All-Day Battery Life Tips
iPhone Tips
With no other apps actively running in the background and a healthy battery, by following these tips you can expect a device starting with a full charge to last up to 14 hours.
- Doing anything on the internet when you have mediocre reception hurts battery life surprisingly more than GPS. You don't have to avoid the internet, but keep in mind that streaming music or constantly using social media on lifts is going to burn through your battery.
- Keep your phone warm(-ish) as a cold phone will have worse battery life.
- Lock your phone (hit the power button) after you start recording. Slopes will go into the background and save power by not having to constantly update the info on-screen.
- You can turn off cellular data (Settings app → Cellular) for the biggest battery savings. Don't use Airplane mode though as it will reduce GPS accuracy.
We're always testing battery consumption and aim for reasonably real-world metrics. During most recent tests, the iPhone app used an average of 7% battery life per hour. During these tests we quit background-fetching apps like Facebook before hitting the mountain, but left WiFi/Cellular/Bluetooth on.
Apple Watch Tips
If you're using an Apple Watch Series 7 or earlier, the biggest tip here is to keep your phone on you. The Apple Watch is smart and will use your phone's GPS if it is nearby and you have Bluetooth on, which saves your Watch's battery and lets it focus on running the heart rate sensor. Using your Watch's GPS alone you can expect ~6hrs of battery life, but with your phone on you you'll see all-day battery life.
The Series 8, second generation SE and Ultra do not piggyback off the iPhone's GPS though, so taking your phone with you will make no difference as they will use the built-in Apple Watch GPS even when your iPhone is nearby. During testing, we found the Ultra used 5% battery per hour during recording with Slopes, while the Series 8 burnt around 6% - 7% per hour.