We all know that not many people upgrade their smartwatches every year. And upgrades are not always huge from one year to the next, so many people opt to keep their current smartwatch until a bigger upgrade comes along, or it starts experiencing issues.
One issue that many smartwatches experience over time is battery degradation, though. Despite that, most timepieces don’t have serious battery protection features, so you have limited options to protect their battery longevity.
Well, now it seems smartwatch makers are starting to pay attention to this issue, and Samsung is also eyeing battery longevity with a new feature coming with the Galaxy Watch 8 lineup.
In other words, the feature keeps your Galaxy Watch battery between 85 and 90% of its maximum capacity when charging.
Previous Galaxy Watch models had only two options in the “Charging” section of Battery settings. You had “show charging info” and “auto power on”. The first one controlled whether your device would show its battery level while charging, and the other one basically determined if your watch would automatically power on when connected to a charger.
This new feature brings things to the next level. You may know that having smartwatches (or any device with a lithium-ion battery) consistently at 100% charge can shorten the battery’s longevity. The 100% charge comes with a stress level for the battery because of the high state of charge.
Nowadays, many new smartphones have similar protections, like limiting the charging to 80%. For the Galaxy Watch 8, it’s 90%. Understandably, although 80% is better than 90%, smartwatches have smaller batteries, so Samsung likely didn’t want your smartwatch to run out of juice when you’re out and about.
It’s not clear at this point whether the feature will come to older Galaxy Watches with the One UI 8 Watch update, or it’s just reserved for the newer models.
Meanwhile, Apple has a similar feature on the Apple Watch. I’ve noticed it on my Apple Watch SE 2 – an automatic behavior where the watch limits its charge if I haven’t been using the full battery and I charge it every night. It’s likely part of the Optimized Battery Charging feature, but instead of timing the charge to finish right before I take it off the charger, it simply caps the battery before it reaches 100%.
But unlike Samsung’s new feature, this one is automatic and triggered in certain conditions only (like charging every night).
