The Huawei Watch 2 is one of the best Android Wear watches currently available, and it manages surprisingly good endurance out of its 420mAh battery. Still, for heavy users who are constantly checking notifications and flipping through apps, it might not be enough to last through a busy work day. Here are a few tips on how to make the most of the Huawei Watch 2's battery.
Turn down your brightness
This one's pretty obvious, but the brighter your display, the faster your battery will drain. In most cases, the Huawei Watch 2 can handle automatic brightness adjustment on its own, but particularly if you're in a dark room, you might benefit from manually dimming the display.
To do this, just swipe down from the watch face and jump into the settings. Tap Display, then Adjust brightness, and choose any level from 1 to 5. Even in fairly bright rooms, the lowest setting can be enough, but keep in mind that switching away from auto brightness can lead to added hassle once you step out into direct sunlight.
Use a black watch face
The Huawei Watch 2 features an AMOLED display, which can be a huge advantage when it comes to battery life. Unlike LCD displays, which emit light evenly across the entire panel, AMOLED displays can achieve perfect black by simply not backlighting black pixels. In other words, the more black pixels being used, the less power it takes to display it.
The Huawei Watch 2 already takes advantage of this with its always-on display, but you can further the benefits by using a primarily black watch face. The pre-installed Elements Digital watch face offers options for a black background with either blue or green elements, but if that's not your style it's easy enough to download other watch faces from the Play Store.
Turn off always-on display
Those power savings we just talked about when using a black watch face? They come in handy for always-on display mode too, but while it's helpful to only display a few elements on the screen, an even better way to cut back on battery drain is to turn off the always-on display altogether.
From the watch face, access the Settings app by swiping down and tapping the corresponding icon. Tap Display, then scroll to the bottom of the list and tap Always-on screen. Make sure the blue dot within the circle to the left turns grey, indicating that the feature has been disabled.
In a pinch? Use Theater Mode
If your battery percentage has reached the single digits, you can turn on Theater Mode as a last-ditch effort. Theater Mode conserves power by muting notifications, turning off the display, and basically turning off the entire watch — turned back on by hitting the power button.
To enable Theater Mode, swipe down from the watch face and tap the box with the diagonal line through it. The Watch 2 will instruct you to press the power button in order to disable the mode, then the display will turn off. Keep in mind that while leaving the display off will minimize power consumption, Theater Mode won't stop battery drain completely — the watch still needs to carry out background tasks like maintaining its Bluetooth connection.
