Hello everyone,
How to fix battery drain on weather watchface made on GWS? I have so many bad reviews because of that.
Thank you!
Hi @activewatchdesign,
One reason could be the excessive number of auto-refreshings. You may try to set the auto-refreshing (Edit -> Preferences -> APIs) duration a bit longer than usual and this will reduce the number of API calls and hence save battery. However, there could be other reasons as well and you need to analyze all the components of your watch face.
Azad
This comes up fairly frequently and we have done tests and adding Weather has may possible decrease battery life by 5%. It really isn’t the weather, it is users turning on GPS or WiFi always on thinking that is necessary. Make sure the users are not doing that.
If you have animated weather then there could be an issue with the animation but weather was not the issue in our tests.
Ron
Samsung Developer Program
I stopped putting weather on faces because I got too many complaints, and customers were very unhappy. This is an excerpt of a five page document I provided to Samsung back in May 2018 highlighting all the items I found unusual with using the weather API… I do believe it’s a result of all the permissions that need to be on in order to get weather to work. There isn’t really anything that can be done to fix this, it’s great that they are able to provide this API in the first place.
Also, because the OpenWeatherMap API is different than the weather on people’s phones, you’ll also get complaints that the city on the watch doesn’t match their phone. 
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I remember this and we could not duplicate it you practically have to update the weather ever minute on and LTE watch to get such severe battery drain. But again older S2 and even S3 devices have much less battery life than the newer releases.
Ron
Samsung Developer Program
Yep, thanks Ron. It was on my S2, and I’m not complaining because I still have and use that watch, it’s a trooper 
I have no experience with the newer models, I should have made that clear, sorry.
My old weather faces are still on the store, and get infrequent downloads. I got this comment a month ago. I have the API set to auto refresh every two hours.
Locations are the weather tower not the city and that is confusing. Even when it is put in the product descriptions.
For instance I live a few miles from a huge train switch yard so weather is Brownlee Park not my city name.
Ron
Samsung Developer Program
Hi @azad,
I have changed auto update to 12 hour and still get battery drain.
I have same watchface without weather, just health info. It didn’t have these problem
Hi Ron,
I have test it by myself, it’s drain battery about 30% in 3 hour. I have turned off GPS and WiFi after get location and weather data.
I have same watchface without weather, just health info. It didn’t have these problem.
Hi Active
You do not need to turn GPS and WiFi for weather if it is paired to a phone and I don’t think you need it for standalone watches but I am not sure on that.
The biggest drain on mobile devices and watches is travelling.
Do you have weather in AOD mode too that might be a bigger drain.
Do you have an older watch model S2 or S3/Sport? Their batteries are much smaller so the same drain would be greater in an older model.
Images and animation may be a problem if you are using them.
If you can create a simple watch design that shows the drain please upload it to support and ask that Azad look at it.
Ron
Samsung Developer Program