Smartwatches are pretty great.
On top of being a regular watch, they can play songs, either through their own speaker or on my phone, and keep me up to date with my latest notifications.
But, as every owner knows, battery life isn’t exactly a strength for most models.
This hasn’t been an issue for me since I stopped wearing mine at night, but this year I made a terrible mistake that meant I potentially faced time without my beloved tech.
Truly a fate worse than death. Thankfully, one feature came to my rescue. Only for me to realize it’s a bit rubbish.
The great smartwatch charger debate: Is it time for the industry to standardize?
Smartwatch chargers are all different, which is becoming an issue that smartwatch makers should start paying attention to
I made a mistake that was easily remedied
On New Year’s Eve 2025, I went to a New Year’s Eve party.
Which is, ultimately, the best time of year to hold one. Sorry, but if you’re holding a New Year’s Eve party in June, I’m probably not going to go.
But anyway, I got there, and partway through the evening I realized my Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic‘s charging puck was missing from my overnight bag.
Disaster! With only 40% left in the tank, it was absolutely not going to last until I got back home.
Horrified at the prospect of losing my nostril hair tracking capabilities, drink in hand, I scrolled through my battery-saving options.
And that’s when my eyes fell on one particular juice-sipping mode: Watch Only.
Brilliant! Sure, I’d lose all my data tracking, but frankly, I was more worried about losing access to my watch.
And as a big bonus, it would boost my battery life by an enormous 12 days! Not that I’d need all that power, but hey, it was good to know.
Sounds like an ideal mode, right? Except, it was fatally flawed in a way that made it pointless.
Watch Only mode is a desperation move only
My word, it’s bad.
Watch Only doesn’t really even do that. It’s more accurately described as “Watch Only, after you press the home button and then inexplicably wait a second or two for the display to wake up.”
The fact that it takes a button press and a small wait seems like a minor inconvenience, but in practice, it eradicates the usefulness of a watch.
The point of a watch is to be able to lift your arm and quickly see what the time is.
In times past, it was the only portable way to know the time, but more recently, it simply means it’s quicker than getting your phone out.
But in Watch Only mode, that’s not the case. It would have been quicker and easier to get my phone out.
Frankly, I’d have been better off chucking my smartwatch into my bag and going without.
Even the impressive 12 days of battery life seem pointless when the mode is this bad. I just don’t know who actually needs this mode.
Sure, you can get the time for 12 days, but why?
If you’ve messed up that badly that you’ve ended up having to rely on Watch Only mode for almost two weeks, just buy a cheap Casio watch instead.
It’ll be far better at showing you the time, and it’ll probably show you the date too.
It’s such a pointless feature. But it could be improved so easily.
It would be so much better if it were actually a standalone mode
I can see why Watch Only exists the way that it does.
Samsung is squeezing the most battery it can out of a device, and frankly, there’s no way to get more out of this watch.
Plus, it looks great on a specification sheet to say you have an ultra battery-saving mode that lasts weeks. If you need it, it’s there!
I can also see a time when such a mode could be useful. But when you have to press a button to make it pop up? That’s a real pain, and it makes it a very tough feature to recommend.
If I could see the time quickly and easily, I’d be the first to proclaim its usefulness.
But a noticeable delay and needing to press a button? It’s just the most annoying interaction imaginable. I’d rather get my phone out.
It’s so easy to see how it can be fixed too: Add an Always-on display option to it. Yes, it’ll impact the battery life, but as long as it’s still multiple days, I really couldn’t care less.
Heck, make it so it’s on a dim backlight and you need to press a button to light it up. At least then it’s on par with a cheap Casio watch.
As it is, it’s about equal with the pocket watches from the early Terry Pratchett novels, where you’d press a button and a surly imp would emerge to tell you the time.
Amusing in fiction, but annoying in real life.
