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Tizen .NET and battery usage

Hi,

I am developing a Tizen application using the .NET API that is targeted for the Gear S3.  I am testing battery usage of the app and I am baffled at what I see.  The app is designed to have a "always on" feeling - much like the Samsung Health application.  This means that I am registering to the DisplayChanged and bringing back the app when the user turns the screen back on.

I have done a test where I leave my app running for 30 minutes and I find that this used up 22% of the battery which is much more than I expect.  For my test I do the following:  start the app and leave it running while the app is doing absolutely nothing - no worker thread, no timer, no UI change.  I then let the display turn off after 10 seconds and leave the watch with the display off for the next 30 minutes.  And this takes 22% battery.  In comparison, I have left the watch running just the watchface for 30 minutes and it uses 2% on my watch - I have cleaned the watch of other apps, cleared the cache, restarted it, and am up to date in the updates.

My questions:

  • Is there a known issue that .NET apps are more power hungry?
  • Where could I find official guidelines regarding practices for power consumption?  Specifically, my app needs to be able to always come back to the front every time the user wakes the display.  As stated, I make sure that no code is running when display turns off by using DisplayChanged callback and alarms.
  • I am comparing this with the Samsung Health app which is able to (1) also always stay on, (2) have a timer, (3) monitor GPS position, (4) monitor hearth rate, (5) monitor movement and still it uses less batery life than my .NET that is doing nothing (no GPS, no sensor, no timer).  Samsung needs to give us clear guidelines on how to achieve this if they want the community to be able to develop awesome apps (and not just mediocre ones like a lot of what we see in the Gear store).

Thanks

List

Responses

2 Replies
Tizen .NET

Hi,
To reproduce this app, I create the simple app that launches itself with appcontrol whenever the screen is on.
I didn't find .NET app especially consuming more batteries.
(I checked the battery stat of apps that consumed the battery for 30 minutes after leaving Galaxy Watch for more than 1 hour.)
There was an issue related to battery consumption, but as I know, it was not limited to .net app and it has been resolved in the latest binary.
Please check it again and if the issue continues, please share the simple app that can be reproduced, how you check, your watch's SW version info with us.
(In Settings app > About watch > Software > Software version)
For information on how to minimize battery consumption in the SHealth app, please contact technical support.
Thanks.

John Seminaro

Many thanks for your reply.

I have done many more tests to understand the source of the battery drain (removing Privileges, Features, Background category...).  I was eventually able to run my test (run the app idle for 30 minutes) and just get 3-4% battery drain (instead of 22%) by doing the following:

  • Uncharge the watch completely
  • Leave it uncharged for a good amount of time
  • Recharge it completely

I don't know if this even makes sense, but that is the only thing that worked.

What puzzles me even more is that before doing this cycling of the battery, the only thing that seemed to drain the battery was my app.  Using just a regular watchface was fine.  I am suspecting that connecting the debugger is related to this somehow...

Anyway, thanks again for your support.  I will keep an eye out on this and let you know if I find more details.