummeted to 15%. I checked the battery stats in the Android Wear app, as suggested, but they didn't help: there were only 2 lines:
- Watch Idle: 5%
- Screen: 2%


???

That is a pretty drastic and sudden drop. What watch face were you using? Did the watch do (vibrate?) or alert you to anything (view messages, receive a call, etc) during that time?
What are each of your settings in the settings area (what features do you have turned on or off)? If you have wifi turned on where you in an area where it may have been attempting to connect to nearby wifi networks and repeatedly failing (like trying to connect to networks where there are sign-on pages where you have to agree to a user agreement before connecting to a free wifi network)?
If you look at your phone battery usage during that same time (if you still can) does it show anything highly active on your phone during that time? (For example could the phone have been trying to update any of the files or apps on your watch during that time?).

 

[itm]

To answer your questions:

- What watch face were you using? Perfection (although the last time I had this problem I was using the Explorer watchface)
- Did the watch do (vibrate?) or alert you to anything (view messages, receive a call, etc) during that time? No - I just got a few notifications when emails came in
- What are each of your settings in the settings area?
- Brightness: 3
- Font size: Normal
- Always on screen: Off
- Wrist gestures: On
- Screen lock: Off

- If you have wifi turned on where you in an area where it may have been attempting to connect to nearby wifi networks and repeatedly failing - No, I was at
home in my study and lounge (within 15 feet of my wifi router at all times)

- If you look at your phone battery usage during that same time (if you still can) does it show anything highly active on your phone during that time? I don't have the ability to look at yesterday's phone battery stats, but I know that there were no app updates or unusual notifications on the phone during that period yesterday

???

 

[Android Optimizer]

To answer your questions:

- What watch face were you using? Perfection (although the last time I had this problem I was using the Explorer watchface)
- Did the watch do (vibrate?) or alert you to anything (view messages, receive a call, etc) during that time? No - I just got a few notifications when emails came in
- What are each of your settings in the settings area?
- Brightness: 3
- Font size: Normal
- Always on screen: Off
- Wrist gestures: On
- Screen lock: Off

- If you have wifi turned on where you in an area where it may have been attempting to connect to nearby wifi networks and repeatedly failing - No, I was at
home in my study and lounge (within 15 feet of my wifi router at all times)

In the days that have followed did the problem of sudden drain continue to occur, or does it appear to have been an isolated incident?

In that time period it experienced the drastic drop were you doing anything repeatedly? (ex: eating food, exercising, reading a book?) Repetitive tasks where you wrist was moving a lot may have been turning on your watch using the wrist gestures, and it seems that wrist gestures (where the brightness level 3, color, etc are activated) may use more battery than always on in its timed-out dim mode does. If you're continuing to experience the problem try going a day with always on screen turned on, wrist gestures turned off, and see if there is a difference in your battery use at the end of the day.

Your watch may also be preforming syncing with your phone at a particular time, and transfer of data across wifi between the two may be draining the battery. You could try turning off the sync setting on your phone for a day, and see if that makes a difference.

Finally you can try turning off wifi, and see how much longer your battery lasts with wifi switched off on the watch.

 

[itm]

In the period when it dropped drastically I was sitting on the sofa watching TV. There were no repetitive tasks. In fact I could probably not have been less mobile!

I now have "always on" mode enabled, and have disabled tilt-to-wake. So far it has maintained the usual (low) battery usage, so I'll wait and see if I get a recurrence of the problem.

The problem with turning off sync for a day is that it's unlikely to prove anything. This problem only happens every few weeks, so if it doesn't happen on the day that I have sync turned off then I'll be no wiser.

I'm not sure what you mean by turning off wifi on the watch - do you mean putting it into airplane mode? If I do I would fully expect my battery life to improve, but how would that prove whether it was the potential cause of the rapid 2-hour drain?

I'm watching my watch battery levels very closely at the moment, but if I do notice a sudden drain again what can I do to establish exactly what is happening on the watch at the time? If the watchface is displayed as usual, and there's no evidence of any specific app running on the watch, what other options do I have for finding the cause of the excess battery drain?

 

[itm]

After 4 weeks I've just had the same problem on 2 consecutive days. At the end of the first day I notiiced that the "tilt-to-wake" option had become re-enabled (I'm not sure how, as I don't remember enabling it). I disabled it again last night, but today my battery was pretty much dead by 9pm. I tried a reboot earlier in the day, but it didn't seem to help.

The latest version of the Android Wear app seems to have removed all info on battery usage, so this is impossible to diagnose. As things stand, the watch has gone from being an all-day device to a device that won't last a whole day in the last days (

 

[corrsea]

Rather than trouble shooting you should just go for a completely new set up of the watch. Uninstall the wear and ZenWatch manager apps, factory reset the watch and reinstall everything.
I've gone from just under a day to an insane 3-4 days battery life. (I don't use any fitness trackers or ambient mode btw)

Sent from my ASUS_Z00AD using Tapatalk

 

[itm]

So today the problem seems to have gone away. For the first time since the weekend I got through the whole day with only 40% battery usage. This battery drain issue seems completely random, and it's annoying that there's no way of diagnosing it.

Surprised that more people aren't seeing this.

 

[CSX321]

The latest version of the Android Wear app seems to have removed all info on battery usage

The new version of Wear from yesterday has the battery usage option again.

 

[itm]

The new version of Wear from yesterday has the battery usage option again.

Hmmm....I'm not seeing an update with that option in it yet.....maybe tomorrow...

 

[CSX321]

Hmmm....I'm not seeing an update with that option in it yet.....maybe tomorrow...

For reference, the version I got yesterday (as shown on the phone) is 1.4.0.2470307.gms

 

[itm]

The new version of Wear from yesterday has the battery usage option again.

For reference, the version I got yesterday (as shown on the phone) is 1.4.0.2470307.gms

Ah OK I'm still on 1.4.0.2462440.gms and the Play Store isn't showing an update available yet. Fingers crossed I'll get it soon, and that the battery info actually gives me some useful information when I see it draining fast next time.